Our Christmas wargame will be the second in our refights of Wellington's Battles. Vimiero was the second of Wellington's (or Wellesley as he was then) battles in the Peninsula. It was fought to cover the landing of British reinforcements at nearby Maciera Bay.
It was quite a small battle by Napoleonic standards.
-->Wellesley had 18000 infantry, 500 cavalry, 18 guns to Junot 14000 infantry, 2000 cavalry, 23 guns. Given that the British were defending, and in a hilly area, this is quite a challenge for the French player. It will come as no surprise that Jan is Wellesley!
You can read the first part of the battle report here:
1812 was a very mixed year for Wellington, as indeed it was also for Napoleon. And for both it ended in a terrible retreat. Wellington started the year with the capture of Cuidad Rodrigo, quickly followed by Badajoz. Then his stunning victory at Salamanca, which led to his liberation of Madrid. Then came the siege of Burgos.
Due to variety of circumstances, such as a strong fortress, a determined garrison, a lack of suitable siege materials and a strong French army of relief Wellington would end the year back at Cuidad Rodrigo on the border of Spain and Portugal.
Burgos was the first of our Walking Napoleonic Battlefields for our third visit to Spain. Unlike most of our battlefields the city of Burgos is well established on the tourist trail. The ruined castle was our main interest, but the city also has a beautiful cathedral containing the bones of El Cid.
I have just finished the battle report for the second part of the battle of Zeitz in the PBEMHalle 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
Our fourth holiday Walking Napoleonic Battlefields was for 10 days in June 1995.
We would cover 1200 miles and visit 13 battlefields including Burgos, Vittoria, Roncevalles, Maya, Vera, Bidaossa, San Marcial, The Rhune, The Nivelles and The Nive.
I have started a new blog to cover this holiday and you can read the first entry which covers the planning for the holiday here
The latest battle in the HallePBEM 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.
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:
Oporto was the last of 11 battlefields which we visited during our second visit to Portugal and Spain to walk Wellington's battlefields. We started at Torres Vedras, then Rolica and Vimerio. Busaco was followed by Poco Vehlo and Fuentes de Orono. Then Cuidad Rodrigo, Fort Conception, Almeida and The Coa.
After so much time spent walking deserted battlefields, Oporto was a real challenge. Indeed even finding the hotel was a real challenge. We speak no Portuguese and entered Oporto on a different road than the one we planned, so no surprise that we got lost. A good hour was spent driving from road junction to road junction, jumping out to show the nearest pedesterian the name of the hotel written on a scrap of paper, then following their directions to the next junction. Only when we passed the same square twice did we park the car and set out on foot. Then we discovered that the hotel was in the middle of a pedestrian only zone!!
You can read about Oporto, and the other 10 battlefields, at:
