Who Wants to be Napoleon?
by Niall Barr and Grant Elliott
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Napoleonic Wargaming has seen the emergence recently of many new and exciting developments. One of the most influential has been the marketing of very small figures that are below one centimetre in height. This has given rise to sets of rules that are designed with such scales in mind. The most frequent justification for this type of representation of warfare is that large battles can be fought or refought without vast resources of space and cash. It is also deemed useful for those gamers who are rather well-travelled, or live in a shoe-box at the bottom of the garden pond.
The companies that are trying to entice you to part with your hard-earned cash boast that you need only acquire their tiny figures and supposedly ultra-realistic rules to become an instant Napoleon. Not only does this completely miss the point of being a strategic commander, in the sense that such an important individual has done most of his work getting his troops to the right place and at the right time; it is also rather presumptions. It assumes that as long as there is the odd rule about command, control and communication, the role of the strategic commander can be recreated using highly visible formations. Now, we could debate the validity of such a concept, but we won't. Instead, we are going to analyse the benefits of avoiding such scales and systems.
We wonder how many figure wargamers really want to be Napoleon, with all that the recreation of such a mode of command should really imply. We would argue that the real excitement of the battle, acquired through the direct involvement of commanders in the turmoil of Corps, Division
and particularly Brigade combats was not really the stuff of strategic and army command. The detachment from the blood and guts element of the battle can lead to a realistically uncaring attitude towards the individual battalions and lower commanders which we feel is not the sort of thing we want to represent with our pretty soldiers and terrain. If we did, we would be better to buy some `Kriegspiel' equipment and find an umpire.
The fact of the matter is that while Napoleon is sitting on his rear, in the rear, waiting for the right moment to commit his reserves, the real work of the battle is being done on his behalf by subordinates and their battalions. Napoleon is both physically and mentally - even
emotionally - detached from the actual fighting and minor tactical moves that will place him in a position of victory. Of course, there were notable exceptions, such as Wellington, who seemed always to appear at the point of crisis - but then just as quickly dash off to meet another threat. nonetheless, he was still rather detached from the close fighting most of the time, and rightly so. We contend that most figure-gamers do not want to play this mode of command.
Rather, they want to be in the thick of the action, getting their hands dirty fighting with Divisions and Brigades, and enjoying tactical possibilities while handling a small enough number of units to really care about what happens to them.
Best of Both Worlds?
Using small figures on whole battlefields tempts the gamer to try having the best of both worlds, and in doing so, never really getting to grips with the intricacies and implications of either strategic or tactical command.
We would suggest using rather more traditional gaming techniques and rule systems but with an approach which zooms-in on interesting sectors, so that the wargamer always plays at the Divisional or Corps level of command and is thus usually quite close to the action. Now, the
traditional approach has rightly been criticised for providing a false idea of just how much initiative our commanders could have, while also making it appear that any and even every battle followed the same stereotypical formula of Division fighting Division. Actually, at the Divisional level usually played with larger figures, there should be very few options for great chess-like moves. What playing at this level of command as part of an Historical Refight does is
to put the Divisional commander back into his actual operational context.
His orders invariably turn out to be concerned with `simple' things like frontal attacks on a village, wood or hill. As you are placing the Corps or Division within the framework of a large battle, created by your detailed research of the events and nature of the conflict, the freedom of initiative is mostly negated. In your sector which you are currently recreating, you must fulfil your objectives because some other poor sod of a Divisional commander is struggling with yet another tactical problem that you may deal with at some other time. And how lucky you are if you have some decent cavalry that will actually intervene on your behalf!
Fighting a Divisional game like this can be great fun, in that the flavour and character of the units in their desperate fight is retained and really means something. It is also instructive and gives a meaningful insight into the limits of Napoleonic command. Your heroic commander must attack or defend a position and hold until relieved, and you may have a silent dialogue with the commander above and below you in the chain of command, probably wondering why on earth he did not do his job or send more troops for the task in hand! Since the orders were written a couple of hundred years ago by a real general you will not generally get much return dialogue, so you must attempt to proceed in the way your historical counterpart would have. The lack of initiative can in fact be a liberating experience, as you cannot rack your brains over great strategic moves or play for points.
