PBEM Battle Reports

I have just finished the battle report for the second part of the battle of Zeitz in the PBEM Halle campaign. This has turned out to be a very long report, and it made me think about whether it is a good idea to make them so long and complicated.

When I started the blog I published battle reports in a very simplified form, with about four photographs of the main phases of the game. I had kept similar reports for many years as part of my personal record of my current campaign. Just something I could look back on, and an instant reminder of previous battles should I need to jog my memory. These were the reports I put on the blog in the early days.

The arrival of the PBEM campaign changed all of that. The battle reports were now to keep campaign players informed of how "their" battle went, and why they won or lost. I felt that it was important for them to be detailed enough for the players to understand why things happened, rather than just record that they did happen. This has grown into, I fear, pretty detailed battle reports with lots of photographs.

Its interesting that since the PBEM campaign started there have been a huge increase in the number of "hits" on the wargame rules blog. I assume that this is the campaign players checking rules, but I am not sure. At the start of the campaign all players were sent a copy of the wargame rules, so they have their own copy to refer to. So it might be that there is a general interest in the rules and the battle reports.

Anyway I shall continue to publish them in their current style at least until the campaign ends. Other battle reports, such as the Wellingtons Battles blog will have simpler reports, but with just as many photographs.

My son is buying me a new camera for Christmas. It has the ability to "stitch" photographs. Apparently this means I an take three photographs side by side and "stitch" them into one new photographs. If it works this would be very useful, because instead of having three photographs showing the left, centre and right of the table, I would only have one for each wargame move. But don't expect too much too soon. Photography has never been my strong point.

In the meantime if you would like to read the latest, and very long, battle report from the PBEM campaign you can find it here

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http://pbem1813hallecampaign.blogspot.com/

Battle of Zeitz

The latest battle in the Halle PBEM campaign is at Zeitz, a small village just south of Lutzen.

One of the problems with the campaign is that the battles, and therefore the wargames, are determined by the campaign timings. There are three moves in one campaign day, and the battle could start on any one of them, even the last. One campaign move is the same as four wargame moves. So if one were to start on the third move of a campaign day there would only be four wargame moves before nightfall.

Fortunately this one starts at midday, so there are eight wargame moves before nightfall. And reinforcements arrive for both sides after four wargame moves. I must confess that I would prefer a normal 12 move wargame, but these campaign games do have their own interesting twists.

For one thing the players have to make a decision about reinforcements before they know what the situation on the table will be when they arrive. This can lead to situations which I would never have considered when I was running my solo campaign.


--> If you would like to read the start of the latest battle you will find it at:
http://pbem1813hallecampaign.blogspot.com/

PBEM Battles

PBEM battles seem to be like buses - you wait a long time and then two come along together.

The campaign has now reached the stage where it is all going to happen pretty soon, at least in campaign time. Both armies are within striking distance of each other, and both are spoiling for a fight.

At present two battles have started at the same time, which could well cause a problem in how to fight them. Because each corps commander writes new orders three times a day, and each battle is likely to take up to a day to complete, I have yet to figure out how to complete one battle with reinforcements, and then fight the second one.

Fortunately the first battle ends within one campaign move, and I can then clear the table and fight the second one during the same campaign move, and allow reinforcements to arrive in the next campaign move. But if both were to continue into a second campaign move I would have a big problem.

As has happened in the past with wagames rules, once I solve one problem in the campaign I seem to create a second one. But worse still the battles that the campaign produce are not proving to be very good wargames. This is the old campaign problem that no one wants to fight an even battle, everyone wants to gain an advantage over the enemy. This is a perfectly reasonable objective, but it does not lend to a good balanced wargame. If one side gains a two to one advantage there is really no point in even fighting the wargame - its bound to go to the one with the larger army.

Its taken me years to design my solo campaign, which works very well and provides excellent wargames. I had hoped that I could convert it to a multi player PBEM campaign, but its simply not working.

