Rethinking artillery mobility and its role in Napoleon’s Battles.
One of the main issues we had discussed for many years is that in NAPOLEON'S BATTLES gun batteries are really too mobile and dictate the pace of the game very often. We felt that they were given too much advantage, and in this post we wanted to discuss some historical examples and briefly discuss the new rules present in the Marechal Edition regarding this topic.
First of all, the problem should be stated. From the players point of view, an army which has more batteries can advance “under the cover of the cannons”, since batteries keep moving at a fast pace (faster than lines, for example) while keeping the pressure over the enemy. Their good fire modifiers and excellent survival qualities (hard to fire to, possibility of being attached, evasions) make this type of attack with mobile cannons very hard to overcome. In some gaming groups, they even term this type of tactic as a “panzer attack”. Even the first tanks in WWI would have difficulties in keeping this pace in combat conditions! (in combat, their speed was about 1mph, which would roughly translate to 8” per turn in the game scale).
On the other hand, the historical reports tell us a different story: the batteries were used to soften the enemy lines and to plug holes on enemy formations, but not to push them. There are many instances of grand batteries deployed in particular spots to help capturing key parts of the battlefield or sapping the morale of enemy formations in that part of the battlefield, but these batteries are often regarded as fixed. There are also examples of batteries giving close support to infantry or cavalry units (normally horse artillery units), as the attack of Soult over Pratzen or the advance on Wagram, but reserve batteries were not used in this kind of mobile support role. It is very difficult to understand that a battery can be moved (out of a track generally) over 200 yards in half an hour and still maintain a sustained rate of fire (twice each turn, possibly to different targets), all this featured in half an hour and repeated again every game turn of the battle.
We discussed this problem with Mr. Coggins, specially focusing on the movement rate of unlimbered batteries. He defended that their movement rates were correct, and that the gunners could freely displace the guns (which easily weighted over a ton) such distances (typically 2” for a heavy battery and 4” for a horse battery) in the time span of a game turn (half an hour) without limbering the guns, only pushing them. For us, it was difficult to accept that in combat circumstances gunners could freely move in such haste (even if it is physically possible on the training ground), but implementing a harsh rule (such as move or fire) was out of the question. There is already a seldom used rule in the past editions to represent this: in early period armies whose guns were moved by civilian drivers, the heavy batteries cannot be limbered anymore in the battle, but this does not slow these batteries (which are subsequently moved only by being pushed by its servers).
Part of the problem here lies in the foundations of NAPOLEON'S BATTLES game system and the gun deployment. If one adds the guns present in the batteries of a historical order of battle and compares it with the guns actually present in the engagement, the count is always short. The reason for this discrepancy is that in NAPOLEON'S BATTLES some of the gun batteries are built-in the infantry units, so ideally each infantry unit has organically included some gun sections, which help to raise the firepower of the unit and its morale. These built-in guns are not represented, since players as overall commanders do not control the placement and targets of these guns (this is left to the low-level commanders, and ultimately taken into account in the dice throws). Players only control “reserve batteries” that were used to support the units, and for practical reasons, the artillery attached to cavalry units (that do not “fire” in the game concept), and those are the only batteries that are displayed in the game order of battle and on the game board.
Hence, many of the accounts of gun batteries masked in infantry formations or moving fast to keep supporting attacks must be ascribed to these built-in guns, while the reserve batteries are not moved so fast. The built-in guns are capable of keeping such pace and even more (typically about 10” for an infantry unit in column formation), but their fire range and effect is less than those of reserve batteries. Mr. Coggins was very adamant in this point and specifically recommended us not to modify substantially the behavior of the reserve batteries.
However, we felt that these “panzers” should not be allowed to roam freely through the battlefield. Thus, there is a new optional rule that penalizes batteries that are being moved, and as designers we recommend applying it. Using this option, batteries are encouraged to stay firm if they want to maximize their firing chances. This prevents players from freely using moving batteries as a spearhead for their attacks, but does not drastically modify the game system and better reflects historical records.
Moreover, some of the artillery unlimbered movement stats have been slightly downgraded to avoid giving these batteries too much mobility. If field commanders wanted to push further (as the French grand battery in Waterloo after capturing La Belle Alliance), they are encouraged to limber them and move them to the new emplacement.
As a corollary, there is a whole new section for “customize” units, and one of the options considered was the possibility of having infantry units stripped out of these built-in guns (or having more artillery support than normal). These changes will be discussed in later posts.
