Tuesday 30 December 2014

One Hour Great Northern War Army Lists

Most of the scenarios in One Hour Wargames use armies of six units each, with a few featuring four or three unit forces. The armies are generated using a D6 roll. Each set of rules features four unit types, and the tables take this into account; for any given period you will get a majority of one core type and a selection of the three other support types.

I have based my Great Northern War rolls on the ACW tables, as the troop classifications are the same - Infantry as the core, with Cavalry, Artillery and Veteran Infantry (Zouaves in the ACW lists) as the support. However I decided to tweak the rolls to take into account national characteristics. The tweaks are:

(i) The Russians would tend to have more Veteran Infantry than the Swedes, representing the Guard regiments. Indeed I will refer to the Veteran units as Guards. The Swedish infantry would be more homogeneous in quality.

(ii) The Swedes would have the possibility of a higher proportion of Cavalry than the Russians.

(iii) The Swedes also have the possibility of Cossacks

(iv) The Swedes have less Artillery.

To this end I created the following 'rules' when rolling for armies:

The first Veteran Infantry the Swedes roll is instead replaced by a Cavalry unit. If, however, the army already has at east one Cavalry, they get a unit of Cossacks instead.

The second Artillery unit the Swedes get is replaced by Infantry.

This gives the following lists:

Russians - 6 Units

1 - 3 x Infantry, 2 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
2 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 2 x Guards
3 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Guard, 1 x Cavalry
4 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
5 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Guard
6 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Guard, 1 x Cavalry

Swedes - 6 Units

1 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
2 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Guard, 1 x Cavalry
3 - 3 x Infantry, 2 x Cavalry, 1 x Cossack
4 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
5 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
6 - 4 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry, 1 x Cossack

Russians - 4 Units

1 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
2 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Guard
3 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Guard, 1 x Cavalry
4 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery
5 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Guard
6 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry

Swedes - 4 Units

1 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
2 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
3 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry, 1 x Cossack
4 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery
5 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry
6 - 3 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry

Russians - 3 Units

1 - 1 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
2 - 1 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Guard
3 - 1 x Infantry, 1 x Guard, 1 x Cavalry
4 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery
5 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Guard
6 - 2 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry

Swedes - 3 Units

1 - 1 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
2 - 1 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery, 1 x Cavalry
3 - 1 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry, 1 x Cossack
4 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Artillery
5 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry
6 - 2 x Infantry, 1 x Cavalry

Unlike the original book lists, the Swedish lists will give duplicate armies under some rolls. In practice this doesn't seem to cause too many problems though. In addition I don't distinguish between dragoons and cavalry. At the scale and granularity of games I'm playing I don't think it really makes a difference.

I have played through probably more than a third of the scenarios in the book with these armies, and they generally give good, close games. The next step, I guess, is a campaign of linked scenarios.

2 comments:

  1. Very interested in your GNW project, as it has been an interest of mine since college (1970 or thereabouts--ouch!). Your Russian lists look good for 1708 or after, but prior to that the army was poor, with very, very few regiments qualifying as veteran, much less Guard! Your treating all mounted as cavalry is spot on for the Swedes, as Charles made no distinction. Supposedly Peter did, but you rarely see a battle report giving much attention to dismounted dragoons.

    Am definitely awaiting the next installment.

    Best regards,

    Chris

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    Replies
    1. I make no claims to have any knowledge of the Great Northern War - prior to earlier this year I was barely aware of it, and only picked it as a backdrop for my project to paint Risk figures because it looked a bit exotic and the uniforms were nice. However even my relatively cursory reading tells me my lists are pretty focused in time and space :)

      An easy shift for the Russians prior to 1708 would be to count their Infantry as Green and rolls of Veteran/Guard as being Regular Infantry. This would give the. Swedes a significant advantage. I'd have to consider a balancing mechanism for the OHW scenarios to counter this, especially for one-off games.

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