When this campaign ends I will have to go back to the drawing board and see what I can design. I am reluctant to abandon the idea of a PBEM campaign, as it has provided a lot of enjoyment. But I do miss being able to "master mind" the campaign moves to provide challenging wargames.

You can read the latest wargeme, the battle of Halle, here:

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http://pbem1813hallecampaign.blogspot.com/

The Frustrations of running a PBEM Campaign

I refer, of course, to the problems of dealing with 14 players all over the world by email.

I had thought that it would be easier with this campaign. The last one required each player to send me his orders every 24 hours, and mostly this was done. Of course it was easier for players to keep up to date with what was happening because I published an updated map on the blog each day with the locations of each corps on both sides.

The current campaign is hidden movement, which requires the players to keep track of where they are themselves. I do send each side a map showing current locations of friendly corps each campaign day. There are three moves in each day, so at the most each player has to keep track of where they have moved for three moves.

Each move starts with the player sending me an email confirming which square on the campaign map he wants to move to, and what his order of march is. I plot them on the campaign map and send them a contact report of what enemy they have spotted during that move. They then send me their orders for the next move.

Not much room for error there, but surprisingly some of the resulting corps orders for the next day contain errors. Usually they order their corps to move to a square which is too far away from where they are. In one case they ordered their corps to move away from the enemy rather than towards it, even though I knew that their commander in chief had ordered them to advance towards the enemy. All very understandable so far, its very easy to make a mistake, especially when the correspondence is by email.

However the frustrating part comes when I try to confirm what they mean. This is where "sod's law" seems to come into play. That is the law which dictates that if something can go wrong it will, and always at the most inconvenient time.

The players live all over the world, so a query like this is going to take at least 24 hours for a reply. After 24 hours I then send a second mail. But what to do if I still receive no reply?

The big problem with PBEM campaigns, as I have learned with my recent 1806 campaign in which I was playing the part of Napoleon, is that they can just stop dead. No explanations, no warning - just silence. I assume that a player just loses interest, and can not be bothered to tell anyone. Instead he just ignores his mail. Very, very frustrating for the other players. You would never do anything like this if you were dealing with people face to face. You would feel obliged to explain why you have decided to stop. But this feeling of mutual responsibility does not appear to apply to some of the internet community.

Of course there might be many very reasonable excuses. But I can't think of any except perhaps his computer had broken and he can not afford to replace it. As I am new to this PBEM business I am perhaps less "street wise" than those who have more experience. Perhaps other's do not feel so involved, or share my feeling's of commitment. Indeed it may even be an "age thing". But I do feel that its a little sad that a group who share even something as casual as a wargames campaign do not feel that they owe something to each other, even if its only the common courtsey of replying to an email asking what is happening.

Getting back to my current PBEM campaign. After two mails and no reply, I then sent a third mail confirming that I would accept the orders - even though they did not make sense. I then get a reply that another set of orders had been sent - but I had not received them. My last mail explains about the mail I had sent, with no reply, and asking is everything ok at the other end. The reply............none!!

Like I said at the beginning, the frustrations of running a PBEM campaign!

Naumburg - What happened next?

Hand ot hand fighting in the town

It seemed a shame to leave the wargame after just four moves, just because the campaign commander wanted to withdraw the Russian corps. So Jan and I continued the game to see what would have happened.

We played the next four moves, which would have been night time in the campaign. The result was a confusing draw. The French lost 6 infantry and 1 cavalry, to the Russian 3 infantry and 3 cavalry. However the Russian cavalry were in rout, and took the reserve infantry brigade with them.

The French garde were still fighting hand to hand in two of the town sections, and this could have gone either way. However they still had one brigade in reserve, whereas the Russian reserve had routed.

The Russian guns were masked by the town fighting and were redeploying to the left of the town, but with the loss of the reserve infantry and the cavalry brigade, they would have been very vunerable to the French cavalry.

