Fred Haub set up a SYW battle with lottsa 15mm figures and a new set of rules, worked up by him and Brian Dewitt. Lobositz took place on October 1, 1756, where Frederick faced an Austrian army commanded by Field-Marshal von Browne. Duffy’s book, THE ARMY OF FREDERICK THE GREAT, terms the encounter “accidental”, in that Frederick wasn’t really anticipating finding the Austrians at Lobositz… the Prussians advanced toward the town in a “shroud of mist”, and sunovagun!… there were the Austrians! I commanded the left flank of the Prussian army… 2 large brigades of heavy cavalry, each of 5 regiments, wherein each regiment was composed of about 4 stands… giving me some 40 stands with which to run down the Austrians. Rick Egvet (not sure how his name is spelled) commanded the Prussian right flank… lots of infantry with cavalry support. Infantry regiments were composed of 5 stands, and two ranks were permitted to fire. Prior to the game, the Prussian infantry was spread across the field, blocking my left flank cavalry, and Rick and I pre-positioned the infantry by pushing it to the right, so that my horsemen had a clear alleyway across the field right into the Austrian lines. The sequence of the Frederick The Great (FG) rules is card-governed. Each side is given a pack of action cards (during the game, the sides held around 15 cards each), and is permitted to play the cards during various phases of the sequence. The half-bound has 5 phases to it: Phase 1. Side A draws 12 cards from the action deck, adding them to his existing cards. The cards are sorted out for use in Phases 2 and 4. Phase 2. (a) This is Side B’s pre-emption phase… he plays two types of cards… those labeled ‘pre-emption’ and those labeled ‘general use’. I found the pre-emption cards to be fairly useless… for example, a large number of them permitted “strategic unit movement”, where “strategic movement” was defined as movement for units beyond 18 inches from the enemy. Since movement rates were quite large (8 inches for infantry and 12 inches for cavalry), just about every unit on the field, after the third bound, found itself within 18 inches of enemy units, and the “strategic movement” cards were thereafter to be ignored. About the only useful pre-emption card that I can remember, is one that stated an opposing battery was out of ammo, and couldn’t fire until it replenished. (b) The "general purpose" cards were, in contrast to the pre-emption cards, extremely useful. In particular, there were ‘maneuver’ or movement cards, each permitting one unit (regiment) to advance. There were other valuable ‘general purpose’ cards, such as ‘one unit can fire’ or ‘one enemy unit takes a morale test’, or ‘’one enemy unit can’t fire due to smoke’, or ‘officer may assist in melee’, and so on. (c) Side B plays as many of his ‘pre-emption’ and ‘general purpose’ cards as he can during Phase 2. Phase 3 Here, it’s back to Side A, who gets a ‘freebee’ fire and move phase. All his units may advance and fire. Phase 4 Side B this time plays his ‘reaction’ cards, and more of his ‘general purpose cards. Note that Side B’s ‘general purpose’ cards get two bites at the apple… they can be played both before and after Side A’s freebee fire and move of Phase 3. Phase 5. All melees resulting from contacts made during Phases 2, 3 and 4, are resolved. You’ll note that Phases 2 and 4 permit Side B to play cards to respond to Side A’s, the active side’s, actions. It’s a limited response, restricted by the particular cards which Side B happens to hold in his hand. And, from Side A’s viewpoint, he’s happy to function during Phase 3, when he gets his unrestricted ‘freebee’ move and fire. Early in the battle, with no Prussian infantry to block my way, I sent my cavalry zipping out toward the Austrian lines. Moving at some 12 inches a clip, contact was soon made. The Austrian commander, Tony Figlia, via his general purpose ‘maneuver’ cards, had, prior to the time my troops made contact, formed all his infantry regiments in square to defend against the oncoming cavalry. No matter… We Prussians were fighting for goodness and beauty and mother-hood… Nothing could stop us. Tony had also played ‘fire’ cards during the cavalry charge, but I think only one unit was forced to halt on route to the Austrian lines due to a failed morale test. Most of the units had a morale level of 80 percent… Deducting 5 percent for a hit, all but one of my mounted troopers passed their 75 percent morale test. When contact was made, each side multiplied 2 values… unit strength times a modified die roll: The first parameter was the total strength of the regimental stands. Most infantry stands had a value of 2, hence a 5-stand unit totaled 10 points. My Cuirassiers, with 4 stands at 4 points each, totaled 16 points. The second parameter of interest was a modifier to the die roll. A nearby unit, touching the unit in combat, rendered ‘support’, which added 2 points to the die roll. The Austrian infantry claimed this modifier, the only one it had. My cavalry modifiers included not only 2 points for a nearby support, but 2 points for being elite, and a negative 3 for bonking up against an enemy square. The two units, in summing up their parameters, had the following products, where DR represents a 10-sided die roll: Austrian infantry: (Strength of 10) x (2 support points + DR) Product = 10 x (2 + DR) Prussian cavalry: (Strength of 16) x (2 support points + 2 eliteness points - 3 for square bashing + DR) Product = 16 x (1 + DR) My toss was high, Tony’s was low, and his square retreated 8 inches, along with his supporting unit. What seemed a wee bit unusual was that when the square retreated, it maintained its square formation, instead of forming line. A losing unit in melee lost a stand, while the winning unit suffered a single casualty. Digression I already mentioned the strange manner in which the square retreated, keeping its formation intact. One would think that an infantry unit, having lost a melee to a cavalry unit breaking into its square, would simply dash