A Buncha Games

Bridge Crossing

by Wally Simon

I commanded two brigades of Napoleonic Frenchmen, 25mm, and in midfield, directly in front of them, there stretched a river across the table, a river with three bridges. The river was not fordable, the Prussians were waiting for us, and the rules were new.

At first, I thought we were playing VOLLEY AND BAYONET (V&B), originally published by GDW. GDW is no more, and I've never seen an up-dated version of the V&B rules, which first came out in 1994. When V&B first appeared, a group of us tried it at one of the wargaming conventions, and decided that it could safely be ignored it appeared to be an unnecessary throwback to the sixties¼ lots of 6-sided dice for hits, and lots of 6-sided dice for savings throws. Frank Chadwick and Greg Novak were the authors, and the mere presence of the Chadwick name was enough to sell lottsa copies. The rules book itself was fairly impressive 94 pages but only 20 of them concerned the rules the remainder consisted of scenarios and historical background.

In this original V&B, a single stand represented a brigade, and the scale of the game was grand-grand tactical (100 yards to the inch). This current version, which we were playing at the Hurst residence, was a product of Fred Hubig's, and he had expanded the scale to the tactical level, such that 1-inch represented about 25 yards. Here, a regiment was represented by 3 stands, instead of a single stand.

On the other side of the river were the Prussians, massed at the bridges, ready for our onslaught. Since the river could only be crossed at the bridges, it was obvious that my troops were going to form column and rush across the bridge with many, many casualties.

All units had data sheets for recording their hits. There were two sets of boxes to be "x'ed"¼ first, each regiment of three stands was given 6 boxes, and second, the brigade itself was given about 12 "exhaustion" boxes. Note that while a 3-regiment, 9-stand brigade needed 18 hits to wipe it out, only 12 "exhaustion" boxes were enough to do it in.

As my troops approached the river bank, the Prussians opened fire. At close range - under 3 inches - each firing stand tossed 3 6-sided dice, and hits were registered on tosses of "6". My thought was to 'soften up' the troops defending the bridges, but 9-dice per defensive firing regiment was too much. If anyone was being 'softened up' it was my own boys.

After hits are scored, the target unit tosses dice as 'savings throws'. Units in cover, and artillery, and skirmishers get savings throws, and none of these applied to my troops. I should also note that when disordered units fired, the target got its savings throws. For the most part, my men simply died.

Fred Hubig hadn't fully worked out all the ramifications of the rules. It turned out that there's an HMGS group planning a huge replay of Waterloo in a year or so, something like the Borodino event held at Fort Meade in 1992, with over 50(?) 70(?) players per side. The modified V&B rules were selected to serve for the battle, and Fred was one of the playtesters who were working out the kinks.

Out of all my two brigades - about 15 stands of troops - 2 stands finally forced their way across one of the bridges. I didn't have too many men left both their hit boxes and their exhaustion boxes had been pretty much used up in the fighting.

Our river-crossing scenario represented one end of the Waterloo battlefield, and our thoughts were that, given the same scenario set up at the 'big game', there were going to be a lot of unhappy participants when they discovered they were faced with a near-impossible task.

As our battle progressed, there were the usual discussions of table-top implementation, for example, how should open-order skirmishers be treated when attacked by formed troops. The original V&B permitted the lights to fight, and we thought that that would be proper when the rules defined a single stand as a brigade, but here, at the tactical level, with each regiment broken down into individual stands, light troops should automatically be pushed back at contact.

To my mind, the exhaustion boxes didn't do too much. Across the river from my brigades, one or two 'exhausted' Prussian units, pounded by my 'softening' fire, were also in disorder, yet seemed to function as well as other units. The one 'plus' for me was that every time the disordered and exhausted Prussians fired, my troops got savings throws.

We also had some discussions about a cavalry-versus-infantry fight. The original V&B gave the infantry an advantage here. I assume that the thought was that if a brigade consisted of a single stand, the brigade commander would have enough smarts to have his unit form square. When used on a smaller scale, however, the regimental stands should be forced to form square to earn their melee bonus.

In all, I wasn't too impressed with this scaled-down version of V&B and its huge quantities of 6-sided dice and savings throws.

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© Copyright 1998 Wally Simon
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