Kolin. The refight with Maurice: Part III, the analysis.

To analize the replay, in order to compare the same battle played with three different rules (Maurice, Volley and Bayonet and DB-Hx), I’ll try to answer to these questions:

1) How many “3”x1.5” bases the scenario needs?

2) The replay replicated a global situation in some sense comparable to the real battle, or developed in a total different way?  The final result was a plausible one with respect of the historical data?

3) There are some parts of the scenario (troop numbers and quality, terrain, special rules) which are too heavy and drive too much the final result?

4) There was in the replay any unlikely or awkward situation generated by the rules or by the scenario itself?

5) The playing area was adequate? Too small with crammed troops or too big allowing for unlikely maneuvers.

6) With this Rule the scenario replay playing went smooth?

7) With this Rule the scenario was funny to play?

As you’ll notice, I never mentioned “historicity”: I already said that this argument is out of discussion whenever we move models on a table. I prefer to deal with the matter as pointed out in question 2).

A typical after-battle discussion

Going into the specific, when the battle of Kolin is played with Maurice we can observe that:

1) Austrians 41 bases, Prussians 27 bases. 1,51 Ratio.

2) Yes. I decided to follow the historical pattern for the Prussian attack, and the following situations were similar to the historical ones. The Cavalry battle was inconclusive. The Prussian attacked gaining local successes but hammering to the pulp their infantry. The Prussian committed two main errors, the first was to lose too much time with the cavalry battle and the second was that the infantry attack was not supported by any kind of reserves. The Prussian right and the Austrian left remained unengaged. The global historical results with, of course, local difference in the battle development.

3) No, the special rules and the National Advantages are not intrusive. The only thing I noticed is that the Austrian superiority could make the difference if in the final phases of the battle the morale are close to the breaking point for both armies.

4) No. In fact there were a couple of lulls in the development of  the battle and I noticed also that the most diffucult thing to achieve was to maintain the attack momentum, two things that appears “realistic” and ask to the player a good deal of planning.

5) The playing area was 150 cm x 112.5 cm, not cluttered with towns or too much difficult terrain. There was room to maneuver and no terrain represented an insormontable barrier. The scenario represented adequately the area were the battle was fought, given the scale and the nature of the rules. To measure the “clutterness” i take the ratio between the area of the bases and the total area which, in this case, is  approximately 10%.

6) The replay went smooth, with no complicated bookeeping or nasty calculation. Even the die-roll procedure was easy to deal with. In this sense the Rules are enough “intuitive” making the game easy to deal with.

7) Yes, absolutely. I like these Rules.