RANK & FILE Seven Years War Solo Game

Continuing on with playing the same, "pocket sized" scenario with multiple rules sets, here is the battle report for yesterday's quick solo game of "Rank and File."  If you've followed SOUND OFFICERS CALL for awhile, you'll recall that I played this game with my 15mm ACW troops about 6 years ago.  (and if you do remember that, good on you!).  You can read that battle report here.

If you're just tuning in, check out the previous post where I played the "Take the High Ground" scenario from the One Hour Wargames book using the "Black Powder" rules.  Continuing on, I'm playing the same scenario although with "Rank and File" a game I haven't played in quite a long time, but enjoyed immensely when I did play it!

Will the expectations of my distant memory live up to the realities of a time strapped gamer 6 years later?  Read on!

Same old story.  Prussian Infantry Brigade moving forward to capture the hill  I expanded the sizes to 6 stand Infantry Regiments.

Atop the hill sit an Austrian infantry Regiment and a battery of medium guns.  Behind them, at a greater distance, are 2 additional infantry regiments and 2 light skirmisher battalions.

"Rank & File" are very much a tournament style wargame with an interesting sequence of play.  There are no fancy command and control gimmicks.  You can pretty much maneuver as you wish, until you start taking significant casualties.

Beginning of Turn 2 - note the Prussian dragoons to the middle right.  They'll turn and charge the guns, having learned their lesson from the last game, in the flank.  The Austrian main body is slowly approaching from the northeast and a light battalion has been chopped off the main body to rush at once to the hill.

Turn 3 shooting begins in earnest.  Shooting is rolled per stand, but when a stand takes 3 hits, it is removed.  Much like Neil Thomas' Napoleonic rules.  All shooting is simultaneous, so I kept a stand here to remember to roll for them.

 In Rank and File, you roll for morale whenever you lose a stand.  Easy and simple to remember.  There are 3 morale grades, however and this can become very unforgiving.  Units in constant contact are going to break sooner or later.

Note my snazzy casualty marker!  Denotes a morale level reduction to "unsteady"  the next grade is rout!  They better rally!

 Very generous mechanisms for moving.  Lights are unencumbered in the woods so these Austrian fellows below are taking full advantage in order to flank the guns and fire upon the hill.

Lights move their full movement even in woods.

 Worth mentioning here that I played the game in centimeters using the normal values.  So line moved 8cms.  It took awhile to come to grips but the game had a good linear feel to it.

Other light battalion reaches the hilltop.

Austrian Brigade advances.

Situation at turn 4.  Note the cavalry in the center are ready to charge the guns!

 The Dragoons tear after the guns, coming from their rear-flank.  There is nothing to gun battery can do except run off (evade).  While there are rules for evading with skirmishers, cavalry, limbered AND unlimbered artillery, I found those rules to be a bit fiddly.  Since these fellows are unlimbered they can either fight or run.  Discretion is the better part of valor and so I had the crew evade.  Now what?

The guns are left behind and the rules say they can be re-crewed.  The crew evade 2D6 distance which they did.  The rules covering this are in a few different sections.

The single base with the red die are the gun crews.  The Dragoons are spoiling for another charge!  It's turn 5 now.

 Naturally with the infantry shooting to their front, they're not expecting a cavalry charge into their flank.  So I charged them.  The rules for dealing with chargers and targets of a charge are also scattered and a bit finicky.  You halt 2" (centimeters in my game) from the target, other people get to shoot at the target and the charger throughout the turn.  Melee one of the last things to adjudicate, assuming your charge made it home.  If any one of them lose a stand during these proceedings, they have to conduct a morale test.  Easy enough I suppose, but the rules covering charging, morale, routing, and evading are spread out over 3 different sections, but all those mechanisms are inter related.

Retreating is also something I needed to research.  I think I had evade down, but what about retreat after melee?  The rules are written very well, with all situations covered, but there is alot to remember.

These fellows will rout.  But where?  How?

CHARGE MEN!  SIR!  THE RULES SAY WE HAVE TO STOP AND WAIT FOR EVERYONE TO SHOOT AT US NOW!  

 I understand the logic behind the sequence of play and it makes sense to me as written.  The problem is I am not sure I like it in its execution.

End of turn 5 before melee.  Constant combat is whittling away the lead Prussian Regiment and teh Austrian Regiment facing them is in big trouble.

The Austrian Regiment was pushed back but their lights are on the hill!  Note the infantry brigade sneaking up from the northeast.

The situation at turn 7.  The Austrian lights are about to boil out of the woods while their fresh, 6 stand infantry get into position to do some real damage.

