Part 1: Battle of Narva: 20th November 1700

WARGAMING THE BATTLE

No matter what scale you choose, this battle will be spectacular! The Russian lines will need a LOT of room to show them off to their best advantage. The river Norova should be impassable except at the bridges, and care should be taken to ensure that units have to deploy properly to be able to cross the pontoon bridge, thus creating some nice bottlenecks. A simple mechanism can be brought into play to decide at which point the bridge may collapse, perhaps dependent upon the amount of use it is getting in any one move.

The fortifications proved passable to the Swedish Horse, after they were stormed by the Foot, so mounted troops should be allowed to cross such obstacles with little or no penalty, once a breach has been effected. However, Swedish horse were able to cross the lines, on" the defenders had abandoned their posts. Perhaps this could also be allowed, but at a for slower movement rate? Fort Troubetsky held out longer then other sections of the line, so it should have an increased defensive value. The Russian camp proved to be well provided with the materiel for building a lost ditch redoubt capable of holding several battalions, and again provision for hastily erected wagon laagers should be made.

For the Russians, there should be a restriction on the range and effect at which they can open fire upon the advancing Swedes, reflecting the effect of the snowstorm. An umpire is 2 must for this type of game, as he can roll a random weather effect, which neither player can depend on. Once the Swedes are through, his only chance to win is to concentrate his unwieldy forces upon his stalled opponents remembering that he eon afford to take casualties at a rate of seven to one in a battle of attrition.

However, his shaky morale may mean a more subtle approach is required. Again, the lack of an overall command structure eon be reflected in a random roll at the beginning of each turn to determine the number of units he may actually move. At the final reckoning, a total victory can only come by killing a large amount of the attacking force, or better than killing Charles XII himself, whilst a moral victory can be obtained by getting a large part of the army away from the battlefield without being captured.

The Swedes must make use of their advantages of quality, leadership and surprise. The initial attacks must be quick and incisive if any headway is to be made, and they cannot afford to lose the tempo. If the game bogs down into a simple confrontation, the weight of numbers ranged against them will soon tell. A total and complete victory can perhaps only mirror the historical result. Every loss over that, and every Russian who gets away can only detract from that result. The actual loss of the battle, or the death of Charles XII would win the Ambrose Burnside Croix de Legion de Turkey for Military Incompetence with Crossed Swords and Oak Leaf Clusters. In actual fact, neither side has an easy option.

As another alternative, because of the static nature of one side, Nerve is an ideal situation for solo ploy, or a "Pony Wars" style game, where the player(s) all play the Swedes, and the Russian horde is controlled by an umpire and some simple pre-programmed responses. Whichever way it is played, it will be a fascinating game.

The Armies

The Russians

The Russian army of this period is a shadowy organisation at best. Of the 70,000 combatants, 30,000 were peasant levies. Their military training and usefulness would have been limited. Voltaire gives us an idea of the appearance of these souls: 'The rest were savages, torn from their forests, clad in the skins of wild beasts, some armed with bows and arrows and others with clubs." (Reminds me of some wargames conventions that I've attended ). Strong arms for digging ditches, but of limited use. I would not guess at their organisation, unless to state that units of about a thousand or so seems to be as good as any other.

Within these irregulars, there would probably have been a fair sprinkling of Cossacks, but as to what proportion I leave up to the individuals. These should not be the "extra light, mega-morale, multi-armed" super troops of many a wargamer's fevered imagination, but a bunch of inebriated mounted thugs, who would quite fearlessly jump hall their own number of opponents from behind, provided they were aged under ten, mortally wounded, or even better, already dead to start with.

The rest of the Russian army was mainly infantry. Peter the Great had only a few dragoons, and if we grant that he had two regiments at Nerve, totalling a maximum of 2,000 men, this leaves approximately 38,000 foot soldiers to represent. Nothing was standardised in the Russian army of this period, but it is reasonable to assume that an infantry regiment was organised into two battalions, each 500 to 650 strong.

About a third of these would have carried a pike, and most of the others a matchlock musket Uniforms could have been of any colour, the famous Russian green, being only a twinkle in one of the tsar's ordinances, and, indeed, due to the look of supply, different hues could be found within individual regiments. Overall quality was poor at best, apart from the two Guard regiments, who proved to be of for stronger stuff than the rest of the army. The Semenovski regiment wore a basically blue uniform, the Prebrojenski, dark green. These units were numerically stronger than the line regiments, and may have had four or five battalions.

A final point to note to any would-be refighter of Narva: the Russian army may be very very big, but at least you can press into action any spare tricorne-clad figures around without any problem of nationality - in the Russian army, any colour goes!

The Swedes

The organisation and appearance of the Swedes was dealt with in my previous articles [in Wargames llustrated].

At Narva, battle was joined with 21 battalions of Foot, 48 troops of Horse and 39 guns. Theoretically, this would have meant that the Swedish army contained 17,600 infantry and 6,000 mounted troops. As the force totalled only 10,550 or so, this gives you some ides of the hardships suffered by the Swedes on the march to the battle. Incidentally, the presence of such a large number of artillery means that the Swedish player will have a very rare chance to use this arm of service. Despite its excellent quality, artillery proved of little use in the Carolean art of war, as it was too slow to keep up with the rapid and hard marches of the main field armies.

Part 1: Battle of Narva: 20th November 1700