Monday 15 August 2022

Rossbach musings

I'm still working on the Rossbach scenario. I'm trying to figure out how many turns I should allow. There is no direct link between turns and time in Twilight of the Soldier Kings. So I calculated the distances the troops moved and the approximate timings known from accounts, and then work back an average number of turns per hour. There's quite a bit of chopping and changing going on. I'm nearly there. Then I've got to finalise victory conditions. As mentioned in the last post, I'm trying to get the scenario to run on roughly historical lines. Twilight of the Soldier Kings has a default victory mechanism based on wing and army morale tests, rather than the Victory Point approach taken by games like C&C. I'm trying to work out whether I can blend the two approaches.


So it'll be a few days before I can get the toys on the table. In the meantime I'm minded to post a blog entry about some of the oddities in the Rossbach campaign. Duffy's work on it is full of interesting nuggets. Simon Millar's book on Rossbach & Leuthen, though very good in itself, has less of this colour. Shamefully, I'd forgotten I had the Millar book. Rather usefully it's got a nice schematic map with the timings of movements on them. Oh, also, I took advantage of a 20% off deal with hellion to order The Battle of Rossbach: New perspectives on the battle and campaign. Hopefully it'll arrive soon so I can see if there's anything in it that will make me re-think the scenario.

14 comments:

  1. Chris, I look forward to seeing you sort out all of the details of the Rossbach battle. You give me motivation to work towards feilding the armies necessary for this battle.

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    1. I hope it lives up to expectations. 😆
      Chris

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  2. There is obviously quite a lot of thought going into this, Chris. Be careful what you wish for....imagine if the new Helion book has some significant new theory, all your planning so far may become redundant ...!😀

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    1. Nooooooo! Don’t say that! 😆
      Chris

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  3. The research part is always fun I find, but can then be hard to square the circle of conflicting accounts etc. For my games, which I tend to keep relatively simple I must confess, I go down the route of when would one side most likely begin to retreat to protect their LoC/baggage, or were too weak to prosecute any more attacks etc. It works for me but then I am a shallow knave;).

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    1. That’s as good a method as any Steve. I could just do the same, but I have a tendency to keep on going past the point it would be reasonable.
      Chris

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  4. It's great to see the level of research you do for these games - one of the advantages of playing them solo, you can take as long as you like over the planning! We look forward to further updates..

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    1. Like you say, that’s the benefit of playing solo. It is a bit self-indulgent, but if any of it is of any interest or use to anyone else then that is a bonus.
      Chris

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  5. I would think that Rossbach would be quite a challenging scenario; the French did so poorly in real life, you want to make that possible but not inevitable! At least with solo play, you don't have to worry quite so much about balance!

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    1. It certainly is a challenge. Even for a solo game I want to make sure there’s a significant degree of uncertainty. And I’m also stretching the challenge by trying to make the scenario competitive enough for non-solo players.

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  6. Impressive detailed research looking forward to seeing the results 👍

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    1. I just need to pull my finger out and get the table set up.

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  7. I too share the enjoyment of planning a scenario and look forward to your further updates and musings. I will be interested to see how you go with a game using Twilight of the Soldier Kings, given my satisfaction with Twilight of the Sun King for smaller scale (I think is the correct geographic term?) games of Great Northern War.
    Regards, James
    p.s. I note you posting as 'anonymous'. The latest change to blogger is that you (sometimes) need to select to post with google, even when already logged in and even on your own blog. Weird!

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    1. Hi James. When I’m on my laptop I can adjust the settings so I can post under my blog username. I don’t know how to adjust the settings to do this on my phone though.
      Regarding the Rossbach scenario, I keep changing my mind on how to set it up. Hopefully I’ll come to a decision by Saturday!
      Chris

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