[Consim-l] Craonne Replay & Review

[Markus Stumptner]

On Thu, 6 Dec 2007, John Best wrote:
> >   Playing catch-up on my wargame emails:
> >   Markus discussed a game which is little known, about a Napoleonic battle
> >   which also is little known:
> > 
> > >  I just finished a solo game of the Sandhurst Book of Wargames "Craonne", 
> > >  the only game I know that deals with this small battle in early 1814 
> > >  that was the culmination of one of Bluecher's failed attempts to 
> > >  outflank and destroy Napoleon.
> > 
> >   Interesting.  I've heard of the book (I think), but I had the idea that 
> >   it
> >   was basically a set of miniatures rules.  Does the book come with 
> >   counters
> >   and maps?

Yes to both, and in full colour.  The Craonne map is particularly pleasant to 
behold.

> >   Markus goes on to clarify how this is different from a "I'm just shooting
> >   at you; you can't hurt me" type of CRT, but I would intereject here that
> >   figuring out what scale that kind of CRT works for in Napoleonic combat
> >   has been a tricky puzzle for designers for decades.  I think,
> >   theoretically, there might a kind of level (determined by length of the
> >   turn, unit size, and hex-scale) where this kind of "I shoot at you in my
> >   phase-then you shoot at me in your phase" kind of CRT might work to
> >   describe relatively quiet sections of the battlefield.  But in general,
> >   it's been problematic to figure out where it might work.

I agree with that, and this is one of the better solutions I've seen.

> > >   The "Melee" result is the most frequent outcome at low odds, it has
> > >   both sides marked with a combat marker. From then on, the units just
> > >   sit, possibly over multiple turns, until one side or the other brings
> > >   in reinforcements to end that stalemate. If reinforcements are brought
> > >   in (this can be through free adjacent hexes or by passing through
> > >   friendly units already engaged), all units that were originally in the
> > >   melee only use their pinned value.
> > 
> >   It's a little hard to visualize what the "Melee" result means in actual
> >   Napoleonic terms.  I get the idea that, once engaged in firing, a unit of
> >   sufficient size seems to have been  kind of "stuck" in its place in the
> >   battleline until something dramatic happens.  But generally once units
> >   were engaged in sustained firing, the casualty rates went up, and when
> >   that happened, something dramatic (like morale failure) would ensue 
> >   pretty
> >   quickly.  The implication in Craonne is that the lethality of the units
> >   actually decreases when they are pinned, as would occur in the Melee
> >   results, if I'm understanding Markus' depiction correctly (which I may 
> >   not
> >   be).  Short fom: I like the idea of units "locked in combat" after an
> >   assault, but I couldn't quite see what was being simulated in the Melee
> >   result.

Actually, I would rather agree with the Craonne view, although I think it 
represents something else than ongoing wild hacking and slashing as the name 
might suggest.  I am a believer in the recently more and more often voiced 
theory that engaging in extended firefights (as opposed to extended artillery 
bombardments for softening up) was not really sought after in the Napoleonic 
era, rather it more frequently resulted from stalled assaults.

A typical model of a Napoleonic according to that belief system is that the 
attackers go in, and then possibly one side or the other breaks and runs, in 
which case we have a quick decision that may be more or less bloody depending 
on how many are cut down while running.  But there is a good possibility that 
neither side breaks, because the attackers can't quite muster the will to 
close, or perhaps their lower level leaders can't, and settle down to firing at 
the defenders in which case a firefight results.  But a property of that is 
that, as the firefight is prolonged, the casualty rate does not go up, but goes 
down as rate of fire, visibility, and order on both sides are reduced.  So the 
highest losses would happen right at the start but again if there is no 
decision then both sides can pretty much continue to take potshots at each 
other for hours.  The classic example for this is the French right wing at 
Waterloo, where it seems that after the failure of the big attacks not much 
happend for the rest of the day until Ziethen's men broke the French line right 
at the angle.  But at that time (when the battle had been going on for hours - 
this was after the attack of the Guard had failed), both sides there were still 
plinking away at each other with muskets at (for muskets) long range.