These casualties would be light in many wargame rules, but would have a noticeable effect in ours. Had it been a campaign game both commanders would have had to decide what they wanted to do at day break, and that would have depended on what friendly corps were within supporting distance. I can't really say anything about that, as it would give away campaign intelligence which is not public knowledge yet.

The routing brigades would have rallied, though the Russian cavalry would not be much use
with so many casualties. If this were our own campaign I would put it down as a French victory, though a costly one.

Battle of Naumburg

Imperial Garde attack Naumburg

We never did get to wargame Vimerio! You may remember that we set the game up to play whilst we were waiting for a battle to fight from the PBEM Halle campaing. Well just the day after we set up the Vimerio game on the wargames table, the campaign produced its first wargame.

Because of the hidden movement in the campaing, Naumburg was not anticipated - least of all by me. But the campaign games take priority as the campaign is paused until the battle is resolved. So I had to clear the Vimerio table and replace it with the Naumburg one.

Then after just four moves the Russian commander ordered a withdrawal. Four wargame moves are the same as one campaign move, and each player is allowed to issue new orders each campaign move. Because the two corps had not actually met on the table, the Russian player was able to withdraw his corps without loss.

The corps in the campaign are now very close to each other, and there could be another battle at any time. So we are reluctant to set up Vimerio in case the same thing happens again.

If you would like to read the (short) battle report you can find it at:

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http://pbem1813hallecampaign.blogspot.com/

New Forum for PBEM Campaign

Now that both sides are in contact along the river Saale in the PBEM campaign there have been a lot of questions raised regarding the rules. At this stage I need quick answers from each player to avoid slowing down the campaign, and these emails require a lot of time and cause delay. Worse, different players often ask the same questions but in a slightly different way, and that requires two long answers.

So I have started a new forum just to deal with the current PBEM campaign. In this way all players can read all questions raised, and also my answers. If they wish they can take part in the discussion, but need not if they don't want to. But all will have the opportunity to read all that is written about the rules and any problems arising from the campaign.

The blog will remain the public record of the campaign, but if anyone would like to follow the background they will find it at:


-->http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/napoleonicpbemcampaign

Russians enter Leipzig

Although the King of Saxony has declared his country neutral this has not prevented the Russian army from entering Leipzig and taking possession of its military stores. Cossacks are approaching the east bank of the river Saale as the 1813 Halle campaign "hots up".

The PBEM campaign is approaching the first critcial phase, when the cavalry screens of each army contact each other, and both try to find out what the enemy is doing but prevent them from doing the same. With four corps, and four players, per side the next few moves of the campaign will be interesting as I try to keep track of who can see who and what each of them do.

You can follow the progress of the campaign by clicking on 1813 PBEM Halle Campaign Blog buttion on the right.

Napoleon on the March

Napoleon reviews his army at Fulda

The 1813 Halle PBEM campaign has finally started. Napoleon and Kutuzov are marching towards the river Saale and the first campaign moves have taken place. The rules have changed considerably from the previous Magdeburg campaign, and there has been some delay as I exchanged emails with the ten players to get the first moves done. The whole routine is different this time, and there have been a few teething problems.

The system is now in place. Napoleon and Kutuzov send daily orders to their eight corps commanders, who then issue daily movement orders. I plot both on the campaign map, notify the corps commanders if they have a contact with the enemy, and they then confirm what they want to do. There are three moves each campaign day to allow for all of this to happen. I then send a daily situation report to Napoleon and Kutuzov, and they issue the next days daily orders.

We have completed the first day and are starting on the second. So far so good. Mind there has been no contact with the enemy yet! I remember reading that one general (I can't remember who) said something along the lines that all plans go out of the window as soon as the two armies meet in battle. We shall see.

There will be a daily report on the blog. As all movement is hidden from the enemy it will not be a daily updated map as with Madgeburg. The blog will be a general account of the campaign, along the lines of a newspaper or bulletin. I have to be careful not to give the players too much information about what the other side is doing. If you would like to follow it you can do so by clicking on PBEM 1813 Halle Campaign on the right.

