Our Journey To Borodino

Part 5

A Triumph of Hope Over Experience

A few years ago I wrote about our group's, The Lead Commanders, endeavours in putting on a demonstration game of Borodino using Baccus’ figures. Whilst the journey to the ultimately successful conclusion 1) was recorded, after a fashion, on the Baccus website that was not the end of the story…

We enjoyed the challenge of putting on a demonstration game and so continued to educate and entertain the public with further examples…..actually we got into a bit of a habit putting the games on and no one was able to break it. So we did a few more at the World Championships in Derby, last year a WW2 western desert battle and the year before a Seven Years war set-to.

So for 2012 what was the group decision? Logically Borodino would have been a good idea as it’s the 200 year anniversary, but we’d done that, and anyway loads of groups would surely have come to the same conclusion as us and have the same idea. So the group decision 2) was another Western Desert 1942.

The planning committee then swung into action, the battle agreed, forces allocated, roles decided. Initial planning meeting sorted out the map, terrain and responsibilities for everyone concerned. The figures were purchased and painting commenced, a few practice games to make sure it looked and worked well and we were ready.

Well almost…

What actually happened was that we’d agreed Western Desert and one member volunteered to organise it. Unfortunately we didn’t see him for a while, 3) but our optimism knew no bounds, so no one was worried. Until a couple of months before the show and the question was voiced ‘What were we doing for the Worlds?’ A hurried email to the organisers got us a table: great who’s organising it?

Deathly silence.

Eventually we agreed another plan: in the sense that we’d still do western desert, but with no idea what. Sound familiar? Certainly does for our group.
Coincidentally, the organisers hadn’t seemed all that enthusiastic about a western desert battle from us. Ok, we didn’t win any prizes in 2011 with our last effort, but we didn’t think it was that bad. But apparently there were lots of western desert games planned for 2012 (did we start a trend?), and no one was offering a Borodino game. Ha ha we thought this was our chance, we could offer to do Borodino and ‘help out’ the organisers in their hour of need to give some balance to the games on display, and commemorate the 200th anniversary of the battle. Completely altruistic of us. Nothing to do with us already having the figures, terrain , boards and army lists. No self-interest there at all.

Actually, as you’ll see we weren’t much better off.

In the years since we originally put Borodino on we’d been busy, with just about every scale and period except 6mm Napoleonics. When we’d originally done the game we’d been short of a couple of bits. That’s probably not too surprising if you’ve read my previous reports. So there was some opolchenie to provide, not much, only about 32,000 men’s worth. No problem as in the intervening period Pete at Baccus had very obligingly produced the proper figures. Only about 1,000 figures to paint then Mike…?

The French players hadn’t quite managed to paint all their figures either, it hadn’t been obvious before as the table had been a bit smaller than we’d planned for. But this time for completeness they’d finish off the missing troops: better known as the Imperial Guard. Well… Napoleon had refused to let them fight so they wouldn’t be needed would they?

The other change we’d made was to the rules. Sorry Pete. We’d tried Polemos, but because we wanted to fight the battle at battalion scale neither of the two Polemos scale rules quite worked. So I’d tried Volley and Bayonet. Which in fairness was Pete’s fault anyway as he’d originally recommended them before he’d brought out his own set.

Not being content to use perfectly good rules we’d (well myself and Barrie C actually) altered them slightly to accommodate the battalion scale and tinkered with a few bits that didn’t fit in with our, distorted, sense of what actually happened. 4)

The main effect of our tinkering improved the balance of the two sides we felt, but also reduced the number of artillery bases the Russians needed. Great, that meant we’d got between 40 and 50 bases we wouldn’t use….anyone want to buy artillery bases going cheap to a good home? Even worse Pete had released some smaller calibre Russian guns which I’d been conned, er persuaded, to buy. I now had 30 extra ‘old’ artillery bases nicely painted I didn’t need and another dozen to add to the pile. I know we all suffer from a pile of unpainted lead, but I was creating a pile of painted lead I’d never use or need and adding to it!
As we’d never actually fought Borodino through all the way previously, one of the oddities of our first attempt hadn’t come to light: the opposing sides’ orders of battle. We all know there’s some dispute about numbers and what units took part, but I thought we’d agreed to all use the Nafziger lists in our first planning meeting (aka drunken night at the pub: make decisions before 9 or Barry M will be drivelling). Anyway, for Volley and Bayonet casualties are recorded on paper records. I’d done the Russian ones, but neither of the French commanders seemed willing to do theirs.

So to help things along this time I offered to produce the orders of battle for both sides. As ever there’d seemed some confusion over who was meant to do what in the French camp. My offer was gratefully accepted…”Just checking what lists did you both use originally?” “Nafziger” came the joint response. Great, so I then spend a couple of nights writing them up. Emailed them off in a self-satisfied frame of mind, another job done for the group, won’t they be pleased I’ve helped, think I.

By return the response was “These are not the OB’s we used, ours are different!”, “But these are Nafziger” I protested. “Huh we used a different Nafziger then…” It now seems that neither of the two French commanders knew which list they’d used, nor were they using the same list. Nor, in fact was it Nafziger!

End result quite a few uncharitable moans and a need to paint up the French units they now needed, in addition to those they’d missed off last time. About a month to go and here’s the photographic evidence of recently completed figures on plain bases. It seems nothing changes does it Barrie?

On the plus side we now had proper models of the three fleches and some more towns so it should look better. As long as no one had sold the trees we’d used last time…
Next came the debate about unit ratings, when the OBs were circulated there were howls of indignation. Even though the average French unit was rated better than the average Russian, ditto the elites on both sides, the French commanders were dissatisfied. Never mind the hordes of dross the Russians were lumbered with in the form of Cossacks and Opolchenie.

Cue a string of emails justifying why many of the French units just had to be upgraded to reflect their actual performance on the battle field. Being a sporting sort of chap all these requests were accepted without quibble and the French army now has lot and lots of top class troops. So no excuses now Barrie??

So two weeks to go, lots of figures still to paint, hand-outs to produce, rules to learn and we need to put it all out and practise to make sure we’ve got everything. Oh and we need to agree on which map we’re using.

No problems, and no improvement despite the intervening years. Still happy we’re advertising your figures Pete? No. Thought not….

A triumph of hope over experience? Worryingly enough I’m not talking about the imminent Borodino fiasco, part 2, we’ve almost agreed to demo Ligny and Quatre Bras in 2015 to coincide with the 200 year anniversary of the 1815 campaign. Still that’s three years away so absolutely no probems then Pete. PETE, PEEETE.

P.S. Remember I mentioned the French still had a few artillery pieces to paint up? I’m happy to say that’s all planned for. The plan being that we will be buying them from a professional painter on the 6th October, we just need him to be there at about 9am before the doors open.

1) Management speak for ‘a hard slog that just about made the grade’.
2) Actually the group indecision, as no one was willing to suggest anything initially. ‘How about another western desert action as we’ve got the figures?’ ‘Uh, Ok…..’
3) In fairness the anonymous member (John…) was fairly new to the group and didn’t realise how inept we all were, and his domestic situation got a bit ‘complicated’ so real life got in the way of wargaming.
4) Acknowledgements and credits to Franck Chadwick and Greg Novak who wrote the V&B2 set we'd 'improved'. They are very good rules for big games.