I had originally intended that the next article I would write for First Empire, having already written a review of Chef de Battalion, would be a users impression of how these rules played. With perhaps a game report thrown in, to illustrate how they worked in practice. However two things in the wargames arena and many more outside it have stopped this coming about.

Both the wargames reasons are connected to Arty Conliffe's "Shako" rules. Beginning with the purchase of said rules last November just after buying and reviewing C de B. Then a conversation with the beloved Editor in which he 'techno dropped' the fact that he had noticed, after printing my review of Shako, (First Empire No.27) that there had been some hard things said about them on the Net.

By the way, I have found one of my statements in the review was factually incorrect in that there is provision for second rate cavalry, a fact that I over looked.

The result of the first has been that I have yet to come to grips with C de B in enough depth to feel confident about such an article, the result of the second you are about to read.

Now having spent what little available cash I have for the world of PC odds and ends on Windows 95 and a processor upgrade (more techno dropping) I am not a Web crawler. However, I am more than a little interested in what the brothers in the USA (for it surely must be they) have to say about Shako. So if what follows gets some views in from them, even if they have to e-mail his Editorship to do so, it will be nice to see.

Time and Distance

It is some comment in itself that Shako has, in effect, taken over in my world of Napoleonic gaming the way it has. The reason for this, apart from the playability of the rules themselves is a matter of time and timing, in that they are very handy for club gaming and thereby have been available for our weekly sessions from the off. It must be said that it is also a sad reflection of how little time has been available to play Empire over the past year.

We have picked up Shako very quickly, our only complicating factor was inadvertently introducing rules from Fire & Fury every once in a while, as we were playing them on alternate weeks!

As you may already gathered my initial enthusiasm for these rules has maintained itself. It must be said that as with all rules they are not without their draw backs and variation to tactics. For example the way squares are handled means that you need to position them well in advance to avoid the consequences of having to attempt to form in an emergency, which with cavalry inside nine inches of their target greatly reduces the chance of making the formation change and gives a high probability of units being wrecked as a result.

Given the recommended table size for 25mm is 5 foot deep, the fact that attackers can deploy 18 inches in, if you as defender then chose to take all of your 24 inch deep deployment area, with a 18 inch cavalry move things happen very swiftly indeed ! This does however have the realistic side effect that you have to think about your deployment more and plan your defensive position, knowing there will be limited opportunity to change it when the battle starts.

More Quirks

There are one or two other quirks. The rule requiring cavalry to charge any formed unit when they come within 9 inches of it, while on attack orders and the equivalent requirement to charge any formed infantry approaching with in the same distance while on defend orders takes some getting used to as well.

As I said in my review, using large terrain pieces does have a distinct effect on the game mechanics. A more open, though still broken, terrain gives a much better game than having the defensive side hide behind large stretches of dead ground. This sounds obvious but I wonder how many people have tried these rules, as we did, without taking notice of the recommendations on terrain and found them not quite as good as they had hoped.

The increased ability to inflict casualties and "stagger" (disorder) units on both sides opens up the game and allows all the rules to come into play. For example the Divisional Moral with it's effect on orders and movement is far more noticeable through the increase in broken units. This again requires you to plan better to allow for formations not being able to achieve their required objectives in the way you had hoped.

We have found it hard to apply the Tactical Doctrine as allowed for in the rules. While it should in theory be easy to ensure that units operate in column and line as per their national doctrine, the rules clearly stating what is allowed and enforcing it by giving support bonus in melee for the correct position of the required formation to flank and rear. It is sometimes hard to keep this alignment in practice and remember just who should be doing what in the heat of the moment. Perhaps we are just thick !

House Rules

The only "house rules" (yes there's always some aren't there) we have chosen to enforce, in order to speed play even further, are that we use the 25mm moves and ranges while playing in 15mm. Also that where in firing there are handfuls of dice to be thrown we have introduced a convention that players can chuck the lot and chose which of those giving a "kill" or "stagger" result are applied to individual units. Strictly speaking these should be applied one at a time to each target. This does mean that in some cases you can victimise certain units but it's the same for both sides and anyway some units were just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At the time of writing the review I had not played the Big Battle variant (where one stand of figures instead of three or four stands represents a battalion). If this is what the transatlantic critics have being chewing on I confess that now having done so I would agree with them. It is far to simplistic and whole divisions evaporating is just to aesthetically displeasing for figure gaming, moving things over to the board game arena, which is OK if you like that sort of thing but not for me. It also needs to be said that the main rules are more suited to one off games and tournament style play than historical re-fights and campaigns.

The modular approach to unit strengths and simple casualty system would in this day and age make an historical battle, or the determination of casualties as part of a campaign, seem very unreal. Again I could see U.S. gamers brought up on sets like Empire and Napoleons Battles finding this some what dated.

Shako: A Step Backwards

In general terms I could also be persuaded that these rules feel like a step backwards, in that they do remind one of the Wargames Research Group 1685 to 1845 set and after all these were first published in 1979. From this point of view it could be argued that they do little to move the rules side of the hobby forward. Indeed I have seen it argued that very few rules have come up with any truly innovative ideas in the past few years and maybe this is so.

However innovation has often lead to complexity and these rules are, to my mind, written for a fairly tight, simple outcome. A game that feels like Napoleonics, played in a short time scale. You are presented with a game that is similar to the way WRG Ancients rules essay an Ancient battle. Not the full blown complexity of something like Empire or Chef de Battalion which were written with a completely different objective of trying to approximate the problems of different levels of command in considerable detail. It is interesting to note that hundreds of ACW gamers (including me) have taken Fire and Fury to their hearts, which have simple concepts like Shako. Does this mean that the simple approach to the Horse and Musket era, as it used to be known, is more acceptable in the later part of the period?

Come to think of it I have never known anyone over here who has adopted Stars and Bars (the Empire ACW period equivalent) so what does this say about realism and complexity versus simple rules for ACW. Does Stars and Bars have a following in the USA I wonder? I would love to find out.

Perhaps someone could call up the Editor's Home Page and let me know!