Gumbinnen 3

The Battle of Gumbinnen #3 was the final battle in a three battle campaign that broke the historical battle into three parts. Victory was determined in each sub-battle by determining objectives held or taken while factoring in attrition.

The three battles were further experiments as I developed a set of rules called MEM14, a take off on the popular board\miniatures game titled MEM44 by Richard Borg.

Converting MEM44 to MEM14 has been a long process filled with experiment as my goal is to get the right "feel" to an early WW1 battle.

What I've learned from Gumbinnen 1-3 as been incorporated into MEM14 4.0 and that will be tried in two more scenarios titled Creeping Tide #1 and #2.

The campaign resulted in a Russian victory. The Russians won each of the three the three sub-battles sometimes narrowly, but a win none-the-less.

The Germans had the burden of attack and in each sub-battle a fortified town served as a significant obstacle in the path of the Germans and victory. It was difficult to attack in WW1 and the tactics used in 1914 would cause all sides to dig in and trench warfare was the result-although things on the Eastern Front were always a bit more fluid than on the Western Front.

Below are the pics from Gumbinnen #3. The captions will have to suffice since the sequence of events is now fuzzy with me and I did not take notes while judging.

The German assault on a fortified village. It was a good assault and properly supported but it was also properly defended and the German survivors had to fall back.

A nice view of the German assault troops and their supports.

Russian reinforcements including mounted Cossacks move to hold the village.

The fromidable Russian river line defensives.

Russian Horse Artillery. Note the uniform from an earlier time frame. 

A Russian Infantry Regiment with flag flyings. 

Same. The flags add color to our games and are not without precedent for 1914.

Russian defenses next to the critical fortified village. 

A pre game shot of Cossacks escorting the horse artillery and a wagon wagon machine gun. Figures by JZ.

Close up of the MG wagon and Cossack escort. Staged, but very cool.

The miniatures used are a combination of HAT, Strelets, Emhar, Airfix for the plastics and IT and Irregular Miniatures for the metal figures. 

My thanks to JZ, MS and JR for their participation in one or more of the battles.