Background image is Les Dernières Cartouches (The Last Cartridges) by Alphonse de Neuville

Saturday, February 24, 2024

The Fight for St Amand: Shots Fired!

 


All fire is simultaneous; that is to say, all fire is allotted and resolved, but the effects don't take effect until all fire has been resolved. Also, units that intend to assault their adjacent enemy are marked during the Movement Segment, and the fire of those units is conducted in the Assault Segment.

So assaults were declared here, so all three French units will fire, as will the Prussian jaegers. Cultivated ground, like the area where the jaegers are standing, blocks line of sight (LOS). So the 2/12me cannot see into Le Hameau (if tracing LOS along a hexside, blocking terrain or troops on either side will block LOS). So 1/12me and 2/12me will fire at the jaegers; 3/12me will fire at the fusiliers in the village, and the jaegers can fire at either one of the battalions in front of them (with the exception of squares, a hex can only fire or be fired on once per Fire Segment).

We'll start with the jaegers. That unit will fire into the first French unit, the one to their right. The jaeger detachment consists of two increments (that's marked on its front side) and up to three factors of skirmishers can fire out of a hex, so they can fire at full effect. Checking the Fire Effects Table, that says that jaegers in skirmish formation multiply their fire factor (upper left of the counter: 6) by 3. So they have 18 FP. They are firing at skirmishers in clear terrain, who have a fire defense of 14. Looking at the fire chart, that ratio (18:14 or 1.3) is more than 1:1 (1.0) but not 1.5:1 (1.5), so the jaegers need 51-66 to hit.

This is where I should explain that one of the very unusual (some might say weird) things about the La Bataille system is that it is so Old School that it uses only D6. And it uses them almost as percentiles; one rolls 2D6, reading one as the sixes and one as the digits. So a roll of 1,2 becomes 12. And since this becomes essentially base six, additions and subtractions work the same way; so, for instance a roll of 2,3 plus six becomes 33.

So, to get back to our friends the jaegers, their fire combat odds require a roll of 51-66 in order to inflict a hit, which is pretty low. The Prussians roll 4,2, so they miss.

Now the French fire at the jaegers. The two battalions facing them have 5 increments each, but only three increments can fire out of hex when troops are in skirmish order. So each French battalion can fire with 3/5 of their 8 factors or a total of 9.6 factors between the two; they also get a multiple of 3, so they fire with a total of 28.8 FP. The fire defense of skirmishers in cultivated ground is 15, a tiny increment better than skirmishers in open. So the French have 1.5:1 odds but just barely not 2:1. They need 42-66 to get  hit. They roll 4,3 and they hit, eliminating one of the jaegers' two increments.

The small French unit fires at the fusiliers. It can use its full 6 factors, times 3 for skirmish fire, but halved for firing at long range, so 9 FP. The fusiliers are in general order in the village, which means their fire defense is 16. That ratio (9:16 or .56) is just over 1:2 (.5), so they need 62-66 to hit. They roll 2,3 and miss.

All firing done, we have to implement results. The jaegers get a 1 marker to show they have taken 1 hit. They have lost half their strength; they would be severely penalized if they were a battalion or regimental sized unit; as a company, they do not suffer that penalty but they still have to take a morale check. They must roll higher than their morale of 25. They roll 2,4 and fail, which means they fall into disorder.


There is no assault combat this turn, so we move to the Reorganization Segment. If the jaegers did not have adjacent enemy, they could recover from their disorder at this point. As it is, we flip over leader markers and move to the 3:20 pm turn.

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