I finally forced myself to sit down and finish my draft scenarion in LJdPB format for BBB, Olustee 1864. A bloody knife fight in open terrain, this was a Confederate victory and the only major land battel in Florida in the US Civil War. You can find it in the Material for Wargaming page, the BBB Groups io file section, and at this link.
Enjoy and a Happy New Year to all!
After two years, I finally got a chance to play some Bloody Big Battles. The plan was to run a remote game with others, but technical difficulties meant I had to solo it, while the other watched and listened. I ran my draft Gribomvo 1897 scenario. I was able to play four turns before having to call it quits. The scenario is difficulty for the Greeks, though I do think a Draw is doable. I am very happy with the terrain setup, which only took 20 mins to put together. I am definetly going to run this for the local group.
The next draft scenario in the Le Journal De Pettite Battailes framework, powered by Bloody Big Battles is now ready! Fight the Battle of Gisikon 1847, when decisive action following a brilliant campaign ended the Sonderbund War in Switzerland with miniscule losses. A campaign that justifies putting Federal commander Guillaume Henri Dufour among the greats of military history, and one of the few to come the closet to living up to Sun Tzu's call to win a war without fighting.
You can find the Scenario though this link LJdPB Gisikon 1847 , which is also posted in the Wargaming Materials page of this blog. It is also uploaded to the BBB Groups.io website.
The Le Journal De Petite Battailes scenario for part of the Battle of 2nd Inonu/Avgin-Kovalica is now ready. This was the scenario I had almost finished when my depression hit hard and put a stop at all my hobby activity. I am glad to present it to you all. As usual you can either get it form the Material for Wargaming Page of this blog or by clicking this link LJdPB 2nd Inonu. Next up should be Olustee and Gisikon.
The remote game we had with Vincent really has fired me up! I now have at least one confirmation that the philosophy of LJdPB places BBB again within my reach. And it has led me to ambitiously consider multiple scenarios. I probably am biting more than I can chew, but darn it, it feels good to be fired up!
Here are some scenarios I am thinking for future treatment under LJdPB (these are separate from the 1919-1922 scenarios) . If you want to help with designing some of them, feel free to contact me at ktravlos(at)yahoo(dot)com. I am looking at scenarios which saw roughly 10,000-60,000 men combined for both sides present and were there is at least enough info for a 1000 men per base scale, and that can be played in 3x3 table (the goal is about 10-20 bases per side, scales can be 500,1000,3000 men per base).
One or Two Scenarios from the First Carlist War (need to get sources)
Gisikon/Gilsikon 1847 "Henri Dufour's brilliant victory"
Goito 1848 "The Futile Victory"
One or Two Scenarios from the Frist Schleswig-Holstein War
Olusteee 1864 "Seymours Southern Folly"
Curupaity 1866 "Desperate Assault by the Paraguay River"
Avay 1868 "Caxias closes the trap"
Tarapaca 1879 "A desert defeat for the Chileans"
Chalchuapa 1885 "End of Rufino Barrios"
Concos and Placilla 1891 "Civil War in Chile"
Driskos 1912 "The Redshirts shed their blood"
I was honored to get a chance to playtest the LJDPB Oeversee 1864 scenario with the indefatigable Vincent Tsao (he blogs at the Corlears Hook Fencibles ) . The game was over zoom (we will explore Discrod for future games). It was excellent. I took the Austrians and Vincent the Danes. I made severla mistakes and the game ended in my defeat. But it was a good test of not just the specific scenario but the whole logic of LJdPB.
1. The scenario ran fast. We were done in an hour and several minutes.
2. The low number of units made it easy to keep track of the game even online
3. Of course the low number of units does mean luck will have a bigger impact than in a normal BBB game. But the short play time permits determined players to run the same scenario twice. There is a DBA logic here, which I think works.
4. All in all I am happy. This worked exactly as I had it in my mind. It is a very different way to play BBB but there is still the BBB spirit of rewarding good tactics and punishing bad.
5. The scenario is balanced for the Draw result, but an Austrian victory would be hard. Still I aim for balance on the draw result.
All in all a good quick game! It was really nice to meet Vincent face to face even if remote. I might in the future organize a remote multi game day of LJdPB scenarios.
Vincent wrote a AAR at his blog at Corlears Hook Fencibles
Considering the catastrophic earthquake in Turkey and Syria, I have decided to release the next planned scenario for LJdPB earlier, a scenario covering the main actuon during the Battle of First Inonu/Bozuyuk during the Greece-Turkey War of 1919-1922 (Turkish War of Liberation/ Asia Minor Campaign). I do this in order use it as an opportunity to plead for your support for charities that are trying to help the people in the earthquake hit zones (mainly in Turkey). Information on how to help is provided in the scenario PDF. If you can, please consider helping. If you already have, you have out thanks. You can get the scenario by clicking in the underlined title below (or go to the materials for wargaming page of the blog, or get it in the BBB Groups IO files folder)
The final scenario of the first batch of LJdPB battles is done. This covers the Battle of Rieti between Neapolitan Constitutionalists and Austrian Imperialists in 1821. The next four battles are decided, but I have to step away from the project for a time due to work.
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 19th 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 1st 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, 1st Inonu 1920/1921, Kanlisirt 1921, Yurmuchal-Nasuchel
1921, Mangal Dag 1921, Erkman Hills 1922) or “bathtubbing” the larger
operations (2nd 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 1st 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)
2ND Battle of Velestino 1897 (Greece-Ottoman
Empire War of 1897)
