Slitherine

Its the 300 year anniversary of the Battle of Borodino this year.

I am most of the way through creating a Borodino scenario. Using John's XL sheet to build the army lists, and Nafzigers OB as the base. I am really just left with troop quality, which is a much more difficult task than piecing together an OB (although many references forget about the militia!).

Infantry
- which regiments/brigades were Conscript, Drilled ?

Cavalry
- Superior/Drilled vs Average/Veteran Hussars ?


I am not sure that there will be a scenario book from FoGN in time to prepare for the anniversary.



Any thoughts ?

The first lists book will be out in June sometime and all the 1812 lists will be in that to enable/supprt you in making those judgements re Borodino. But for a historical refight the game designer(s) do have to make the decisions and the lists are only a guide as to the range and distribution of elan and training. We won't have done a scenario booklet by then and presently there has been no decision/request for us to produce one.

What I fear is the size of the table

bahdahbum wrote:What I fear is the size of the table

Actually the battlefield was rather compact relatively speaking. Having said that you could fight a portion of the battle, say the redoubts or the Southern flank with the Poles, for example.

The battle was cramped indeed.

You could easily manage it with the battlefield ranging from the river through the redoubt and fleches and ending at the northern edge of the woods near Utiza. Then have if you want a 3rd sector at Utiza.

Then manage everything else as reserve sectors.

North of the river was very little action.

Then you have the real battle where both sides keep shovelling troops into a meat grinder.

Might want to be careful on the Russian OOB... I believe Nafziger has a couple glaring errors there.

From the various sites and everyone is close. Natziger does have the militia so the Russian left (Utitsa) is impacted - maybe. But all are similar - so maybe everyone has used Natsiger as the base ?


Borodino to Utitsa front looks like its < 4 miles. I was thinking of mainly focusing on Bagrations front.

Borodino to Utitsa front looks like its < 4 miles. I was thinking of mainly focusing on Bagrations front.

4miles = approx 12ft/9ft/6ft in 25mm/15mm/5mm scales.
You could probably get away with a table depth of 6ft/5ft/4ft if you use some imaginative off-table withdrawal and reserve rules.

If the rules used forced you to withdraw damaged divisions (or corps) before they could be replaced with fresh ones you'd keep the on-table figure density to more manageable proportions and reduce the required number of figures.

Was planning on an 8 x 6 with 15mm troops.
Plan to play test some sections to see if the scale and forces will work. I have used brigade basis and not regiments so I don't think figure density will be issue.

The map associated with this OB looks almost like a wargame scenario bn/rgt layout for the battle.

http://napolun.com/mirror/napoleonistyk ... rodino.htm

Mike

A good resource - it was my starting point. OB's close to Nafziger. Map isn't scaled, used 4miles from another source. Based on this map/deployment I will need 4 miles x 4 miles, while the venue could handle 8x8 my arms aren't that long.



Thx.