This is in a way an answer no one asked for, but might be interesting anyway. Someone wrote on one list or another that the NBS orders system is too rigid and slow for the Napoleonic period. The writer at the same time stated that the system was perfect for the Civil War battles it was originally written for, something that somehow hints at that armies were easier to command in 1813 than fifty years later.

Being married to the NBS system I hear things like this quite often and the arguments run along several lines:

• The Civil War was fought in broken woodlands while Napoleon & Pals fought in the open. Hence the latter could watch the proceedings from convenient hills and had a lot better control over what was going on. (A version of this is that Napoleon always had all his subordinates more or less within earshot, so controlling them was a picnic.)
• Demigods like Friant, Murat, and Davout were above stuff like "rolling for acceptance." They simply did things right away at all times.
• Anyhow, Napoleon and his marshals worked so well together that whatever orders passed between them were so short and minimalistic in style that they fall below what is considered an order in CWBINBS.
• Finally, if the two above provisions did not hold true, that is, it actually took an order to get Soult moving and that he even might have spent a few minutes figuring out how to do things, the ADC would show up and set him straight. The ADC was empowered with imperial powers and was-very much like the Ringwraiths in The Lord of The Rings--the embodiment of their master's (evil) genius. The Angelic version of this is of course The Iron Duke Himself who (as we all know) had a tendency to materialize at people's sides at exactly the right moment and give them cute little dry-humored hints of what to do next.

Of course all these versions of history are pure fantasy. They are part of a 19th century Anglo-French mythology that has very little to do with real life. Also, these claims are of course always limited to French and British armies, as the Austrians, Russians and Spanish of the Napoleonic wars are imagined to be always slow, corrupt, and bureaucratic. In game terms this means that the later should probably use the CWB orders system, while the French and British can do without it.

While most of the above can be safely dismissed, a few points are quite interesting. One can, for starters, point out that not all Civil War battles were fought in The Wilderness and that Civil War generals as well as their troops loathed the place as fighting there always turned into a bloody mess. Seen the other way, no Civil War battles were fought around a massive central European town such as Zaragoza or Dresden or even a place such as Plancenoit or M6ckern. This has nothing to do with army or staff quality but is rather a geo-cultural fact. And to underscore the point, early 19th century "urban combat" was just as chaotic and impossible to control as anything going on along Chickamauga Creek was.

The spin-off concept that Napoleon not only saw all his units but had all of them within earshot perhaps held true to some extent on some occasions in 1796 when his army was nothing but a big corps. Indeed, most Revolutionary War battles were very small (40,000 men fought at Rivoli, about a third of the combatants at Antietam or an eighth of those present at Wagram), and it is no coincidence that most of all those charming anecdotes that form the core of Napoleon's legend are from that period. On the other hand, most Revolutionary War battles ranged wide and far, so in effect shouting orders across the Marengo battlefield would actually have been harder than across the one at Aspern-Essling.

As for someone (Friant, Murat or Davout) never doing something wrong and therefore in game terms being immune to any random "order-handling" effects: Get real. It is not even hard to find examples of Friant, Murat, or Davout blowing it. Especially Murat could be erratic to the extreme. Another crystal-clear example of a typical D6 acceptance roll is when Davout spent the better part of the second day at Wagram preparing for his attack on the Austrian left. Having Friant, one of the finest officers ever to run a division, in his corps that day did not improve this, although when they finally got going the results was quite devastating.

And yes, Napoleon did issue orders. Loads of them. Issuing barrages of orders and double checking things was part of his greatness. As a matter of fact he is partly responsible for inventing modern staff-work. An eyewitness, again from Wagram, has him standing throughout the day in a sheltered spot either talking to his lookouts (he had realized he was far from bullet-proof), or working his way down an queue of people requesting orders or delivering reports. Boring, but quite effective, as one does not run a 180,000 man army by pointing and making cheerful remarks. Except in the land of military porn, that is. It is by the way no coincidence that this mythology has a lot in common with the myth surrounding the German generals of WW2. They were also inspired geniuses, all of them, and if things went wrong it was all Hitler's fault. People like their heroes clean. Napoleon would have ruled Europe had it not been for that idiot Grouchy.

The final gestalt of this dissection, the ADC, is just another fragment of the same myth. Truly, keeping a bunch of high ranking officers "pooled" at Army and Corps Headquarters was something that gave the French armies enormous advantages, mostly because none of the other armies did. 1796 saw among others St. Hillarie, Marmont, Murat, and Junot lounging at Napoleons'HQ ready to be used as his eyes or to extend his voice. This at a time when Wurmser went to almost perverse lengths to ensure that gifted officers such as Melas or Vukassovich were squandered away in positions were they had neither authority, nor responsibility. Contrary to myth, the French ADC was seldom used to form temporary combat teams (Aspern-Essling being one of the few occasions); instead they supervised and passed on orders, in effect working as very qualified orderlies. Along with Napoleon's staff-work and other arrangements, they assured the French Army of a continuity few other armies had. The French command structure did break down from time to time, but it did so far less often and in less spectacular ways than in any other army. And that superiority, caused by among other things the very qualified ADCs, is what a realistic game system must show.

A part of the above system never shown in Napoleonic games are the artillery officers, probably because gunners are considered dull and nobody thinks a Senarmont counter gives cool local color to a game. A French army corps usually had a Major-General (General d'Division) in charge of the corps' artillery. ("Big deal", I hear people say.) This is at the same time as "senior artillery officer" in other armies meant "the oldest artillery major to be found lurking among the guns." Trivial it as it might seem, this makes a difference when this "oldest artillery major" tries to round up every gun at hand to form a grand battery. Imagine that despised specialist trying to convince a sixteen year-old twerp of gentle birth that His Highness Division's Guns might be put to good use somewhere. In the French camp the Divisional Commander holding on to his guns would take far less time to convince as the guy asking for them was quite obviously was authorized to do so.

To round this rant off, I'd like to return to the command structures, broken or not. In game terms, I think that most command rules that work in CWB work in NBS. The system is excellent in showing the rather smooth workings of an army such as Napoleon's Grande Arm6e or Lee's Army of Virginia, and from that it goes slowly downhill, regardless of period. And here, in the land of the dazed and confused, it is far easier to simulate the Civil War's personal conflicts and grave misunderstandings as all of them take place within a quite standardized tactical organization. Civil War brigades make up Civil War divisions that make up one or more Civil War corps, all in a quite repetitive way. It is just the men that lead them that vary in ability. And as In Their Quite Fields brilliantly shows, even McClellan can be fitted into the system. The Napoleonic era that ranges over twenty years full of far from standardized formations, countless national quirks, and hordes of odd personalities is quite another matter. Luckily the CWB command system is sound, well tested and very flexible. It is in for a rough ride but will enable us to create the best Napoleonic games ever made.

In the next issue I intend to show some of the problems facing you when you deal with Napoleonic leaders and their armies in command terms, and hopefully show some interesting solutions-none of them including telepathic French Marshals or a faultless Iron Duke.