2025 Hammfilade Saturday - GDC Battle of Logovo (pt 4 - Right flank [main event])

 

 

My knowledge of what happened on the right flank (of the spano-russians) is spotty at best. It was ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE TABLE. Also, it wast narrow at times to pass people.

 

 The French cleverly overloaded this flank (already owning the flank by a wrap around deployment). The Spano-Russians dropped their redoubts here, anchored the hinge at the Onion domed orthodox church, and loaded up this side with a infantry heavy, cav poor force. 

 

 

UNFORTUNATELY the corp was built of brittle units (2 strength points vs 3), this meant that in most cases each stand/division was gone after one serious fight. 

Almost immediately the Spanish were ejected from the church (cue jokes about orthodox vs catholics). The church was now a traffic issue rather than a hardpoint.   

 

Steady pressure from the hordes of French dismantle the first redoubt at the hinge. French certainly had an impressive artillery concentration on the flank, were they had placed their guard corp. 

 

 

 

 

 

 Pushing through the opening they begin to 'pinch' the second redoubt. Cleverly they have chosen to hammer a line of troops along the table baseline (damn the flanks!). I'm not sure if it was a conscious choice or a morale check that had the spanish pulling back further. 

 

 

 

Already the Russian reserve under Miloradovich (guard equivalent) is reacting to the pressure on the right and repositioning guns and troops.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pressure from the centre has created a challenge to do this. The cavalry reserves (2 corp) are moving to the centre as well, to hopefully allow Miloradovich to pivot right.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The lone redoubt holds, but not for much longer. The Russians were surprised, (but probably shouldn't have been) that when they were lost all their corp suffered a morale step loss. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At last the mess is somewhat cleaned up. There's a fighting lull as both sides are tidying lines. Troops continue to die under the steady cannon bombardment however. 

It's subtle (not many units left), but the Spanish vaporize due to a failed morale check. Across the table the players are all starting to try and pick off weakened units and shakey corp to try and degrade army wide morale. It's getting dicey even for mostly intact corp. 

  The armies are largely pivoting to form an 'east-west' front vs the original 'north-south'. There isn't a single corp on the table that isn't at risk of routing on a bad roll (1 in 3 for most, 1 in 6 for the 'healthy' ones). 

The french on their right (closest) are looking at a push by artillery, cavalry, and 2 corp across the river against their Line of communication. The defenders are present...but worn. 

 

On the french left they have a lot of weak troops and reorganization to effect before pushing onto the relatively fresh ressian guard supported by a strong artillery park. Tough sledding there.  

An extended rule discussion (this is why the rules change every year) derails us for a while. We all agree that this is, truly, a bloody draw.  No commander is interested in advancing their worn forces and breaking/routing their whole corp. It's not particularly surprising as the forces were intentionally strength matched at the beginning (actual composition was what we varied on, but each unit had a duplicate on the enemy potential roster). You'd need to be an insane commander (or a wargamer) to go ahead with this meeting engagement. 

It appeared our three new players had a good time, and certainly the regulars did. We likely will have a game/table setup at enfilade 2026 (now in Tacoma). 

2025 Hammfilade Saturday - GDC Battle of Logovo (pt 3 - Centre)

The centre to Right flank was were the main event was. Gortshakov (lower left) was originally meant to help cause grief for the French right flank, but they left such a tiny force there it was soon dragged into the main event. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The armies faced at a sabres length at the start of the game along a line that took a 90 degree turn at the onion domed orthodox church. 

 

 

 

 

 

Behind the church on the Spano-Russian flank were 3 fleche redoubts. In a non optimal outcome, the fleches were defended by a horde of poorly motivated/trained Spanish (lots of elements but not much staying power).  

 

 

 

In the Centre we had one of our new players (Chris? Craig?) with Tolstoy and the elite/guard corp reserve immediately behind him. It actually ended up being a fairly challenging command as both sides destroyed their centres quickly and the heavy french assault on the flank required the reserve to commit early to a hinge point.  

 

 

 

 

 

To be honest, my understanding of the fight on the far side of the table was a bit superficial. It seems as though tons of casualties developed with early assaults and then the Centres fell quiet for a bit since artillery was tearing both sides apart. 

 

The Russian Reserves are fully committed in the centre/hinge right. Depleted french units are being murdered by the still robust (thanks to the artillery reserve) Russian cannons creating a no mans land in the middle. 
 

 

 

   

 

 

Gortshakov shuffled from the left towards the centre and helped set up a late day push towards the French LOC. 

Both sides were on the dagger edge of breaking by this point. 


