Field of Battle3 - Refighting the "Battle of Kunersdorf 1759" - Frederick´s greatest defeat - The game itself

Figures:   FrontRank Miniatures, Crusader Miniatures, WargamesFoundry, Dreispitz Miniatures

Terrain:   TTM (Tabletop Modellbau) 

Scale:   28mm

Hi,

following the last post this will be the second part telling how the game itself has played.

If you have missed the first part - just have a look here     Refighting Kunersdorf - Part one

Just as a reminder here is a picture of the terrain of the battle.

Heavy terrain makes movement difficult.

A closer look at Kunersdorf and the fortified "Mühlenberg"

And this is the party of guys who joined me at my home. We needed an expert, who watched over the rules and gave as us advice and information how to act after the rules in certain situations. And of course - the gamers.

Franz as Voltaire in his function as referee.

Christopher as Frederick the Great.

Peter as Friedrich Heinrich von Seydlitz in an earlier uniform

Oliver as Gideon Ernst von Loudon.

Me as Piotr Saltykov

After having decided, which player is going to play which force the armies had been placed onto the terrain as the battlemap of the scenario told us.

The Austrian brigade under command of "Oliver Loudon".

The Russian main brigade defending the "Spitzberg" and the "Walkberge".

The first Russian brigade entranched on the "Mühlenberg". 

The first Prussian brigade or Avantgarde already storming the "Mühlenberg" - played by Peter.

The second Prussian brigade still in the woods in march columns lead by Christopher playing
Frederick the Great.

The third Prussian brigade under command of "Peter von Seydlitz".

As you can see there won´t be very much space for movement. The yellow section left to the cavalry
of Seydlitz is impassible for cavalry and artillery. Kunersdorf can only be passed in march columns.

Another view on the combined terrain of Kunersdorf and the "Kuhgrund".

A total view of the battlefield...

...and another one from the other side.

Just a short explanaion of the background of the setup as it has been in reality.

Frederick the Great´s force (some 49.000 men) was outnumbered by the Russian-Austrian force (some 76.000 men). The allies expected a Prussian attack from the north of the three hills and so they decided to place their brigades on the "Judenberg", "Spitzberg", "Walkberge" and "Mühlenberg". But in the night Frederick lead his army from west to east and managed to start his attack on the right flank of the "Mühlenberg". The Prussians had been successful in taking the "Mühlenberg" rather quickly, but the hardships of night movement, the hot temperatures of August, lack of space for manouvre and heavy fighting exhausted his army soon. His generals told him to stop the attack after having taken the "Mühlenberg", but Frederick refused to do so. He wanted to destroy the allied force. This stubbornness also made him loose the battle.

In our scenario the Austrian brigade was not able to be react until one of the following situations occured.

1.    The Prussians had taken the "Mühlenberg" completely

2.    The Prussians had entered the "Kuhgrund"

3.    The Prussians passed the gap between "Mühlenberg" and "Walkberge"

Prussia got 28 ArmyMoralePoints, the Allies got 35 AMP´s

So - let the game begin.

The Russians won the initiative and their first card to play was "Artillery fire". Lucky ones.
First fire coming from the heavy artillery against the Prussan artillery...

...causing the first two UI-losses on the Prussian side.

Reloading and firing a second round wiped out the Prussian artillery.
What a dramatic start of the game.

The second Russian battery from the "Mühlberg" and another one from the "Walkberge" shot at the
advancing Prussian Grenadiers..

...and cause another loss of at least one UI for the Prussians. Things went good for the Allies.

The second Prussian brigade was not allowed to change from march column into line until it had not
left the woods. But also the small space made it a challenge to deploy the army. 

An overview onto the "Mühlberg" after first actions.

The Prussians came closer pretty soon.

Due to the terrain the brigade of Seydlitz also had difficulties to bring its units into good shape.

"VORWÄRTS"

"THE PRUSSIANS ARE COMING!"

"THEY COME FROM TWO SIDES!"

Heavy fighting on the right flank.

Seydlitz´ cavalry formed up into columns for better movement.

