Hi,

I'm planning to recreate the battle of Wagram, as detailed in the Napoleomic Companion book for Polemos Napoleonics. I intend to do this mostly for solo play, as due to poor health, I do not have much contact with other gamers. I am planning to do it at half scale, so 30 x 30mm for troop bases, and the battlefield will take up roughly 4ft x 4ft so fairly easy to model on 4 2ft square sections and easier to store. I'll by using 2mm troop blocks (I know, wrong scale, but I already have some French painted and based on that size originally intended to use for V&B, so just need the labels changing).

I'll need to work out a system to allow the bidding for solo play, the things I've read about doing this for solo play in Polemos sound interesting, but I think I'll need to tweak then to get what I consider reasanable. Something along the lines of getting a range between say 25 to 60% of available points used for each bid.

Another thing I want to do is to rate the corps commanders on a historical basis, rather than use dice rolls to randomly assign them, as I think that would be more historically acurate for a refight of an actual battle. Problem is, I don't know enough about the period, or the generals involved, to decide what their ratings should be, Anyone have any tips on how I can go about this that doesn't involve reading dozens of books about Napoleonic warfare and battles involving those corp commanders at Wagram? :-) I do have a few books about the battle, including the nice Osprey one.

Although I have yet to play a game with these rules, I really like the look of the command and control system, and look forward to seeing how it works in action.

More later,

Biker500

Just convert the command ratings from a system that does include this info.  I can't do this right now but I probably can on Friday.

Thanks,

I;ll have a look through my other rules and scenarios for Wagram, I'm sure I have a few around, and hopefully one of them will have the info I am looking for :-)

Cheers

Biker500

The " empire" rules by Scott Bowden have a pretty comprehensive table of commander ratings.ratings are always going to be subject to author opinion though.

?

I have no particular love for Bernadotte... will not rate him above average... and certainly SLOW... just my humble opinion mind. The first of great attrition Napoleonic Campaigns 1809...

Adapting the ratings in Sam Mustafa's Grande Armee, one might use:

Charles - Decisive

Nordmann - Capable

Bellegarde - Plodding

Hohenzollern - Capable

Kollowrat - Capable

Rosenberg - Plodding

Klenau - Capable

Liechtenstein - Capable (maybe Decisive)

Napoleon - Decisive

Oudinot - Capable

Davout - Decisive

Massena - Decisive

Wrede - Plodding

Bernadotte - Plodding

Marmont - Capable / Decisive

Bessieres - Decisive
Eugene - Decisive

MacDonald - Capable

Grenier - Capable / Plodding

Quarrie has fewer suitable ratings in his book, especially for the Austrians, but he proposes for the French:

Napoleon - Decisive

Oudinot - Capable

Davout - Decisive

Massena - Decisive

Bernadotte - Plodding

Marmont - Capable

Bessieres - Capable
Eugene - Plodding

MacDonald - Capable

Thanks for the answers everyone, a great help!

As it happens, I have bought a copy of Grand Armee a few days ago in PDF format, mainly for the general ratings, but also as one can't have too many Napoleonic rulesets, LOL. Thans to Whirlwind I don't even have to do the conversion :-)

I have bought some 6mm MDF, cut to 60cm x 60cm for the battlefield, and am currently collecting all the books and scenarios I have on Wagram (about 3 or 4) so I'll start cutting streams and rivers and adding elevation changes as soon as I have finalised the layouts.

I also found a source of files for 3D printing 2mm troops, so I'll be using those, as well as modifying some 30mm bases from an unfinished V&B project I did a while back.

One nice thing is that all 3 rules sets I have (V&B, Polemos and Grand Armee) use the same ground scale, so building a permanent terrain setup i usful for all 3 rulessets. Basic troop basing is the same too, 3cm square for inf and cav, although artillery does differ between the rules.

More later

Biker500

Wagram looks good in 6mm. We fought it last November - lots of beautiful Baccus figures on the table. :-)  My blog entry for the Warfare show mentions it briefly:

https://bloodybigbattles.blogspot.com/2019/11/warfare-2019-solferino-and-wagram-and.html

"With 300,000 men on the pitch, this little scuffle was even bigger than Solferino. You'd think it might leave no room for maneuver and just be a dull slugfest, but it was a fantastic game. No shortage of slugging it out, to be sure, but plenty of movement, and a real feel of punch/counter-punch, like two heavyweights trading blows, reeling back and then surging forward again. Awesome."

No pics of our game, but here's another group's Wagram game, also from last year:

https://pushingtinwargames.blogspot.com/2019/07/wagram-1809.html

May you have as much fun with Wagram as we did!

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!

https://groups.io/g/bloodybigbattles

Hi ChrisBBB.

I'd love to do some battles in 6mm, but unfotunately I'd be limited to smaller battles if I ussed 3" bases (which really is the best looking for 6mm) due to limits on my table size. I'll probably do something Napoleonic in 6mm as a future project, as I have a reasonable collection of Baccus French Napoleonics, currently still in the packages! I'd like to do a game for Geoffrey Wooton's Corp d'Armee rules in 6mm, as I like the command and control system in those rules. I also have the BBB rules, so I've just downloaded the Wagram scenario for them, this may just about be doable on the table I have, so a futore project is possible in 6mm, after I have finished my current project :-)

Cheers

Biker500