Prussian Grenadiers in The Last Argument of Kings

[Mark Stanoch]

It has always bugged me that there is not a separate line of stats for Prussian Grenadiers in The Last Argument of Kings. So I am inclined to assign a Morale of 3+ similar to Guards. What does the community say?

[invisible officer]

The Grenadier companies are made from the biggest men, not the most brave or best trained.

Not like the guards that became the best trained as school for the army.

[Mark Stanoch]

As they present bigger targets should their Morale be 5+ then 😉?

[invisible officer]

Don’t tell that to my Prussian born “she”. Shorter, but much more brave than me,

😉

[Cpl John]

Hi Mark,
I think my intention with combined Prussian Grenadier units was always to treat them as Guard units. I use the different special rules to differentiate, depending on the battle being fought and the how the units performed historically. You should certainly be considering Stubborn or Brave for the Grenadiers, as well as superbly drilled and first fire. I think a 3+ save is also in order.
As Invisible Officer states, some Grenadier units were Grenadiers in name only, never having seen action and performing on a par with their line colleagues. I don’t think this should be the case with the Prussian Grenadiers, who were hand picked and did perform well on the whole.
As always with Black Powder, its your game and if you think they need to be harder to kill, make them so.
Hope this helps
Pete

[Mark Stanoch]

Hi Pete,
Thanks for the insights. I think I will apply the Stubborn Useful Rules to the Grenadiers as well. Improving the Morale save may be a bit too drastic. You can read my scenario development for the Battle of Mollwitz on our FB page at Darkside Historical Gamers
And you can view the stats for the forces here: Mollwitz

Let me know what you think!

• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by Mark Stanoch.

[invisible officer]

The Prussian Grenadiers are selected in the battalions for the Grenadier company. In wartime formed into Grenadier battalions, 4 companies from wo regiments. In peace they stayed with the parent Regiment and got no different training.

(Different with the Garnison Grenadiere, selected among men under 166 cm, they formed Grenadier fortress garrisons in peace)

Naturally the officers did not select the “best” men to loose them for war.

In general the Grenadiere from good regiments are good too. Including the Füsilier ones. IR 35 was raised from “Reichsrekruten”, volunteers from other countries. Garrison in peace at Spandau and there they behaved bad. But in 7YW they fought well.

And in those that lost the lapels for bad war service ……

The crushing defeat of 1806 caused the Preussische Heeresreform and permanent “Elite” Grenadier Regimenter got formed.

So I second your idea of having a look on the battles.

[Erik E]

Prior to the great sprinkler flood of the game room this winter, I had been playing a lot of the Final Argument of King solo games and had altered the scale slightly which happened to make the Prussian Grenadiers work well for the games I was doing (Zorndorf, Kolin, Mollwitz twice each).

For each two actual battalions at the real battle, I was using a standard sized unit of infantry. That seemed to work well enough and allowed for some fun with some of the Large unit 3 battalion units of Austrians at Kolin and Observation Corps Russians at Zorndorf.

For the Prussian Grenadiers, I tested a couple of different methods on the table and decided to make each (say the 1/13 and 4/16) as a small unit. Gave them Elite and Stubborn. In some cases Valiant – you get the idea. Take away or add whatever you desire. While the fire power was less (and the platoon firing I was mixed on as I really rather liked it during the SYW even though not necessary from what I recall in the supplement) and the hand-to-hand rating being lower, the Prussian Grenadiers being these small, tough, packets scattered as assault formations do actually….work. I was shocked.

Where the loss of a large unit in a line can be devastating as a huge hole is hard to fill, the presence of small units of elites is more difficult to deal with than I would have thought and if combined with battalion guns at 1 for every 3 units, there are a lot of decisions to make.

Lots of fun. Hope this helps.

Erik

[Mark Stanoch]

Erik,

OK, now you’ve done it. Here I was, having uploaded all Mollwitz material to Onedrive and content to sit here and twiddle my thumbs until game day arrives (In my case, May 25 in Sarasota, FL). But now you have disturbed my sleepy contentment in a job well done, with your fascinating report. So I will have to remove the cobwebs from my brain and see if I can incorporate some of your fantastic suggestions.

In all seriousness though, thank you so much for your valuable insights. I will have to reconsider some things…

[Mark]

Very interesting indeed, Erik. I guess the Last Argument of Kings lends itself much better to solo games than I thought. I’m going to try this.

[Erik E]

Mark and Invisible Officer – shall I start another subject on solo gaming and the various items I found when gaming the Last Argument of Kings with the scale I’m using to keep the original post mostly on the Grenadiers? If so, let me know and I’ll get on that.

On using the Prussian Grenadiers as Small units, having them as 3 stamina, elite units was a significant moment for the game. While losing a bit with the fire power and hand-to-hand, having a decent chance of recovering from disorder worked well with the Stubborn rule. If a regular Foot unit has 3 stamina and so does a small Grenadier unit, then there is a real incentive for the Prussians to WANT to use the units to attack and keep attacking (in my case, I kept wanting to get that feel of the first line attacking at Zorndorf and could not quite get it right – but the small Prussian Grenadier units made it work). My initial thought of “well, this won’t work, they don’t shoot as well and don’t attack as hard” was soon shown to be wrong in the solo game as playing the Russian side I knew it was vital to stop that specific attack. THAT felt right to me.

Again, please see what you think. I’m playing solo and get a lot of different looks and options to try (well, playing both sides does that!) but not having an opponent I could be missing the obvious.

Hope this helps and happy gaming!

Erik

[Mark Stanoch]

Erik,

Let’s keep the discussion here if you don’t mind.

I can see how BP lends itself to solo play. While general strategy must be announced prior to rolling for Command,the Command rules adds significant variability into the follow up to keep both sides honest. I shall have to give it a try!

[Erik E]

Good Morning –

Thought I would add something else today just for additional observation. The Last Argument of Kings has that deceptively crafty rules on battalion guns being attached and movement. In solo games, I have found that rule to be a real challenge in the fun way! If you get that command role of 2 moves, when is it worth surging forward the full moves recognizing you cannot take the battalion gun with you (it can only move one). That is a simple by real moment of decision. Oh, quick thought. I’ve read some other folks who have had some of the battalion guns as 1/1/1 if the historical army was particular weak so giving that a try might be of interest too. Also, for mounting purposes, I was able to get a gun and two crew men on the same size base as four musketeers so it is an easy means of keeping the battalion guns separate from the main artillery.

That is another fascinating area: In most of the games I have had the pleasure to play, there is that 1st or 2nd turn when attacking forces will block the main heavy or medium artillery. In many games, I never did move them forward (lack of command rolls or guns were too heavy) rendering them rather useless. That again made the decision on when or if to keep the battalion guns with the main units a vital decision.

And those Prussian Grenadiers having a battalion gun every 2 or 3 units are a daunting prospect especially if your force has poor command dice!

Best of luck gaming!

ERik

[Mark Stanoch]

Hi Erik,

You bring up some interesting points regarding battalion guns. I can say that every Last Argument of Kings games I played, the battalion guns certainly lagged behind to such a great extent that I was having difficulty deciding how command rolls would apply. I am playing Mollwitz tomorrow and will report on the dynamics.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by Mark Stanoch.

[Mark Stanoch]

In our Mollwitz game this weekend, grenadier battalions were not given battalion guns. All other infantry had them. Is this correct?

• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by Mark Stanoch.

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