Planning Vintage Leipzig

When Roy and I were sorting out the details of Vintage Waterloo we had the luxury of playing a test game which was very valuable particularly in terms of working out deployment. We won’t be having the same opportunity for Vintage Leipzig so I’ve been trying to give as much thought as possible to the way we should run the game.

Waterloo was a relatively easy battle to game as it was fought on a single day over a quite small area. Leipzig presents more of a challenge as it was fought over several days across a large area with vast forces. Clearly we won’t be able to accurately portray either the terrain or all the troops involved in the real battle in one day’s play so it will be necessary to scale everything down while trying to retain the flavour of the epic struggle fought out in October 1813.

Roy has two tables in his wargame room the larger of these is 12’ x 5’ and the smaller is 8’ x 4’. The plan is to utilize both of these with the large table representing the area south of Leipzig and the smaller one the area to the north. The suburbs of Leipzig will be represented on both tables and there will be three villages spaced out along the tables to act as victory locations. The rest of the terrain will be relatively open and flat to allow space to deploy the 2,800+ figures we will be using in the game.

The southern table - 12' x 5' - showing deployment areas

Victory Conditions - at the end of play victory will be determined as follows:

French Decisive Victory – if all of Leipzig and all villages are in French hands
French Substantial Victory – if all of Leipzig and 2 villages are in French hands
French Marginal Victory – if part of Leipzig and 2 villages are in French hands
Allied Decisive Victory – if all of Leipzig and 2 villages are in allied hands
Allied Substantial Victory – if part of Leipzig and 2 villages are in allied hands
Allied Marginal Victory – if all villages are in allied hands

The northern table - 8' x 4' - showing deployment areas

The order of battle has been scaled down to provide four commands to each side giving us a total of eight players which is as many as we can comfortably accommodate. I’m hoping the game will provide some interesting challenges to both sides in particular the fight for the northern table where the allies will outnumber the French but the difference in troop quality should balance things out.

French OOB

Allied OOB

Reserves are kept off table and can be deployed at any point on the owning army’s base line from the start of turn two. Troops will not be allowed to switch between tables so deciding when and how to use reserves will require some careful thought.

One valid criticism of my rules Muskets and Marshals is that Old Guard units rated as A+ are fairly indestructible in melee (although they can be shot just as easily as lowly Landwehr). So for this game Old Guard units will be rated A and Young/Middle Guard will be rated B which can be justified by the drop in quality of units following the campaign of 1812.

In total there will be at least 95 units of infantry, 35 of cavalry and 39 artillery batteries in play in this game and whatever happens it should look quite spectacular. There will of course be copious photos posted here following the game.

Oh, and I forgot to mention there will be a RHA rocket battery…