Napoleonic Wargame

Rules

reviewed by Norman McLeod

Designed by Greg Stephens and published by Dreamworlds, 17 Walsingham Road, Enfield, Middlesex EN2 6EX, United Kingdom. $7 postpaid.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: a 32-page rules book plus a large-format player- ref ere nce Game Sheet and two Roster Sheets.

SYSTEM OVERVIEW: These rules are designed "... to cater for 5mm and similar sized figures and the type of game these suggest, i.e. very large scale actions..." at a 1:1 figure scale and a 1 mm - 300mm ground scale (all distances are in mm). Note that this statement contradicts the rules' printed ground scale, which is 1:1, but I am sure this was air oversight by the writer since at 1:1 a typical battlefield would be maybe two yards by three yards. The author states that the rules can be used for other figure scales by altering the figure ratio, and presents tables to aid people playing in other scales.

As stated in the Introduction, much of the system is "... adapted old ideas Maneuver/combat units are battalions, squadrons and batteries. Written orders are required for each turn. Casualties and the like are recorded on a roster. The sequence of play is: orders; movement; fire or melee; morale (but it's not quite that tidy in practice). Casualties are incurred in the number of men rounded to the nearest ten. Although a unit's strength in men car) he an important modifier, its combat value is abstracted into a numerical "efficiency" rating which at the start of a scenario will range from 13 to 22. A typical line unit would start with an Efficiency of 17.

The most innovative feature of these rules is the "Impact Table". Whenever two units. hostile or friendly, collide, the player crossreferences the combat arm and formation of the two to find out the result of the collision, or impact. For example, if an infantry column impacts an infantry square, the result reads" Both stand and become unformed". If a cavalry line impacts an infantry line, "Cavalry march on and become unformed, infantry pushed back and unformed". And so on.

The Game Sheet (of which the Impact Table is Part 3) is in general well laid-out and well presented. This is the most positive feature of the rules. However, like many rules sets, once play commences the standard of organization and clarity is found to be not as high as it appeared. For example, each section of the Game Sheet is numbered (1-11) and at first glance these numbers to be the order in which play flows; in fact, they are not.

I also liked the emphasis on historically correct formations, along with some sample army OB's: "... your army must be a reflection of a real army, not a fictitious jumble made up of your favorite regiments or fantasies."

Another positive feature is its adaptabilityto any figure-mounting system. Although it is sensible for a rules-writer to tell his readers the mounting system that he personally uses, I have always objected to rules which mandate or attempt to mandate a particular mounting system. From the marketing viewpoint, it is unrealistic to expect players to re-mount armies for every new rules set; from the design viewpoint, it is rarely if ever necessary to insist upon a particular mounting system.

On the negative side, most experienced Napoleonics players would find many nits to pick, especially with the results of some of the "impacts", but in many other areas as well. The format, however, makes it simpler than in many sets to do such fine-tuning. Something that bothered me but will not bother everyone was poor print quality and poor proof-reading (for example, "morale" is spelled throughout the rules as "moral"). Such criticism should be balanced against the comparatively low cost of the rules, but these problems do make the end product look less than professional.

The organization of the rules leaves a great deal to be desired. The booklet has 2 introductory pages, 5 1/2 pages of rules, 4 1/2 pages on orders of battle and "raising armies" - and a 19-page "reference section". This reference section in fact contains many rules and other material that is essential to successful play. It consists of independent paragraphs or sentences arranged alphabetically by subject heading (e.g. "Elevation"; "Elite", "Enemy"; Engineering"; etc.). First, I must disagree with the designer's statement that "you should not need to study the whole section in depth"; I was unable to draw up a scenario OB without studying the reference section. Second, to me at least, the subject headings seemed arbitrary. Looking for specific information often meant leafing through the whole section.

For example, the information for setting out an Order of Battle is contained under the heading "optimum efficiency" - with no cross-reference from "efficiency" which is where most people would first look. For anyone but rank beginners- for whom these rules are not suitable anyway - a number of the entries seem unnecessary. For example, "SNOW falling or lying on the ground can severely affect firing and movement Or "SMALLARMS essentially muskets, rifles... etc.".

These issues bring up a general point about these rules. To borrow some model railroading terminology, they are a rules "kit" rather than "readyto-run", with the Game Sheet acting as the assembly instructions. This is not necessarily negative, since the alternative is much longer rules. Nor am I saying that you cannot read these rules and then start a scenario you can. But a lot of the necessary detail is going to have to be determined as you go along. And if your experience is at all like mine, with repeated readings you will find that you have clone things differently than intended because you didn't know under what heading to look for the information.

Partly for that reason, but more because I did not feel that my 25mm army would be a fair test of these rules, I am not going to attempt a detailed analysis of the actual play. I feel obligated to quote the designer: "If you persevere and avoid amending anything, a balanced and fluid game will result." I did, however, draw up a scenario and play out a few turns. Some observations: A typical I x12-foot game table will be about 600x1200 yards. Lacking any guidelines for scenarios, I inferred that we are looking at up to a Corps on a side. The designer recommends one player for every ten units; this seemed about right; go much beyond that and the mechanics become tedious. The inference here is that a player will be a division commander.

The only real mechanical problem encountered was smallarms firing; when it occurs, and the distinction between volley fire and "normal" fire are still not entirely clear to me. Orders are codified (e.g. artillery can choose from four orders: March, Unlimber, Cannonade, or Limber Up) with a table clearly describing what each order means. But,as the designer states, the orders are often very flexible: "The flexibility [of the order to Advance] comes in with the direction of movement (generally towards the enemy), the distance moved (UP to "X" [millimeters]), in fact the unit need not move or fire at all, it merely has the option to do so." With flexibility like this I often questioned the point of writing orders at all. This is also a good example of the kind of detail that you are going to have to add on your own: are such orders in any way conditional, when do you have to "lock in" your intended movement, etc..

RECOMMENDATION:

Despite my comments about kits, this is not a set of rules that somebody churned out on a word processor and then "ran through a couple of times down at the Club". With a little work by the purchaser, the rules have an internal consistency that speaks of a lot of play-testing. The Impact Table is a genuine innovation that could be adapted to other rules sets. A number of other features will be new to many Americans who have not experienced "English- style" miniatures rules. Organization is a weakness, but one shared by most other rules sets. Most gamers will want to make changes in the Orders system. If (unlike me) you absolutely hate rosters - keep looking. If (like me) commandcontrol features and anti-optimum-move features are important to your concept of gaming, this set leaves you on your own. Finally, the price is fair.

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