Start of PBEM Halle Campaign

There has been an unexpected delay in starting the Halle campaign. The start up enmails went out on Monday, together with maps and player briefings. The first stage is for Napoleon and Kutuzov to issue their initial campaign objectives, and I did not set a deadline as I wanted them to have plenty of time to plan their campaign.

I was not surprised to be advised that they would like to delay until Monday, so that they could consult their corps commanders. However getting replies when they are spread throughout the world can be a time consuming problem. I have asked for the initial orders by Monday at the latest.

Each corps commander will then have to issue movement orders for the following day. The days are broken into three moves, each of four hours. So when the two armies get close together a lot might happen during one campaign day. They will also have to choose their route with care, as there are movement penalties for moving off road or through difficult terrain. Finally they will have to ensure that they have a clear supply route to their forward supply depots.

Nine of the ten players took part in the Magdeburg campaign, so I know they can be trusted to respond promptly and issue orders on time. However that was a very simple campaign compared to this one. All corps were displayed on the daily situation map, so there was little need for careful planning. It will be interesting to see how they get on with this more complicated campaign.

1813 PBEM Magdeburg Campaign Completed

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PBEM Madgeburg Campaign Report

Unlike the ill fated 1806 PBEM campaign, my own first attempt at running a PBEM campaign was a great success, very enjoyable and seemed to work well for all concerned. It was run on a daily basis, with movement orders received and the situation updated on the blog each day.

The campaign started on 30 September 2009 and lasted for five weeks.

The declared purpose of the campaign was to see whether my solo campaign could be adapted to a multiplayer PBEM campaign. It has proved that this is possible, but with major adjustments to the original campaign.

The aim of the original campaign, and the PBEM one, is to produce good wargames. It has failed to achieve this aim and if we continue to run a PBEM campaign Jan and I will have to arrange some alternative method of providing our regular wargames.

There were 10 players taking part in the campaign. Each was required to submit orders daily by email, and most managed to do so. Where it was not possible the two CinC did so. However this only happened once or twice.

I had not put a great deal of thought into the different requirements of a PBEM campaign as opposed to a solo one, and I made this clear to all players before we started. As a result there was one major change during the campaign to allow for reinforcements during a battle.

I am very grateful to all of the players who took part and accepted the changes imposed on them during the course of the campaign. I am also happy to report that 9 of the 10 will be taking part in the next campaign which starts next week.

From my point of view it worked very well, and I really enjoyed it. I hope, and expect, that the next campaign will be even more fun – both for myself and the players. It is a much more ambitious campaign, with hidden movement and greater reliance on the corps commanders keeping the commanders in chief informed of developments.

My role in the new campaign will be two fold. First as Games Master or Umpire. Second as chief of staff to both commanders in chief and corps commanders. In this way I hope to be able to remove a lot of the paperwork and administration from them. I will also be able to feed in reports from patrols and spies.

I have suggested to the players that they might like to post their comments on the forum, and I hope that they might do so.

If you would like to read about the campaign, including the battle reports, they can be found at label 11 on the right.

New PBEM Campaign

I have started work on the next PBEM campaign, which will start when the current Magdeburg campaign comes to an end. I expect this will be in about two weeks.

The new campaign will also be set in 1813, and the objective will be to take the river Saale and the town of Halle.

There will be a number of differences from the previous campaign, including hidden movement.

If you would like to find out more click on PBEM 1813 Halle Campaign on the right. You will also find details of how to take part there.

PBEM 1813 Magdeburg Campaign

The French cuirassiers are about to win a cavalry melee, fail their morale and end up sitting in front the the Prussian guns. The impending French victory is about to suffer a serious reverse.


The battle of Seehausen seems to be lasting forever. This is the latest battle in our PBEM Magdeburg Campaign. Its already lasted 12 moves, which is quite unusual for one of our wargames. And its also proved to be a very enjoyable game. But it now looks like going into a second day!

