Battle of Oeversee, February 6, 1864

[vtsaogames]

Danes (well, dismounted Union cavalry) fight a rearguard action against bayonet-toting Austrians. The report is here.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood

[Tony S]

Lovely little battle.  As you say, white felt and white bases are always quite striking visually.

I’m also intrigued by the whole 3×3 concept of BBB.  Are there any rules changes, or is it simply all wrapped up into the scenario design?  I’ve always been interested in BBB, but although the rules seem quite attractive I must confess the number of figures needed, and the terrain needed for a big table, have always been a deterrent for me.

[vtsaogames]

Basic BBB rules with scenario specific rules as usual. Konstantinos does have special rules for his 1919+ War of Turkish Independence stuff, taking into account machinegun ratios, etc.

 

If you go to the BBB groups.io group, you can find mid-sized scenarios in the file section. My First Bull Run scenario is on a 4X4 table. The Union has 37 infantry bases, 3 artillery. The Confederates have 35 infantry, 1 cavalry, 2 artillery and 1 leader base. It lasts 9 turns which makes it a larger and longer game than Oeversee, taking 2+ hours. But if that’s too big, check out Konstantinos’ scenarios.

 

I am thinking of running OHW scenarios using BBB. I figure the games will last 90+ minutes, but the combat will be more nuanced than the OHW version. Might have to do something about the 15 turns too, maybe 7 turns? In BBB each player gets two fire phases per turn. To wit: player one moves, player two fires, player one fires and then assaults, player two moves, player one fires, player two fires and then assaults.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood

[Konstantinos Travlos]

It was a good show, and I deserved the loss and a court-marshal. My own reactions can be read here .

 

As for scenarios beyond the 1919-1922 ones that do include rules changes, the rest of the scenarios play straight from the book. Of course with smaller footprints and unit numbers, things can turn south quickly, so I keep objectives simple, and try to make sure both sides have a good chance at a draw result, even if victory might be tougher for one of them. But you can always play one game, and then play a second and exchange rolls.

In this game I made several mistakes: deployed my artillery and cavalry too close to the enemy, did not use my cavalry to threaten the furthest and second objective, and committed infantry piecemeal. All cardinal sins in BBB and of course military reality. I blame my rustiness (only played two BBB Games in the last two years).

[vtsaogames]

I had two advantages.

First, I was on the defensive and basically had to shoot well, and mostly did.

Second, after a long layoff from BBB I had two face-to-face games with it in the First Bull Run game recently. Oh yeah, coordinated artillery fire…

It's never too late to have a happy childhood

[Chris Pringle]

Konstantinos, Vincent: great to see you test-drive the LJdPB concept so successfully. Thanks for the reports.

Tony: as Vincent says, there are quite a lot of modest-sized scenarios in the BBB group files. People also occasionally strip down the published scenarios – reduce the number of troops, etc – to make them even more feasible. (Sort of ironic, given that the original ambition of BBB was to make the biggest battles feasible in an evening. But it’s true that some scenarios are still quite demanding just in terms of figures required.)

Chris

[vtsaogames]

While you may groan because your dice forsake you, BBB has not left me wondering How the Hell That Happened (HTHTH,  trade mark pending), which other rules do from time to time.

 

The assault table gives reasonable (if not always favorable) results, if you can manage to close through the defensive fire. As I discovered playing First Bull Run, raw troops will flinch before contact if the defenders sneeze loudly.

 

Now, an aggressive veteran unit charging a disrupted, spent raw unit, yeah!

It's never too late to have a happy childhood

[vtsaogames]

We went at it again, in the snow. AAR here.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood

[Konstantinos Travlos]

And once more I failed the Kaiser. I will be lucky if I am not shot :p

[Chris Pringle]

Promoted to a sinecure provincial governorship, surely? This is the Austrian army, after all!

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