Such things do not make sense in a real battle, and there is no point making a last-turn suicide charge to win as you may be playing the first of a series of actions in a long day of battle, making conservation of troops essential. When placed within the real framework of a battle you have to get down to the task in hand and there is little point playing as if you are omniscient, as the whole thing is not represented and you do not have all the troops anyway. You find yourself thinking like a Divisional commander. You wonder if you can achieve your objective with your small force, or how long you can hold out. Winning becomes far less important - it is more a matter of survival and attempting to fulfil your orders.
What we are saying is that you do not have to resort to the tiny hordes, or even the use of large figure-to-man ratios to have a good game. Indeed, we would argue that using a larger scale figures and ratios to add character and personality, and zooming-in on one section of the battlefield at a time gives more realistic appraisal of what it was like to fight and command troops in a Napoleonic battle, as well as being more exciting and interesting. Using the `zoom-in feature', it is possible to get close enough to the action to lose the sense of detachment to the fate of the individual Generals and battalions which large-scale refights tend to result in, while gaining an insight into period command structures. We concede the loss of the `what if'
aspect of the game - as you will not be making high level decisions you will rarely change history.
But consider this. you can play any board-game you want, from the simplicity of `War and Peace' to the detail of `La Battaile de Austerlitz' and change history. Big deal - it is not that much fun and it certainly does not translate into a meaningful figure game. But, using your ingenuity, you can fight `small' games on a small board using `toy' 15/25mm soldiers and still
feel happy that you are engaged in a meaningful historical recreation of your much researched battle. This is a much more creative exercise which involves you and your wargaming comrades. There are various ways of doing it, and it all depends on what you wish to represent of the specific battle you are refighting. Some things to take into consideration are:
2. Do you want to refight interesting sections of the battle piece by piece, or would it be amenable to a simple scale-down of the whole thing? Usually we adopt the former approach as we like to represent the battalions or regiments, and the Brigade commanders, fighting over reasonably detailed terrain. Remember, so much terrain on the Napoleonic battlefield was only tactically important, to the extent that it would not be represented in a game with a large ground scale. However, its effect on the course of the battle as a whole could be substantial - just think of that ditch at Talavera into which fell the British cavalry, or the ditch that foiled the French cavalry at Quatre Bras, or even the seemingly small ridge at Waterloo. Again, the zoom-in approach gives you the opportunity to wargame the detail without too many hampering restrictions. In the final analysis, it all depends on your table size and on how many units you can field, and if it looks right.
3. What restrictions should you impose on the tactical possibilities of you army? Formations, timing of attacks and quantities committed can all come under this. It may make the battles appear somewhat contrived, and virtually solo-playable to impose such limits, but it really gives the feeling of restriction at all levels of command. But be warned - do not make it too contrived as far as timing arrivals is concerned or it will not work. The committal of reserves, should in general, be logical and timed to prevent the total collapse of one side or total ascendancy of the other - unless that relates to what happened in the real thing. With thought, the rather odd feature of many large scale games rules, where troops in combat seem to plod along while unengaged troops can race about using special `Reserve Movement', can be eliminated. Yes, such a mechanism does emphasise the importance of reserves, but in a rather artificial way. Commanders did not have such a facility, and were required to make their plans and place their reserves `fire-brigade like' to a threatened area without seeing the need for it hours before. Wellington's classic victory at Salamanca, where forty-thousand French were defeated in forty minutes, took hours for the troops to move up and engage in combat - something which accelerated `Reserve Movement' tends to distort and sometimes obscure. Reserves should usually be triggered by historical events, so forget a strict timetable. In a battle, one sides reserves appeared when a certain farm was taken, or friends had been pushed back some distance. In any event, the Generals often kept little or highly inaccurate track of time, so why not have `event -triggered' reserve rules and keep things feeling right?
Finally, forget about playing in a competitive manner. These games are best fought in a way that creates the battle in a reasonable and realistic fashion, without being too dogmatic on the historical side. Such refights encourage the reading of military history in depth, and really exercise the mind . they are particularly useful for two great friends with a small table and larger scale figures who want to learn about what made these battles tick. As long as you adopt
an intelligent and inquiring approach, you need never again feel guilty about your little battles. Who can say that such adventures are second rate compared to the "little big" battles?
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