Because Jan and I now wargame together and rarely have anyone else involved I have become used to doing what I want when I want with the campaign. It suits me fine, because as soon as I get a new idea for the rules, or the campaign itself, I can change it immediately. So I find it frustrating not to be able to do so with the PBEM campaign.

Its been a great learning experience, but I am anxious to start a new campaign and include all of the new ideas I have had. However I found when I was running a weekly group back in UK that players don't like too much change too quickly. I have already changed the rules for this campaign once, and I do not intend to do so again until we start the new campaign.

I had hoped that Seehausen would end in a dramatic victory for one side or the other, but it was not to be. At the end of the first day, 12 wargame moves, either side could still win. We have already had reinforcements during the first day, and that has helped to balance the odds even more. On the 12th move the advantage was swinging to the French, but an unsuccessful French cavalry charge which failed, and left the horsemen sitting in front of the Prussian guns, helped to redress the balance!

On the campaign map both sides have a corps ready to arrive at first light on the second day. The two players commanding those corps have not yet had a chance to test their commands in battle. They have done all of the map moves with the intention of doing so, and I feel it would be really unfair to stop the battle just as they are about to enter it.

I left it up to the two CinC players, and they both want to continue to a second day, so that decided the matter. And this decision will result in a dramatic end to the campaign. I don't want to anticipate what that will be, but I am pretty sure that Seehousen will be the end of the Magdeburg campaign.

You can follow the battle with a daily report move by move by clicking on PBEM 1813 Magdeburg campaign on the right.

PBEM 1813 Magdeburg - Battle Report

Daily movement on the PBEM campaign is on hold whilst Jan and I catch up with the wargame backlog. What started as a small battle looks like becoming the major battle of the campaign, as more corps are fed into the battle.

I am trying out a new battle report layout for PBEM games. It is only fair that players who have put a lot of effort into getting their corps into position for the battle should be able to follow the wargame. So each move will be explained in greater detail than normal, and the rules illustrated more.

If you would like to see what its like, the first move can be seen by clicking on PBEM 1813 Magdeburg on the right.

PBEM 1813 Campaign

After a week's break to fight the first campaign battle as a wargame we were ready to start again last night.

There has been yet another change which I explained yesterday, namely move three squares for one campaign day. Despite this most of the players sent in their movement email on time, but a couple did not. I expect that they are confused - and who could blame them!

Jan and I had already finished wargaming the second battle of the campaign, and I had written the battle report. But changing to three map moves a day meant that players could move their corps into the battle. So Jan and I had to start the wargame again.

For the time being the battle reports will be slightly different. We will only be wargaming the campaign battles. The battle reports will be in much more detail, so that players can understand what is happening. I will also be putting them on the blog as instalments rather than a complete battle report. This is because they would be very long and complicated to put on as one battle report. And if I put it all on too soon the campaign players will react. If I put them on too late they will have gone onto the next battle and will have lost interest.

I am not sure whether the new battle reports will be an improvement or not. Perhaps you could let me know when they start to appear.

PBEM 1813 Campaign

It took four days to reorganise my own PBEM campaign, including finding a new French CinC. It had to be reorganised because there was too much for the CinC to do, and not enough for the corps commanders. It was easy to put the problem right, but it took time to tell everyone and wait for replies.

After four days I was still waiting for two replies, one from the French CinC. I did not want to let the delay drag on, so I sent urgent reminders to both of them. No reply, so I found replacements. Then I got a mail from the French CinC - he had been away from his computer because of a long weekend in USA. Unfortunately too late, I had already confirmed his replacement. But a week later and still no reply from the other player.

So the campaign get going again. You may remember that I stopped the earlier stage just as both sides were about to have a major battle at Magdeburg, so they were very close together on the map. When I received the first days movement orders there were two immediate battles. This meant that the campaign had to pause again until both could be fought as wargames!

Jan and I have been busy fighting the first this week. I have put a daily report on the blog to keep everyone involved, and we have already finished the first battle. It was one of those games where the lucky dice are very kind to one side, and do nothing for the other. Jan was the lucky player this time, and within four moves had half my infantry in rout.

