A new project: Le Journal De Petite Battailes (powered with BBB)

 

A new project: Le Journal De Petite Battailes

Taking into consideration my move to games that can be played on a 36x36 inch table, and within an hour or hour and half, and my love for Bloody Big Battles  I am embarking on a new initiative that I have called “Le Journal De Petite Battailes” (to be pronounced with the worse imitation of a bad French accent you can muster) or LJdPB. The goal of LJdPB is to produce at least four scenarios powered by BBB per year that fit those parameters, i.e playable in a 36x36 table in an hour or an hour and a half.

BBB is a system that is targeted at the operational level of strategy, with the goal of permitting players to play large operational battles within a evening, and on a normal wargame table (with scenarios on average using a 6x4 foot table, but also having 8x4, 5x4, and 4x4 scenarios). A 3x3 table is truly pushing BBB outside of its normal target. But it is the reality for a lot of us, and it is doable. There are two ways to go about this 1) scenarios covering relatively small but still large battles that saw at least 5000 men per side. 2) “bathtubbing” larger battles. BBB has a variable troop scale that has run from as small as 250 troops per base to as many as 3000 troops per base. Since units represent the centers of gravity of larger formations, it is much easier for it to scale up and down, than say Great War Spearhead (with its company=base hard-wired ratio). While there are scenarios that use less then 500 or 400 men per base, I feel such battles are better talked by tactical level games or games that use the company as the basic maneuver element.

Thus I intend to use LJdPB to showcase either scenarios were the basic scale is one base=500-1000 men, or larger bathtubbed battles were one base =3000 men.  Breaking from the 6x4 mold gives me the liberty to explore some of the many battles that never ended up becoming BBB scenarios. This includes many 19^th century battles that are “too small” for the average BBB scale but still involved ten thousand or more troops involved, or for which we have little information to permit the kind of detail found at that average scale. And it permits to tackle some massive battles for which detailed information is scarce or hard to translate to workable wargame in BBB average scale sizes.

Looking at an older document I had uploaded to the BBB Yahoo groups there are many candidates for LJdPB

Curupayty, Avay in the War of the Triple Alliance (Lopez War)

Oriamendi and maybe others from the 1^st Carlist War

Rieti from the Congress Wars of 1816-1823

Chalchuapa 1885 from the Central American Wars

And many others.

I will also do my 1919-1922 Greece-Turkey Wars according to this logic. Scenarios will focus on key and iconic battles during larger operations (Gediz 1920, 1^st Inonu 1920/1921, Kanlisirt 1921, Yurmuchal-Nasuchel 1921, Mangal Dag 1921, Erkman Hills 1922) or “bathtubbing” the larger operations (2^nd Inonu, Sakarya/Sangarius)

There are many advantages to the LJdPB format: 1) more options for people who want to play BBB 2) more historical battles covered 3) games that can be used in an educational setting due to low requirements in space, time and collections.

I am also using a different format for scenario presentation than Chris usually does. Chris’s scenario format is perfect for getting all the useful information into a economically affordable printable area. But for LJdPB I am inspired more f0orm the Altar of Freedom presentation style, ergo the faux newspaper title, that can accommodate pictures of important actors, and bibliographies/references.  I have also decided to go with hand-drawn maps, and simplified terrain.

The first three scenarios are now done in draft form and ready for your playtesting pleasure. Two are re-implementations of existing scenarios, and one is a totally new one. The fourth one for 2023, will be the main theater of the Battle of 1^st Inonu.  You can get them either directly from these links, or from the relative section in the Material for Wargaming Page of the blog.

Battle of Oeversee 1864 (Second Schleswig-Holstein War)

2^ND Battle of Velestino 1897 (Greece-Ottoman Empire War of 1897)

Battle of Gribovo 1897 (Greece-Ottoman Empire War of 1897)