WS&S

Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Representing a BIG Battle with Blucher

The versatility of the Blucher rules is very refreshing after playing so many sets of rules over the years. One area that really is appealing to me is how easy it is to fight a battle on a small area with fewer miniatures - and I am talking about big battles here, not small actions.

French Brigades mounted for the Blucher rules.

Over the weekend I fought out several large engagements featuring at least three to four corp per army - French v. Russia in this case. To show off some of the scaling options available to Blucher players, I used a BW of 3cm with infantry units two stands strong, artillery and cavalry one stand strong. Each unit of course representing an historical brigade of 1,500 - 3,000 men. With such a small BW to be used for the battles, a small play area was required. In my case this was a 2' x 3' board - PERFECT.

A French corps deployed for battle. 6cm BW is my standard, with 4-6 stand units. Perfect for a 6' x 4' table-top.

The same French corp represented with 3cm BW's. Units are basically half sized, and thus half the table space is required.

The changes of course had no effect whatsoever on the game-play. The only change was the size of the units on the table-top and the basic measuring distance for all shooting, movement, etc. Normally I would be using units of six infantry stands and four cavalry/artily stands for each unit, and the BW would be 6cm on a 6' x 4' table. Such a larger representation of units looks fantastic, giving that "mass" feel and look to the battle. But that isn't the only way to play of course, demonstrated here.

A smaller practice battle in preparation for the weekend using the smaller scale to represent units - 3cm BW.

This versatility is wonderful. It means I can have somewhat faster moving battles on a much smaller table-top without sacrificing any of the rules used in Blucher.


Some of my  Blucher DIY cards I down loaded from the Honour Games website.

Of course, Blucher is only one part of my journey through the Napoleonic wars. Other fantastic rules are in my clutches and not only are great reads, but wonderful games as well. 2016 will be a wonderful year of battle, to be sure.





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