So, the fact that *nothing* happens after the first clash unless reinforcements 
come in may be a bit harsh - I could certainly see a colonel saying after a 
couple of hours "this is no good, I'm just losing a trickle of men constantly, 
let's fall back", so you could get the occasional movement. But overall, I 
think the "quick decision or static outcome" is not a bad model.

>From that perspective of course, the name "Melee" is a bit of a misnomer, since 
clearly there's no close-in-fighting going on, it's just the units hanging on 
and not deciding much over time.  "Engaged" might be a better term.

[Now, someone could come back and say "so is the old NLB CRT which has rather 
bloodless outcomes at the middle columns not a good model of this style of 
combat after all"?  To which the answer is, no, since these columns in my 
opinion significantly undervalue the potential of the attacker to get a 
decision even at 1:1 or 1.1:1 odds or something similar. The commanders of the 
time rarely though in odds, and in Craonne, although it has odds, generally 
anything from 1:1 up is something where a commander won't feel bad about 
attacking.  The other aspect is that the NLB CRT instead institutes lots of 
retreats which lead to bloodless pushing back and forth, and that is nonsense. 
If there is pushing, then in general there'll be losses.  If both sides settle 
down to very slow attrition, there will also not be much movement. And if 
losses happen they happen exclusively by locking in ZOCs, whereas Craonne 
nicely shows that a solid attack can evaporate, i.e., rout, a defender 
directly.]

> > >   A defender in good terrain simply adds the pinned combat value to the
> > >   value he's fighting with, clean and simple.
> > > 
> > >   Defending cavalry checks if it has defeated the stalemate by a
> > >   countercharge that would force the attacker to retreat. Artillery can
> > >   bombard for up 7 hexes away, using its pinned value for fire beyond 1
> > >   hex range.
> > 
> >   I like both ideas:  If you are infantry and you approach enemy infantry 
> >   in
> >   good terrain, you should get shot up.  And I also think that cavalry 
> >   "held
> >   ground" against infantry on the Napoleonic battlefield by constantly
> >   threatening, or implying, that it could charge.  At least, this is my
> >   reading of how Napoleon held his right flank at Ligny for example with
> >   Pajol's corps against Prussian infantry.

Agreed.

> > >   Total French losses: 6 units, 54 SP (36Inf, 18Cav)
> > >   Total Russian losses: 13 units, 66SP (42Inf, 12Cav, 12Art)
> > > 
> > > 
> >   I wondered about the unit scale, and hex scale (it looks like the turn
> >   length is a somewhat unusual 40 minutes; I wondered if that turn length
> >   was done theoretically, or from an effect standpoint (ie, "We wanted the
> >   game to be ten turns long, and the battle was 7 hours long, so do the
> >   math").  I wondered if the scale was maybe regimental (Russian regiments
> >   were numerically smaller than French, and it looks like that is reflected
> >   in the average unpinned combat strength of the units).

You could actually be correct, I did not pull out any of my sources to check.

> >   Based on the
> >   artillery bombardment distance (7 hexes--that's big); that might suggest
> >   that the hex scale is a pretty small 100 meters or so.  That's an
> >   interesting mix.

I think it's more like 300 meters, so the range is rather long (but acceptable 
as an abstraction).

I agree that the time scale is rather odd (similar to the 35 or 35 minutes, I 
forget how much, that the 3W Abensberg/Eckmuehl had, which was regimental).  I 
do assume that this is based on some assumption on the command cycles of the 
era, but there's nothing in the notes to check. Thanks for your comments, 
insightful and appreciated as always!

Markus

Last 3 games played: The Legend Begins, Magenta, Ogre
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"Bakayaro! Bakayaro!"  ("Stupid Bastards!  Stupid Bastards!") -- Admiral 
Aritomo Goto's last words to his staff, October 11, 1942