A Method to My Madness

I wrote a post a few months back on modeling your Napoleonic forces without the crutch of using army lists (No Army Lists? No Problem!) and I felt like it was time to look at the concept again, this time using a slightly different approach. Sticking with my 'Combat on the Coa' theme, let's look at my French wargames army for REPUBLIC TO EMPIRE based on the 6th Corps under the command of my favorite French Marshal, Michael Ney.

My list is drawn from Donald Featherstone's book Campaigning With the Duke of Wellington & Featherstone. This is one of those treasured volumes that I have returned to over and over for wargame info on the Peninsula theater. Again, I don't have detailed brigade strengths for the Combat on the Coa, but other sources show the French battalions to be quite small. If I stick with my 1:30 ratio that I used for the Light Division, I would end up with units or 16-20 models! That's not really what I want, so my solution is to reduce the number of battalions on the historical order of battle and increase the number of models per unit. Below is my ultimate goal, with the units I have finished in red.

Loison's 3rd Division

Brigade Simon

26th Ligne (2 battalions of 36 models each)

Legion du Midi (24 models)

Legion Hanoverienne (2 battalions of 30 models each)

Brigade Ferey

32nd Leger (24 models)

66th Ligne (2 battalions of 36 models each)

82nd Ligne (36 models)

Loison's Divison did the brunt of the fighting at the Combat on the Coa battle. All of the line regiments were made up of 4th, 5th, and 6th battalions and should probably be rated as Recruits, but it's hard to play a game a fielding an entire division of such troops. When I amass more troops, I would field them that way, but for now they get to be elevated to Drilled, with only my poor allied units - the Legion du Midi and the Legion Hanoverienne - suffering the yoke of the Recruit rating. Just for the sake of balance, I've rated the 32nd Leger as Veteran for no reason other than the e'spirit de corps such units tend to display. The 32nd was also severely understrength (or maybe present as a half battalion?) but I added a few models to bring it in the line with the rest of my Division. The 82nd Ligne is on the painting table...

In the future, when I go to add more troops, I will draw from the following units from the 6th corps, building one brigade at a time, with strengths again built on numbers near the battle rather than those actually present on the day: 

Mermet's 2nd Division

Brigade Bardet
26th Leger (36 models)
27th Ligne (2 battalions of 36 models each)

Brigade Labassee
50th Ligne (2 battalions of 36 models each)
59th Ligne (2 battalions of 30 models each)

Marchand's 1st Division

Brigade Maucune
8th Leger (36 models)
69th Ligne (3 battalions of 24 models each)

Brigade Marcognet
39th Ligne (2 battalions of 30 models each)
76ht Ligne (2 battalions of 36 models each)

Cavalry

Lamotte's Brigade

3rd Hussars (12 models)

15th Chasseurs (12 models)

Gardanne's Brigade
15th Dragoons (12 models)
20th Dragoons (12 models)

The cavalry strengths are based purely on what works best on my small game table. I have two boxes of the Perry Dragoons on order and they will be added to my army soon, possibly appearing at Historicon in support of my French!

I'll more on the subject of army lists in a few days...

No Army Lists? No Problem!

We made the decision early on to avoid trying to create points based lists for Republic to Empire. The period simply has too many armies and too many variations to do any kind of justice to such a project without devoting a whole book to it. Even then, I'm not confident that such lists would ensure fair and balanced games. I will agree that such lists are useful to the beginner, but I would argue it's just as easy to pick a real brigade to use as the focus for a collection. After all something brought all of us into the hobby, whether it was reading about a specific battle, a particular general or unit, or even a Sharpe novel! The Napoleonic period is well documented and there are detailed orders of battle for almost any battle you care to draw from.

Republic to Empire has a chapter devoted to the process of turning historical formations into tabletop armies, but let's look at one of my British Peninsular divisions for an example of how to do this.

The British Light Division is a wargamer's dream. Colorful personalities, elite troops, and a mix of coat colors (no having to paint six battalions with the same uniform). The composition of the Light Division changed nearly every battle (and indeed this is true with most formations in the period). For my collection, I chose the Combat on the Coa to serve as my model. Oman's History of the Peninsular War series is one of my favorite sources for detailed orders of battle for that theater. Although I couldn't find detailed unit strengths for the Coa, the third volume has Wellington's army listed at Bussaco which took place a couple of months later:

Light Division, Brigadier-General Craufurd

Beckwith's Brigade
      43rd Foot (804)
      95th Rifles (384, four companies)
      3rd Portuguese Cazadores (656)

Barclay's Brigade
      52nd Foot (946)
      95th Rifles (358, four companies)
      1st Portuguese Cazadores (546)

Republic to Empire is designed for a default 1:20 scale, but my collection was started years ago and is actually built on a 1:30 - no worries since you can field units of 18-48 infantry!

Beckwith's Brigade
      43rd Foot (27)
      95th Rifles (12)
      3rd Portuguese Cazadores (21)

Barclay's Brigade
      52nd Foot (31)
      95th Rifles (12)
      1st Portuguese Cazadores (18)

Finally, I base my units in stands of six models so I round my units to multiples of six:

Beckwith's Brigade
      43rd Foot (30)
      95th Rifles (12)
      3rd Portuguese Cazadores (24)

Barclay's Brigade
      52nd Foot (30)
      95th Rifles (12)
      1st Portuguese Cazadores (18)

That's it! This gives me a viable wargame force for small games that is colorful and historically accurate. At various times, the Light Division was detached on it's own and Craufurd was given a small cavalry element as well made up of the 1st KGL Hussars, 16th Light Dragoons, and a battery of RHA. Both cavalry regiments numbered around 450 in 1810 so I rounded down to two units of 12 models.

Veteran wargamers will not have learned much from this post, but it has been mainly aimed at the beginner who may be feeling lost without an army list. In a future post, I will talk about playing 'fair and balanced' games without using a point system.