WIP - SAXONS Great Northern War

 

I had the opportunity to take all my GNW Saxons out the other day and put them on a large table. I have been planning the Battle of Fraustadt 1706 and I now have enough units to do it,  along with the Russians. I was experimenting with the frontage of the allied army and its deployment. I won't be fielding the complete order of battle ( see below) but a scaled down version.

The Saxons all laid out- 9 Regiments of Foot , 1 regiment of Dragoons ( 2 Squadrons) and 4 Regiments of Cuirassiers ( 8 Squadrons) with three guns. 

Saxon Foot with chevaux de frise

One of the most intriguing things about this battle is the massive disparity in numbers and the fact that the Swedish infantry with only 3700 men were massively outnumbered by the combined Saxon and Russian foot. The Swedes had about 5700 Horse and Dragoons. The Allied army had about 18-19000 men of which 4,000 were mounted ( Saxon Cuirassiers, Russian and Saxon Dragoons), the rest foot.

The allies were in a strong defensive position with the flanks of the infantry protected by villages and marshes.  

Saxon Cuirassiers

And yet the Swedes tore into them and smashed the allied army.

If I used any set of rules with 'normal' troops, is it possible to win this? How do the Swedes pull it off on the table? 

An option is to make the Swedes move even faster, fight even better, shoot even faster, and be generally more aggressive.....perhaps fin stabilising discarding sabot pikes with HESH (high explosive squash head) musket balls.  Ridiculous of course.

The rules already give them greater movement and slightly better fighting factors, but they still have to take casualties and react to those casualties.  For the game, I will rate all the Swedes as veteran and the vast majority of the  allied troops as Raw ( and a few 'Trained')- to replicate their performance on the day. 

This will mean that the current rule structure is adhered to and the quality os built into the rule mechanisms. 

But if I put out 9 Saxon and 8 Russian Battalions ( let's face it do I need more? - as well as a French. battalion too!) vs say 7 Swedish ones- and then about 13 Allied Squadrons vs 19 or so Swedish ones, will the Swedes be able to replicate this?

Reading accounts of the battle, it appears there are a few other things that I can 'tweak' to give the historical outcome a chance without making the Swedish infantry, in particular, 'wargame supermen'. 

During the battle, many of the Saxon foot regiments fired far too early as the Swedes advanced and wasted their 'first fire'.

The leadership was also much poorer. In my simplified rules, the Leadership Rating ( LR) plays a significant role in maintaining morale. For this game, all the allied Brigade commanders would have 0 or 1. Having an LR of 0 makes it difficult for the troops to be rallied. For the Swedes, they will all have 2      (with the CinC having 3). The LR is added to the morale test roll. This makes it easier to rally. 

 

So, 'Raw' classed troops with poor commanders vs veterans ( who have some significant movement and melee advantages) who have outstading commanders......it might just work.

Experimenting with the layout for Fraustadt.
I am also going to need snow covered terrain!