The photo above is of Jan looking very pleased with herself as she considers my routing infantry.

Halle Campaign ends in French Victory

13 June 1813 - end of campaign

After a series of defeats, Napoleon concentrates his army for the major battle of Halle defeats the Russians and drives them back towards Leipzig. He moves his army to the west bank of the river Saale and declares a victory.

He has secured the flank of his Second French Army who are facing Blucher at Madgebug, but has failed to turn the Prussian flank.

The campaign ran for 6 weeks and covered the period 15 May to 13 June 1815.

You can read about it by clicking 1813 Halle Campaign on the right.



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PBEM Campaign - Not so good

Only yesterday everything seemed to be going so well with the PBEM campaign, and now the wheels have fallen off!

The exchange of emails worked much better than I dared hope, especially as each player had to submit his orders every 24 hours.

However the communication has been a problem. What would be simple to explain face to face has proved very difficult via email. This may be due to the way I explained it. Some players seemed to understand at once, others couldn't seem to grasp what I meant. And with the daily requirement, plus the different time zones players live in, this proved difficult.

The biggest problem was the system I was using. It has worked really well for a solo campaign, and I think it would also work if there were just one player per side and an umpire. But it was not up to it for a multi players.

First there was too much for the CinC to do, and not enough for the corps commanders. I tried to allow the corps commanders more freedom by using the types of command which work so well in the wargame. But as a battle drew near it became obvious that it would not work for the campaign.

I thought that we could get through the first battle, and that the corps commanders would then have more to do in the aftermath. But on Friday there was a lot of traffic between players trying to sort out their battle plan, and we just ran out of time. I tried to cobble the first battle, but the more I thought about it the more I realised it needed serious reorganisation.

So today I have called a halt to the campaign whilst we sort things out. I have mailed each player to confirm that they want to continue, and to ask for feedback on the campaign so far. I have also published the outline of the new system on the blog.

Hopefully by Monday I will have all of the replies, and we can get it going again.

The whole idea of the campaign was to learn what works and what doesn't with PBEM. Well I have certainly learned a lot about what doesn't work! If I can keep the players on board I am sure that we can get it going again.

PBEM Campaign - so far so good

I am quite surprised, and very pleased, with how well the campaign is going. It has only been running for four days, but already all ten players seem to have settled into the daily routine of sending movement orders. The two CinC are having a little more trouble, but then again their job is that much more complicated.

Depending on the orders they give today, we may have a battle before the weekend. This would work out well, as it would allow Jan and I to set it up during the weekend break for the players.

I had planned to follow the campaign on the Forum, though not the daily orders and routine admin which would be handled on the blog. But there was some opposition from some members of the Forum who felt it should be on a forum of its own. This quite surprised me, because one of the reasons for opening up the 1813 campaign to PBEM was to encourage interest on the Forum and hopefully result in a little extra posting there. Everything has been very quiet for almost two months.

It was difficult to know how to handle the opposition, without creating more problems. I opted for a poll to see how much opposition there was. This in turn resulted in four or five letters against the whole idea. This put me in a quandary. If I moved the campaign to a new forum I would spend little time on the old forum, and already I am posting almost half of the posts there. This in turn could well lead to the old Forum dying for lack of interest.

After a lot of thought I decided to keep the Campaign on the forum, but to explain my reasons for doing so. I posted a long letter this morning, and the response so far has been favourable. So hopefully the PBEM campaign will achieve the result of raising the profile of the forum.

--> If you are interested you can read about it on the forum here

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/Campaigns_Napoleon/

You will find the blog for the PBEM campaign by pushing the button on the right.

The Battle of Halle

French infantry assault Halle

The main battle of the campaign was fought in 15mm, as all four corps were involved on both sides.

It proved to be an excellent wargame, and quite a challenge to fight a large battle after so many single corps games.

You can read the battle report by clicking 1813 Halle Campaign on the right.