The Prussian infantry applied heavy pressure on the Russian units defending the "Mühlenberg".

Line after line of Prussian infantry came up the "Mühlenberg".

Finally the first Prussian units entered the top of the hill destroying one Russian battery and also 
one unit of Russain Grenadiers. Fortune of war had changed.

One half of the `Mühlenberg" is occupied by the Prussians.

The Russian units are outflanked and also outnumbered.

Saltykov is crying out; "What the hell is going on?"

With one of four units of Grenadiers and one battery left the Russians defended the "Mühlenberg"
and had not been an easy enemy for the Prussians.

They even managed to make two Prussian units run. But they also knew that the massive attack will
give them no chance.

After really heavy fighting the second Russian battery on the "Mühlenberg" got lost and there was only one single unit of Russian Grenadiers left defending the"Mühlenberg". A Prussian battery managed to get into the north of the "Mühlenberg". Because of the fact that the allied had not lost far less AMP´s thatn the Prussians, Saltykov decided to bring up some of his troops from the "Walkberge" to support the last remaining unit of Grenadiers on the "Mühlenberg".

The Austrians still were not allowed to move or react. So Saltykov also decided to give the order to this last unit of Grenadiers to leave the "Mühlenberg" by carrying out a strategic fall back. The hill now was totally under control of the Prussians and the Austrians at least were allowed to join the fight.

In the meantime the Prussians had lost many ArmyMoralePoints and soon would have run out of them So the allied troops tried to combine their forces for a massive counter attack.

The last remaining Russian unit of Grenadiers retreats from the "Mühlenberg"
and stops its movement right in front of the loaded Prussian battery.

"HURRA! We are finally allowed to move!"

Russian infantry from the "Walkberge" and "Spitzberg" forming up to 
attack the Prussian battery. Five more losses on the Prussian UI´s and the
battle would become a victory for the allies.

The Austrian cavalry is also lining up for a charge on the Prussians.

But fortune of war really changed from the allies to the Prussians.

The allies did not get the right order cards and also rolled their dice badly. Instead of causing any notable losses on the Prussian side they got shot down by the Prussian battery in their front and also from the Prussian infantry on the "Mühlenberg" in their flank.

Saltykov ordered the attacking units to go back into their original position on the "Walkberge" and "Spitzberg". The plan to deliver the death blow to the Prussians had failed and the Russians also had only five AMP´s left.

The Russians get back into their orginal position.

The artillery fire of the Russian battery got ineffective. Because of the entranchments the 
Prussians had good cover.

Meanwhile night had fallen and both sides did not drop any cards that could bring decisive actions to win the game for any side. Both sides had only five AMP´s left and so we decided to call the outcome of the game a "draw". So we really "changed" history for in reality this battle had been Frederick´s greatest defeat. Congratulations to Christopher and Peter for doing better than Frederick the Great!

We had a lot of fun playing this scenario and I enjoyed our get-together very much. I am sure that this won´t have been our last battle of wargaming.

We found out that using a scenario created by AI also does work. But we have to point out that you have to check for AI made mistakes and have to optimize some things here and there. In other words - AI can be very helpful to start creating your own scenarios, but subtleties have to be done by yourself.

But also remember that there are a lot of experts out there who already created scenarios for certein rule systems. So if you have the chance to play some scenarios from books this should be the first choice before creating your own ones by AI.

Cheers 

Mike

Field of Battle3 - Refighting the "Battle of Kunersdorf 1759" - Frederick´s greatest defeat

Manufacturers:  WargamesFoundry, CrusaderMiniatures, FrontRankMiniatures, DreispitzMiniatures

Scale:  28mm

Hi,

after having done a lot of posts about toysoldiers and AI  I recognized that it has been a long time since doing a report on topics concerning wargaming. Sad, but true.

So this post is dedicated to a game we are planning by using the rules of "Field of Battle 3". There will be another post about the game itself. This post is about some background.

I do have a really good collection of SYW Austrians. There are also SYW Russians on my shelves though the number of units is less compared to the Austrians. From the last games there are still a lot of SYW Prussians in my hobby bunker that belong to my friend Walter. Combine those armies and you could play the "Battle of Kunersdorf 1759".