back in any-old-formation, trying to stave off complete disaster. Another item which I’d change - if I had my druthers - was that I wouldn’t permit either side in a cavalry versus infantry-in-square combat, to have a support unit help out. To me, the two involved units would be so engrossed in their efforts to stay alive, that the effect of nearby units would effectively be nulled. In looking at the parameters and products given above for the melees, another possible change might be to increase the penalty taken by the cavalry for charging into the square. A negative modifier of -3 didn’t seem to be enough to give the infantry-in-square sufficient advantage over the charging cavalry. End of digression. Square Breaking And now, back to my square-breaking functions. In short order, by tossing high on my melee die rolls, I caused all of Tony’s Austrian infantry squares on his right flank - my left flank - to retreat, leaving only a couple of his units safely tucked away behind hard cover… areas into which my cavalry could not penetrate. One of these areas was Lobositz itself, heavily defended by both infantry and guns. I had mentioned that, at the beginning of the battle, Rick and I had moved our Prussian infantry to the right to clear a path for our cavalry to charge. This worked, but we now were paying the price for it… there were no Prussian infantry units on our left side with which to attack Lobositz proper, and the cavalry were powerless. Which meant that my cavalry, now with no more targets to be charged, was sort of left hanging… they now had to get over to the right flank to help out. And as they made their way to the right, they were targeted by the Austrian guns and took losses. Duffy’s book, in describing the battle, refers to a couple of Austrian Croation regiments which had been lingering in a large woods located on the Prussian left flank. Frederick saw these Croatians and move several of his units to his left to counter them, eventually nulling them. In our battle, however, the set-up was quite different. As we Prussians advanced up the field toward Lobositz, we saw nothing to our left, no Croats, nada… all we saw were empty woods, which we bypassed. But not for long… around the 5th bound, suddenly there erupted from the dark woods, 2 Croation regiments, now well behind our lines. Militia Croats… and there’s nothing lower than militia Croats. I had set up a battery of our heavy guns on a hill near the woods, firing long range directly into the Austrians around Lobositz, and the first thing those nasty Croats did was to charge the guns! The battery of 3 guns tried to pivot and managed to get a single shot off against the Croats (we didn’t have enough ‘maneuver’ and ‘fire’ cards) , but that only seemed to make them angrier and nastier. And so we lost our heavy field guns to those nasty Croats. In fact, we almost lost Frederick himself to the Croats! Tony pointed out that earlier in the battle, Der Alte had attached himself to the battery, and if it was over-run, he’d be captured and we’d, by definition, lose the battle. Can you imagine Frederick himself being captured by Croatian militia? Can you imagine what the CNN commentators would make of this? And so, we had to use one of our precious ‘maneuver’ cards to get ol’ Frederick running off to safety. Rules The rules themselves flowed smoothly and logically… No hitches, no glitches appeared in the sequence. Occasionally, we’d have a discussion about the mechanics of the procedures, which were soon ironed out. For example, one of our Prussian batteries, a single stand, was sandwiched in between two Prussian infantry regiments, when the battery was charged by an Austrian cavalry unit with a 2-stand frontage. Melee was defined to be unit-on-unit, and the Austrian commander defined his target as the Prussian battery. A problem arose because the frontage of the Austrian unit was 2-stands, thus overlapping the battery and contacting one of the infantry units. Could the cavalry commander zero in only on the guns? What about the fact that the cavalry is actually in contact with the infantry? Should the gun crews actually engage in melee or look to the infantry for their defense? Not to worry… Our genial host solved the problem by declaring that the artillery stand and its adjacent infantry regiment were a single entity, and when charging the gun, you would really be charging the regiment, and the battery would simply serve as a support. Fred Haub’s victory conditions for the battle were that a side would be declared the victor if it knocked off about one-third of the opposing enemy stands. Each army contained around 150 stands… so we each looked to destroy some 50 or so enemy stands. When we Prussians had had 40 stands destroyed, the Austrian body count was around 30… we Prussians were in trouble. And to make matters worse, I seemed to have used up all my good, high die tosses during the cavalry versus infantry-in-square combats earlier in the game. During these previous melees, I had come up with a consistent run of ‘10’s’, which impressed everyone at table side and sent the opposing infantry running. But no longer could I toss a 10… The magic was gone… 2’s and 3’s seemed to be the thing as I lost combat after combat to the Austrian horse. And the end came soon, perhaps hastened by Frederick’s harassment by those nasty Croats. Way back in 1756, the forces fought fiercely all day, with the Prussians breaking into, and winning Lobositz by driving the Austrians out. And, according to Duffy’s book… The next morning revealed that all the enemy had stolen away from the field. Duffy says that von Browne had deliberately broken off the action to help a force of Saxons escape capture by the Prussians. To no avail, since the Saxons, around 16,000 of them, surrendered some days later. But in our Lobositz battle, Frederick couldn’t hack it. Rick and I fought fiercely, but our losses mounted too rapidly to keep up the fight. Back to PW Review December 2000 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com