Slitherine

1806 Prussians. Ultimate losing army of all time,but wait for it...
I cannot wait for this to be published!
My favourite army of the period, found and dusted off the club army years ago and was fairly successful with it...
Mad I know, but it is one of those armies that should never win, but when you do feels so good!
I will be interested to see how the divisional make up works, are they mixed? The brigade structure was two units of musketeers, which were paired up, and their grenadiers detached and combined to form a third infantry unit per brigade, with attached cavalry and artillery.
Their quality will be interesting to see, as they predate Prussian conscription. All infantry should be unreformed, will they be allowed their skirmishers, as ten men in every hundred should be schutzen? Something ignored by many a wargamer...
Decent cavalry dragoon divisions please, Napoleon rated them as dangerous until they met the French.
The big question is, apart from Blucher and Yoirk, will any general be higher than Competent? Or will a whole new category of incompetent be needed?

My spies tell me Only competent corps commanders. and the infantry generally look avergae drilled unreformed.

The cavalry is mostly veterans but i don't know about attachments or division requirements.

Sounds like they are going to be a LOT of fun! In Principles, the core commanders were not even allowed to 'share pips' with other divisions!

I too have a smallish 1806 Prussian army in 28mm ( for Grand Manner so in Btns of 30 figs ) and FOG will suit its size nicely (although I have rather too many heavy cavalry figures for our rules and lists !)) Infantry mostly average drilled all unreformed (Grenadiers can be av vet or Sup drilled but average veteran cavalry ( with options for average drilled for hussars and superior option for cuirassiers.) Nothing better than a competent Corps commander and skilled divisional commanders. Optional saxon allies (which can have ave vet infantry ) .

A fairly solid army but with command control issues and infantry only in small units - cavalry can be in 4's or 6's . It will need a good French opponent player to be able simply to walk all over it in my view so not an easy prospect but , which of course is what the French had in Davout. Folk should not knock the great powers' ancien regime armies while they still had their professional core - which is up to about 1806 - but at the very latest. In my view they usually lost because they were heavily outnumbered but more due to bad generalship on and especially off the battle field and brilliant French generalship in both but it was not simply because their soldiers and junior leadership were poor ( for some smaller states it was of course) .

Will: your stable balanced prussians vs my proposed massed fanatical conscript FWR french army ... Will be a fun game... Hope we cross dice at warfare...

I have learned the hard way over the years, the only use for a Prussian C-in-C is to look pretty and not get shot (so The Duke of Brunswick failed on both those accounts)!

The main problem with the 1806 Prussians is that whilst they have some serious staying power in their infantry; they do not have the command and control to react to the French, which is why Davout was able to pick the Prussians apart at Auerstädt against the main Prussian army with a single French Corps!

To be honest, that is all sounding 'bang-on', especially the grenadiers and cavalry.

Sorry if I'm sounding a bit over excited, but after trying to put together an 1815 British list, this sounds a dream!

MikeHorah wrote:I too have a smallish 1806 Prussian army in 28mm ( for Grand Manner so in Btns of 30 figs ) and FOG will suit its size nicely (although I have rather too many heavy cavalry figures for our rules and lists !)) Infantry mostly average drilled all unreformed (Grenadiers can be av vet or Sup drilled but average veteran cavalry ( with options for average drilled for hussars and superior option for cuirassiers.) Nothing better than a competent Corps commander and skilled divisional commanders. Optional saxon allies (which can have ave vet infantry ) .

A fairly solid army but with command control issues and infantry only in small units - cavalry can be in 4's or 6's . It will need a good French opponent player to be able simply to walk all over it in my view so not an easy prospect but , which of course is what the French had in Davout. Folk should not knock the great powers' ancien regime armies while they still had their professional core - which is up to about 1806 - but at the very latest. In my view they usually lost because they were heavily outnumbered but more due to bad generalship on and especially off the battle field and brilliant French generalship in both but it was not simply because their soldiers and junior leadership were poor ( for some smaller states it was of course) .

Hmmm....I suppose my 12 bases of cuirassiers and 12 bases of dragoons are "rather too many heavy cavalry figures for [the] rules and lists".

No fear, my 1806 Prussians are ready to go as they were the first army I re-based for FoGN.

Or wait for a 3000 point game? I suspect even my Hussars and Curassiers from Principles will be too many too!
Now I'll have to source some extra Curassiers from minifigs whereas the rest of the army is Old Glory or AB/Fighting15s.

madlemmey wrote:Or wait for a 3000 point game? I suspect even my Hussars and Curassiers from Principles will be too many too!
Now I'll have to source some extra Curassiers from minifigs whereas the rest of the army is Old Glory or AB/Fighting15s.

Or use them as disrupted/fragmented/routing markers.... You should have enough then

shadowdragon wrote:

MikeHorah wrote:I too have a smallish 1806 Prussian army in 28mm ( for Grand Manner so in Btns of 30 figs ) and FOG will suit its size nicely (although I have rather too many heavy cavalry figures for our rules and lists !)) Infantry mostly average drilled all unreformed (Grenadiers can be av vet or Sup drilled but average veteran cavalry ( with options for average drilled for hussars and superior option for cuirassiers.) Nothing better than a competent Corps commander and skilled divisional commanders. Optional saxon allies (which can have ave vet infantry ) .

