Bloody Big Battles – Leeds 2023

Saturday July 1st 2023 saw a Bloody Big Battles day at Hicks Hall, Burley Leeds. The Leeds Wargames Club own the hall due to legacy from a past member. It’s a pretty impressive place, in good decorative order and lots of space to leave games set up.

We all took part in 2 games each of about 3 1/2 hours. My morning game was Sedan with the brave pantalons rouges trying to get out of the mess their command had got them in to. Here we see nos amis starting to deploy. The boche are going to come in from literally all sides, a few are already in place to the left of table.

A close up some of the Armée d’Afrique, Baccus models.

Sedan is a tough nut for the French. In 1870 they lost about as badly as possible. I had command of the left and organised a slow withdrawal while my colleague to the right kept the retreat route open. Luckily the boche came on slowly and I managed to send a few units off to hold the route out clear. The boche came on en-masse down there but were of poor quality and took a thrashing.

It finally came down to holding 2 objectives, a town towards the top of the board which the Prussians threw waves of troops at but were all beaten back. Also a village at bottom right where we were initially beaten out but managed to push up some cavalry to screen it while the German (they may have been Bavarians) force nearby refused to move up. If they had our horse would have been mutton. The final result was a draw, more than good enough seeing where we started from.

Bloody Big Battles worked particularly well for this period. The chassepot were good enough to menace the German guns. The Dreyse rifles generally rubbish unless the Prussians got properly stuck in. Their allies with early breach loaders did better at shooting. The relatively long range of all weapons kept the field open. Cavalry looked good for prancing around but you don’t want them to fight.

The afternoon turned to Napoleonics and Lutzen, I took the French again. We start out thinly scattered with Prussians and Russians piling on.

As the game continues more and more of our lads show up pushing the allies back.

A closer look at our lads.

I had to run for a train before the final whistle but it was looking at another draw.

In both games the victory conditions were tight making the games competitive although from a military point of view one side was clearly on the back foot.

Although the rules author (Chris Pringle) was on-site there were no copies on hand to buy but the experience was enticing enough to send off an order to NorthStar.

Getting the rules is a trvial part of setting, figures and terrain are the rub. At these scales terrain is a major element as it needs more than many other rules. In the Sedan game the hills are wood cut to size, the roads and rivers chalked onto the mat. This makes the whole set up restricted to a single battle. This is part of the battle map for Lutzen, created by Mark Smith.

The roads and rivers are felt. These were probably cut from small felt squares. A better effect might have been to cut strips from 60cm width bolts of felt cloth.

Another battlefield at Leeds was 2nd Bull Run. Apparantly the trees are made by cutting up a bath mat. The roads and rivers are mounting board.

A handy ‘get out of gaol’ solution is to choose a battles based in a flat desolate area like this from the Sikh Wars.

In the base rules the included battles are all from the Franco-Prussian War but are pretty big affairs, probably not the best place to start. There is a large collection of scenarios at the Bloody Big Battles IOGroup including the Lutzen example above. From a skim of some of those available a likely force size would be 72 infantry, 12 horse, 6 guns and 5 generals for each side to cover a few suitable battles. Units are usually in 4s and 6s. A few battles will run on a 4′ square board with far fewer bases. Possibly not the recommended battle size but enough to get the hang of the system and hopefully playable in a 2-3 hours.

Most of the models in use were Baccus 6mm on square bases although almost anything could be re-purposed. The Baccus figures are detailed if somewhat stylised. Irregular have a nice range, well posed but often crudely sculpted. They do not take well to re-basing so will be likely to show up on long thin rectangles. Heroics and Ros are thinner but like Baccus not based. Their artillery are much better than those of Irregular. Other scales could equally well be used. 10mm or 12mm is tempting especially with the new Warlord plastics although these will need cutting and re-basing. They are moulded standing very close together so expect to lose some models in the cut.

Skirmishers are an important element in most infantry units. They give a buff to combat but are the first stands to be lost as casualties. Most infantry have 1 or 2 skirmisher stands in the appropriate time frames. In the games played here skirmishers were on regular infantry bases but had different poses. This could pose an issue if re-purposing an existing collection where all bases are much the same.

Several games including Lutzen made use of unit markers. These are not strictly necessary if you can work out which unit is which from their tiny 6mm uniforms. The markers did not work too well as they easily became detatched from their parent units. If labels are to be used they need sticking to the relevant unit, possibly with post-it notes. They hold little crucial information unlike in Fire and Fury or Volley and Bayonet so are best skipped if possible. There was some need for status reminders. Disorder was common, often removed so not required for every unit. Spent was less often needed. Other markers such as low on ammo or unable to fire could be covered by a single marker type. Plastic counters were used in Leeds but for anyone working close to the ACW time frame some manufacurers make suitable markers for Fire and Fury.