Battles for Empire

Napoleonic Rules

by Jim Birdseye

Written by Buck Surdu and Rick Vossman, this set of rules is well presented and organized. The rules include a truly excellent series of illustrations and explanations using photos, sixty or so in the text. Mounting is per Empire and Guard du Corps rules. All dicing is done with two D10 as a percentage outcome. The sequence is Command Phase, Movement Phase (with opportunity fires), Fire Phase, and Recovery Phase.

Morale checks are made after units receive fire casualties. Leader casualties included as a 5% chance per total casualties. Fire and morale use an interesting set of tables. Modifiers move the scale left and right at one point increments. The player then slides across the table and gets the percentage to hit per gun orthe percentage to hit forthe number of castings firing. Cavalry charge resolution requires the use of three tables while infantry melees require two. The movement is done in functions with modifications of the distance moved by type of formation. Cavalry must build to the charge speed from a walk, and this is a nice feature which makes cavalry playalotmore interesting.

In our test plays the tables were relatively easy to use once you found the right one. The melees and charges frequently resulted in the units' being engaged. The mechanics also required each action to be completely computed because the winning differential provided the table for winner to compute the result.

Over all this is awell organized set of rules that played fairly well despite the excessive number of tables. The rules are available from a wide variety of sources in the U.S.

Reviewing Stand

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