A fairly solid army but with command control issues and infantry only in small units - cavalry can be in 4's or 6's . It will need a good French opponent player to be able simply to walk all over it in my view so not an easy prospect but , which of course is what the French had in Davout. Folk should not knock the great powers' ancien regime armies while they still had their professional core - which is up to about 1806 - but at the very latest. In my view they usually lost because they were heavily outnumbered but more due to bad generalship on and especially off the battle field and brilliant French generalship in both but it was not simply because their soldiers and junior leadership were poor ( for some smaller states it was of course) .

Hmmm....I suppose my 12 bases of cuirassiers and 12 bases of dragoons are "rather too many heavy cavalry figures for [the] rules and lists".

No fear, my 1806 Prussians are ready to go as they were the first army I re-based for FoGN.

12 bases is the max for heavies including dragoons so 36 figs ( I have 2x40! ) but then that is for a single Corps or equivalent so for a larger force you can obviously have more and you can have 8 bases of saxon equivalents ( 24 figs) so you could call them " saxons" .For infantry I shall have to make do with either 5 bases of 6 as a unit or add a sixth base stripping them out from my other line units and and I have far too many grenadier units for a ingle Corps sized army ! But I swap between GM and FOG(N) - my usual opponent is not yet a FOG(N) convert ( tho is to FOG(A) )so I am not rebasing.In any case I just have too many figures to rebase ( c 20,000). My cavalry are in twos and 4's and half my infantry are in units with 6 figure bases not 8's so one has to "adapt". In 15mm I am starting from scratch but sticking to 1792-1800.

At lesat it goes to show that oen didi nt allow on'e own heavy investment in fgurse to ilfunce the shap of the rule!

MikeHorah wrote:

shadowdragon wrote:

MikeHorah wrote:I too have a smallish 1806 Prussian army in 28mm ( for Grand Manner so in Btns of 30 figs ) and FOG will suit its size nicely (although I have rather too many heavy cavalry figures for our rules and lists !)) Infantry mostly average drilled all unreformed (Grenadiers can be av vet or Sup drilled but average veteran cavalry ( with options for average drilled for hussars and superior option for cuirassiers.) Nothing better than a competent Corps commander and skilled divisional commanders. Optional saxon allies (which can have ave vet infantry ) .

A fairly solid army but with command control issues and infantry only in small units - cavalry can be in 4's or 6's . It will need a good French opponent player to be able simply to walk all over it in my view so not an easy prospect but , which of course is what the French had in Davout. Folk should not knock the great powers' ancien regime armies while they still had their professional core - which is up to about 1806 - but at the very latest. In my view they usually lost because they were heavily outnumbered but more due to bad generalship on and especially off the battle field and brilliant French generalship in both but it was not simply because their soldiers and junior leadership were poor ( for some smaller states it was of course) .

Hmmm....I suppose my 12 bases of cuirassiers and 12 bases of dragoons are "rather too many heavy cavalry figures for [the] rules and lists".

No fear, my 1806 Prussians are ready to go as they were the first army I re-based for FoGN.

12 bases is the max for heavies including dragoons so 36 figs ( I have 2x40! ) but then that is for a single Corps or equivalent so for a larger force you can obviously have more and you can have 8 bases of saxon equivalents ( 24 figs) so you could call them " saxons" .For infantry I shall have to make do with either 5 bases of 6 as a unit or add a sixth base stripping them out from my other line units and and I have far too many grenadier units for a ingle Corps sized army ! But I swap between GM and FOG(N) - my usual opponent is not yet a FOG(N) convert ( tho is to FOG(A) )so I am not rebasing.In any case I just have too many figures to rebase ( c 20,000). My cavalry are in twos and 4's and half my infantry are in units with 6 figure bases not 8's so one has to "adapt". In 15mm I am starting from scratch but sticking to 1792-1800.

At lesat it goes to show that oen didi nt allow on'e own heavy investment in fgurse to ilfunce the shap of the rule!

Not to worry, Mike. If you want to re-fight Auerstadt with all 5 Prussian divisions you'd need 6,000 heavy cavalry (108 figures), so you can still acquire 28 more figures!

Having "too many heavies" isn't a concern as I will undoubtedly play multi-corps games - wargamer meglomania demands it. Even for a single corps game I can always use extra cavalry bases for "attachments" or just bring out different regiments for different games.

"Having "too many heavies" isn't a concern as I will undoubtedly play multi-corps games - wargamer meglomania demands it. Even for a single corps game I can always use extra cavalry bases for "attachments" or just bring out different regiments for different games."

You sound like my kind of wargamer!!!

Mike

Played about with those stats and the points in the back of the main book last night, assuming no attachment or officers, I made it 206 for a skilled division commander,two units of infantry, a grenadier unit at ave vet, a unit of hussars and a two gun battery.
Add a dragoon division of 12 bases and a general for 170 and that looks like a pretty decent list to me!
Going on estimated scores, and with no attachments, it looks like three infantry divisions are possible, maybe even the guards!