 

2025 Hammfilade Saturday - GDC Battle of Logovo (pt 2 Left Spano-Russian Flank)

 James and I had brought troops as suggested by Doug. Hilariously we both decided to bring our Spanish as we don't get to use them much. Thus the Spano-Russian intervention was created. 

 

The spanish anchored both flanks for some reason. On my flank I had Gazan and Bagration pushing on one side of the river to cave in the French right. It was held by a token force of poles and two small french cavalry corp. 

Across the river Gortchacov held the river line and fired cannon (where line of site permitted). He would soon realize he need to push toward the Centre Right to help avoid the collapse of our forces in the centre and right flank. 

Poor command die rolls (pips) made for a slow advance on this side. Cannon are particularly hard to get moving foward on the attack, and the Poles were well played by a new player, Garret, constantly giving just enough ground and launching local counter attacks to prevent overly aggressive advances. The Cavalry was able to hide behind the tree line from Gortsachov and made for difficult opponents to hunt. 

The flank was largely a side show for the game but very late in the game this flank was busted open and left a (long) march towards the french LOC, held by a small but credible force.

 More pics after the break...

2025 Hammfilade Saturday - GDC Battle of Logovo (pt 1 setup)

 Saturday had us setting up for the semi annual General du Corp game. It's a convention fast play ruleset (not published). Bases are roughly a division, commands are corp. Turns represent 30min. Each player commanded 2 corp (roughly). Since we have done most of the historical battles Doug decided to make up a roster of 12-15 corp. The two teams then were able to select 10...both sides having an option to sacrifice a choice to get a benefit (Russians took some fleche/redoubt fortifications and a large artillery reserve). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The teams split up to make their choice, and then decide a rough battle plan and setup  blindly. The table was split down the middle plus the left flank(s) were also open for placement (i.e. both sides could immediately be subject to a flank attack on their right). A stream (crossable but disordering) was roughly diagonal across the whole table).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We positioned cards in alternating fashion to denote the start point of the leader of each corp. The cards were flipped and placement of the troops happened alternating in order of the cards. It was fun and different and we ended up with some interesting match ups. 

 

 

 

The Russian plan (my side) was to  go artillery heavy on the left in a crossfire to give the french a problem to solve. We dropped our fortifications on the right, assuming an attack there, created a battle line across the front, and left a strong reserve of cavalry and elite infantry. 

 

 

 

 

 

The french overloaded their left flank and refused the right. A token force was left there. The centre had a reasonable force to push. Roughly 60-90 minutes after 'starting' we were all setup and ready to start fighting. 

 

2025 Hammfilade - Bad 6s cavalry game

 Another August rolls around and Doug hosted another weekend of gaming at his lovely basement set up. Friday  we started off with some napoleonic cavalry fight. Originally the rules began as a riff off of dragon rampant, but they have evolved quite far towards a system that is descriptively called '6's are bad'.

 

 

 

Units are 12 horse (we experimented with some small units of 6 as well). Generally speaking you try and activate your unit to do an action by not rolling a 6. As you go on you will accumulate BAPs (bad action points) which increase your friction, you roll extra dice and 6's are bad (a 6 is not only a fail but also increases your BAPs). There are opportunities for rallying/recovery to get rid of BAPs. The units have 2 actions a turn.....assuming they pass the first action. 

 

Movement into contact is a fight. After a fight the loser has to rally off all his BAPs before they can reform. Getting hit while unformed puts you at substantial disadvantage. 

 

 

 

 

The game was largely French vs Anglo-Allied. There was very little balancing. There are some unit characteristics but they don't do a whole lot (light, heavy, armored, hussar, lancer). We were play testing leaders (which were OP and the french had a bunch) and a cannon (which needs some tuning).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game play was fast and free wheeling and it was very common to hit the opponent and then have to deal with a counter charge for long enough that the original opponent was able to pull themselves back together and start moving again.  

 

 

 

 

We all had 2 units. Doug had one of his units chased off the board, and then finally (FINALLY) managed to get a shot off with the single cannon on the game (roll to, limber/unlimber, move, load, fire, accurate hit, and then........a bucket of dice).  

My largely intact hussar unit disintegrated. Naturally I rolled something like 10 or 11 6's out of 24 dice, but I think even with more predictable rolls the gun is a one hit to cripple a unit. 

There was much hilarity at this result including from myself, it was just such a terrible example of rolling.  

 

 

 

My other unit kept the barn between the gun and itself as we started to think about how to hunt the gun down. Eventually it got late and it had been a travel day for many so we retired.