Neverenufski – The aftermath

It’s hard to believe July is already gone. Historicon was a blast, without a doubt the Piquet players are the best group to hang out with. I especially want to thank the folks that participated in Neverenufski; you helped us identify a few changes we need to make to the Borodino scenario.

Peter has posted an excellent report on Neverenufski on his blog which can be found at http://blundersonthedanube.blogspot.com/2011/07/neverenufkski-circa-1813-historicon-pt.html which I highly recommend you check out if you haven’t already.

As mentioned, we’ve identified a few changes to make to the Borodino scenario, most notably, we need more room! We’ll be adding at least another 6 feet to the bottom of the table. The table will be U shaped, with the wings containing the action around Utitiza to the south and the village of Borodino as well as Uvarov’s Cavalry raid to the north.

Another needed change that Neverenufski made apparent is we will reduce the number of Infantry units per side. I’m still playing around with the ratios, but it looks like the final numbers will be reduced to around 90 to 95 Infantry units per side.

Last weekend I went over to Joe’s house to play out one of the battles our 1809 (Imagi-nation) campaign generated during the game we kicked around several Borodino related ideas. Joe had some good suggestions for me to maul over.

One of the concerns I have for the Russian side is the huge number of Cossacks and Militia units that could eat through the Russian Moral chips very quickly. But as Joe so accurately put it “when did the Russian’s ever care about dead or routing Cossacks?” Or Peasants for that matter?. So, look for a scenario specific rule regarding Cossack losses and morale chip losses.

The other thing we spent a fair amount of time discussing is how to handle Uvarov’s Cavalry raid. The raid so unnerved the French Army Eugene halted his attack on the Great Redoubt to redeploy to protect his flanks (this gave the Russians time to deploy their reserves). Napoleon even went so far as to deploy the Young Guard and Vistula Legion to strengthen the Northern flank in fear of this raid. Most gamers will know that while the raid represented a significant portion of the Russian Cavalry it had no Infantry support and virtually no artillery support. At the end, I think Joe had an excellent idea involving morale chips that will force the French to react to the raid, unless they are willing to allow the Russian’s to gain some extra morale chips. Stay tuned for more on this as we work out the details and see if it will work as well as it sounds.

The last Borodino related item for now is how to handle all of the Russian reserve artillery. I have some ideas on that that I think will work.

And now for the obligatory painting update. Since my return from Historicon I haven’t been very productive, only completing one Cuirassier Regiment.

Little Russia Cuirassier Regiment

Next up on the painting table are 6 Old Glory Russian Commanders.

I’ll try to post a little more regularly, with a few more thoughts on the whole planning aspect of the 2012 project. And as I’m approaching Napoleonic burn out, there may be a few non-Napoleonic (gasp) posts as well.