Frederick the Great decided to fight a combined army of Russians lead by Salykov and Austrians under Loudon who had joined near Frankfurt Oder at Kunersdorf. The united forces of Russians and Austrians had been a great danger of marching against Berlin. The number of troops of this combined force was about 76.000 men and round about 430 guns. Furthermore the Russian position on the Mühlberg had entranchments. 

The Prussian force was about 49.900 men and 286 pieces of artillery. Though being outnumbered Frederick decided to fight this battle. Due to a march in the night he managed to place his force on the right wing of his enemies. After a good start for the Prussians the terrain had been a big problem for Frederick´s army. After six hours of fighting he Prussians force had been defeated. Two horses carrying Frederick during the battle had been shot. The Prussians lso 569 officers an 18.400 men dead or wounded, 26 colours, 2 standards, 172 artillery pieces and 110 ammunition wagons. This battle was one of Frederick´s worst defeat.  See further information at Kronoskaf.com or on YouTube.

But how to play this battle? Ok, there are already some scenarios in certain books, but I only have one version of a scenario in a book and this one did not seem to be suitable. So I wanted to try something different.

I asked google gemini to create a scenario for this battle. I have to point out that I didn´t ask for units, a certain dimension of the table nor did I tell the AI that we want to use the rules of "Field of Battle 3". The result was an AI created scenario based on the dimensions 6´x4´. The program also gave a recommendation about the number of units to use per side. It even told me somethng about the  history of this battle.

Thinking of the number of units we had at disposal I played a bit with the dimensions. I asked for a         12´x4´sized scenario. That could have been feasible for there are two gaming tables in my gaming room that can be connected, so you could play games of at least 5m wide and 1,60m deep. But this plan was soon discarded, The battelefield would have been to widespread and there also would have been to many manouvres done before first action and fighting started.

So another trial with 8´x4´. The program adapted the scenario and the units to the new dimensions and asked for the rulesystem we were going to play. After that google gemini gave an "Order of battle" to me for both sides devided into three brigades on each side and the units within each brigade. It also added the values of dice (D4 to D12) for every unit and gave advice for the ArmyMoralePoints.

I asked for a battlemap showing the terrain and also got a good proposal.

AI is a very good help for creating scenarios, but to be honest, it is also very tricky. You can´t really rely on all results. The lettering of the battlemap was not accurate, we also had to rethink about the values of dice per unit and sized the AMP´s down. It also had been a very difficult thing to place the terrain of the created battlemap in reality. While doing this I realized that it almost would be impossible to place all the units on the battlefield. Though we already reduced the UI´s from 4 to 3 (we had a problem concerning the number of figures) there probably would be not enough space for manouvre. So my layout of terrain now has the dimensions 8´x5,3´ (2,4m by 1,6m).

So now we will have to try if scenarios created by AI will work. Are the units well balanced, is the terrain playable, how about the dimensions combined with the number of units? We will see and I will keep you informed.

Thanks to my comrade Franz, who gave me advices in matters of "Field of battle" and who also has done the revision of the unit stads and AMP´s.

Here are some pictures about the preparation of the game. The AI created battlemap, the terrain I tried to lay out as near as possible to the map, the compilation of the adversarial forces, the revised Order of Battle for both sides and of course an overview on my wargaming room.

Hope you like it. :)

Cheers

Mike

Painting of Prussian Grenadiers storming the Mühlenberg (AI created).

Two battlemaps of Kunersdorf that can be found in Battlebooks.

The AI created battlemap as a template for the layout of the terrain.

My implementation of the layout as near as possible to the battlemap.

Kunersdorf is already burning an the Mühlenberg is heavily fortified with entranchments.

The order of battle for the Russian/Austrian force.

The figures for the Russian/Austrian force.

The order of battle for the Prussians.

Frederick the Great and his tiny soldiers.

Both forces next to each other.

A view into my complete wargaming room.

Another view onto the battlefield, I will need a Russian flag of the SYW aswell.

Refighting "The Battle of Kunersdorf" - I will be there.