Rossbach Table Set-up

Good evening from a joyful Kriegskabin at the Schloß Nundanket. Joyful following another late (away) winner for Grimsby Town, and joyful because I've finally got my toys on the table for Rossbach.

Map courtesy of Christopher Duffy's Prussia's Glory. Large rectangle is the table size and the squares are 2 ft and 1 ft respectively to aid placement. Incidentally, Duffy's scale is wrong. It should say 2km and 2 miles not 4. I checked against other maps, including satellite maps of the area.

Rossbach area today. The landscape has been transformed by open cast mines, which are now mostly lakes. Unlike many of Frederick's other battles, the site is still in Germany and not Czechia or Poland, so limited changes in place names.

I read the Helion book on Rossbach (Rossbach 1757: New Perspectives on the Battle and Campaign). Whilst it had some interesting information, it didn't change anything in how I planned to run the game. It didn't lead to any reassessment of anything in the Duffy book.

Contents page from the Helion book on Rossbach

I also flicked through Simon Millar's Rossbach and Leuthen 1757, from Osprey. Millar's text is quite brief, but it was very useful for the OOB and has a very handy map which shows the approximate timings of events. This coupled with the Duffy work and Kronoskaf, helped me plot a time schedule and using the movement rates in Twilight of the Soldier Kings I calculated that the game should last a maximum of 30 turns. Sounds a lot, but the turns do trip by quickly. 

Here is a schematic of the rival armies:

PRUSSIANS
	Hussars		FK (small)
	Musk	Musk	Garde/Gren	Musk	Gren
		Artillery (large)	Musk
	Generals		Cuir (large)	Dragoon	Garde Cuir
ALLIES
	Cavalry
Austrian cuir	1
Imp Cuir (poor)	1
Imp drag (poor)	1
	1st line	Artillery	Reserve	2nd line	Imperials
French Cuirassiers	1		1
Mixed Fr drag/huss	1
Fr Inf	3		2	1
Swiss inf	1			2
German inf				1
Artillery		2
Imp Inf good sm					1
Imp inf blue (poor)					1
Imp inf white (poor)					1
	St.Germain
French Cuirassiers	1
Fr Inf	2
	Loudon
Grenzers (large)	1

I've used different layouts above for each side as it was just easier to do. Each of the Prussian units shown above is a brigade. The numbers for the allies are also brigades. Brigades are normally 2 bases (3 for large). The Prussians are seriously outnumbered - 12 brigades to 25. To counteract, they have the advantage in quality. I might downgrade the French infantry too, as they didn't cover themselves in glory. I have given both sides a commander plus 2 subordinate generals (better quality again for the Prussians) - even though the Prussians have a much lower number of units. This is to reflect the very high concentration of command assets that the Prussians had in the real battle.

Another leveller is the split command on the allied side. I've chosen to give each army a 'break point' - i.e. number of points it can lose. This way, the Prussians don't have to wade through 13 allied brigades to make them break. I've added a couple of objective points too. Whichever of the allied armies takes the Janus Hill gains 4 points back, and whichever takes Reichardtswerben gains 2. Conversely , loss of Zeuchfeld causes the allies to lose 4 points. The rationale is that these places are crucial for protecting the combatants' lines of communication. And more importantly, in game terms it gives the sides some encouragement o follow historical routes.

Breakpoints are:

French - 10

Imperialists - 5

Prussians - 8

The VP/breakpoint idea is not the Twilight of the Soldier Kings standard method, so it hasn't been game tested with the other mechanisms. There might be a degree of tweaking necessary along the way.

Lastly, a few shots of the table

Looking along the length of the table towards the Prussian positions in front of the stream, left resting on Rossbach. Allies just off the top of the shot, except for St. Germain on the hill across from the Prussians, top right.

Prussian positions. The whiteish building in the middle is the 'Herrenhaus' from where Frederick's Capitain des Guides kept a watchful eye on the Allies.

The Allied massed columns. St.Germain on the hill in the foreground.