 It's looking up for the Prussians on turn 7/8 as they have a line on the hill and have pushed off the strong Austrian units, but they will have new problems to deal with as the Austrian reinforcements crash in on their flank!

Prussians on the hill moving up.

 Routers automatically flee.  But I missed a significant rule about losing extra stands when charged.  What a mess.  I feel like I've read more than I've played.  Sticking with it, the Austrian infantry roll well for their evade/rout roll and make it off the hill.  They're at 50% and cannot rally now.  Their presence is basically a speed bump.

Austrian lights trade fire with the guns, who are now on the hill too.

 The Prussians see the problem on their eastern flank developing and move a battery of guns into the valley between the woods and the hill.  Their reserve, 6 stand Regiment Wolfenbuttel is moving to counter the Austrian flanking move.

Lights coming out of the hill to skirmish with the guns and harass them.  Meanwhile an Austrian Regiment marches forward as if the battery isn't even there.

The commander of Wolfenbuttel spies a wall of white advancing.

Turn 8 Austrians are threatening the hill from the north and east.  The Prussian batteries have both turned to deal with this new threat.  Hulsen charges the Austrian lights off the hill, and the Austrian "Kaiser" Regiment who routed on turn 5, is finally destroyed by rampaging Dragoons as they roll a "3" on their evade roll.  I am assuming that when you move in to "capture the ground" and touch the enemy stand who was supposed to have evaded, that's when you "contact" them and they're knocked out.

Tough fighting.  The Prussians didn't put Anhalt on their extreme left in the best position and now they're paying for it.  They'll have to sacrifice both artillery batteries in order to gain maneuver space for the infantry.

 The Austrians sense the Prussians' time is up and charge forward with Radeztky!  They plow into the Prussians, whose good rolling enables a brutal 3 rounds of melee.  Here is where the Austrian numbers and Prussian attrition from previous games pays off for the Austrians - Eventually the Prussians evaporate due to casualties while the Austrians only lose a single stand.  While the breakpoint is "5" for both Armies, the Prussians reach 4 and I call it a day.  The Prussians lose this battle again!

My favorite!  Charging up the slope through shot and shell!

Prussian valor couldn't stand against repeated Austrian assaults.

The Final Verdict?
Nothing like I remembered it to be.  There were so many rules I played incorrectly and had to research that it took the fun out of the game this time around.  There are numerous things I liked, and numerous things i disliked.  Here goes:

What I like about RANK AND FILE:

The infantry combat (both shooting and melee) is excellent.  I love the attritional based nature of the firing, tied to the morale system.  It's just like Neil Thomas' intro to wargaming and napoleonic wargaming rules, but more sophisticated.  If your game was nothing but infantry regiments with no artillery or cavalry or skirmishers, you'd have a pretty excellent game.

I liked the simple sequence of play and the way movement and firing are handled.  I also appreciate the initiative rolling each turn.  It allows for a subtle change of the nature of the game and adds a little bit of tension.

I like the generous movement and firing and I appreciate the simplicity of the movement.  Units can do alot of things and players will still come to grips relatively quickly.

I like that there is a breakpoint to the armies and that the games don't end with literally 2 units chasing each other around the table, which at least from my reading and understanding of war, is not how battles end.

What I dislike about RANK AND FILE:

The charge/melee portion and where it lies within the turn sequence.  In the game, making the decision to charge is an important one and you must declare it in the beginning.  Having units stop 2" short, then allowing everyone to shoot at them is a neat concept and makes sense to me, but where it all happens throughout the turn is a little confusing.

What happens after melee and charges requires some pre-reading and understanding.

The "half stand" skirmisher concept, and "single stand" artillery concept was tough to wrap my head around.  The rules discuss artillery batteries with single stands, and skirmisher unit "half stands" however liberally sprinkled throughout the rules are references to how artillery will fight with which bases, etc in melees.  While I understand the idea or concept, in reality this doesn't play as clean as it reads.  I found that alot with these rules, which again, I really enjoyed but had a hard time coming back to without reading much more carefully.


So there you have it!  It was fun returning to these rules to see how my thoughts have evolved over the last 6 years.  I really enjoyed these rules, but they certainly warrant careful re-reading before play.  For the price tag, however, they are definitely comparable and could give just as good of a game as higher priced rules out there.

 I am loving the pocket armies concept.  2 small Seven Years War games have been played with very different rules.  Both Austrian victories but they played out somewhat differently.  My next, and last, game in this great experiment is to play this same battle with "Honours of War" and see how that plays out.