I set up a small solo Napoleonics game which I hoped would last for no more than 3 hours… it did. The encounter could be termed a “brigade-versus-brigade” affair… 3 French infantry brigades, assisted by cavalry, attacking 3 emplaced Russian infantry brigades, also supported by cavalry. How does one differentiate between the French and the Russians in terms of gaming parameters? The usual ploy is to make the Russians more stolid, vegetable-like troops… immoveable, fixed in place, defending the soil of Mother Russia to the last man. But, alas!… despite my penchant for creating historically accurate, accurately realistic, and realistically true-to-life rules sets, I gave both sides the very same parameters in terms of morale factors and fire power and combat capability. As far as scale… one of my 15mm infantry stands was called a ‘battalion’. A regiment was formed of anywhere from 3 to 5 such battalions, i.e., 3 to 5 stands, and 3 regiments were grouped into a brigade. At this scale, with a single stand representing a battalion, I’m not sure if the level of the game was tactical or grand-tactical, or what. Each brigade of 3 regiments had a commanding officer, a Brigadier, who could assist his units in their morale checks, in melee, and could also augment what I called the brigades’ “Capability Level” (CL). A brigade’s CL factor was the be-all and end-all parameter in the rules. At the beginning of the battle, I diced for the CLs of each brigade… and they ranged from a high of 60, to a low of 40. As the brigade engaged in combat, CLs were lost, and when the CLs reached zero, the entire brigade was removed from the field. That’s where the Brigadier came in… during one phase of the turn sequence, the Brigadier had a limited supply of points, called his “Reserve”, and could augment his brigade’s CL by 5 points… no more than 5 points per turn. But the Brigadier had other responsibilities, other uses for his Reserve… not only could he use his points to increase the CL, but he could toss them in when one of his regiments took a morale test. The Morale Level of every regiment in the brigade was defined as the sum of two items… (a) a base of 30 plus (b) the current CL factor. In other words, every regiment in the brigade had the same Morale Level. As the CL decreased, so did the Morale Level. And so the Brigadier had to keep his eye on two factors… first, the entire brigade’s CL, and second, the Morale Level of his regiments as they tested individually. The map shows the layout of the field… three towns, each defended by a Russian brigade, backed up by Legenski’s Cavalry. I should note that Legenski’s horse did good work… the two cavalry regiments charged straight south toward the gap between the two French brigades of Le Faux and Von Dragg, and split… one cavalry unit going east and one going west. The west-going unit wiped out Von Dragg’s battery, while the east-going unit smashed into the rear of one of Le Faux’s infantry regiments and annihilated it. They did this because there were no French cavalry to oppose them in mid-field. Dorf’s French cavalry brigade was preoccupied with making an end-run to the north around the left flank of the Russians. Dorf’s 3 regiments, while not doing too much actual harm, did keep the defending Russians in square most of the time, hindering their maneuvering. I ginned up two combat charts, one for the firing procedures, and one for melee. In most of my rules systems, I’ll add up a couple of factors to obtain a probability of hit (POH), toss the dice, and if the toss is below the POH, the targeted unit records a hit. But here, I didn’t bother with a POH at all… when a regiment or battery fired, there were no calculations involved… simply toss percentage dice and refer to the table. Here’s the firing table: DICE EFFECT 01 - 25 Target brigade loses 1 CL if in the open, no loss if in cover 26 - 45 Target brigade loses 2 CLs if in the open 1 CL if in cover 46 - 55 Target brigade loses 3 CLs if in open, 2 CLs if in cover, regiment takes immediate morale check with -5 modifier 56 - 80 Target brigade loses 1 CL, regiment takes immediate morale check 81 - 90 Target brigade loses 2 CLs, regiment takes immediate morale check with modifier of -10 91 - 100 Target brigade loses 1 CL, regiment or battery immediately returns fire by dicing Each time an infantry or artillery unit fired, percentage dice were tossed for a look-up on the chart. If the firing unit was a battery firing canister, it got 2 tosses, i.e., it could refer to the chart twice. Note that the charted results take care of the cover factor, tell if the target must take a morale test (and with what type of modifier), and even include a potential for return fire by the targeted unit. Note also that when a regiment is fired on, two factors are affected… first, it’s the brigade that loses CLs, and second, it’s the regiment that must take a morale test. I considered firing as a sequential procedure. Thus if both Regiment #1 and Regiment #2 were in position to fire at a given target, and I tossed dice for R#1, and as a result of this first volley, the target took a morale test, failed, and fell back, R#2 wouldn’t get a chance to fire. One of Le Faux’s French regiments advanced to the outskirts of the town of Borov, defeated a defending Russian regiment and was just about to attack a second, when Legenski’s cavalry came to the rescue. Legenski’s horsemen, in charging south, had already caused a couple of Le Faux’s units to form square, and the cavalry struck the advancing Le Faux regiment in the rear. I referred to the second combat chart… similar to the first, but this one oriented toward melee. Each of the involved units tossed dice, with the number of tosses in proportion to its advantages. Here, for example, the cavalry regiment, coming upon an infantry unit not-in-square, got 2 tosses. And it received another toss for striking its opponent in the rear. As I kept dicing, one of the results tossed for the French infantry unit was that it must fall back. But situated as it was, with Russian infantry to its front, and Russian cavalry to its rear, there was no way in which it would fall back. And so, I removed the unit from the field. On the eastern side of the field, Peck’s Russian infantry, defending the town of Ritskoi on the Russian left, was taking it on the chin. Peck’s brigade had started with a CL of 50, and Brigadier Peck, himself, started with a Reserve of 40 points. Peck’s units were being clobbered, and as the CL went down, so did Peck’s Reserve points, which were continually being tossed in, not only to augment the brigade CL, but to help out the individual regiments when they took a morale test. At the end of Turn 3, the brigade’s CL was down to 33, while Peck’s Reserve was down to 17. As I previously stated, a regiment’s Morale Level was the sum of (a) a base of 30, plus (b) its current CL factor. With a CL of 33, each time one of Peck’s units tested morale, it added 30, and the resultant Morale Level was a lowly 66 percent. And with a Reserve of 17 points, Peck wasn’t in a position to help out too often. One of the reasons for Peck’s rapidly declining numbers was that the French brigade facing him, that of Narco’s, had 2 batteries, and as the guns were wheeled up and came into canister range (10 inches), each time the battery fired, each gun was permitted 2 tosses on the fire table. I should also mention that Legenski’s Russian cavalry had also run out of steam. The cavalry had done magnificent work, but had taken loss after loss. The brigade’s CL was down to 31 points (it started with 50), and Legenski (starting with a Reserve of 40) had only 6 points left in his Reserve. To use one of Scotty Bowden’s words, the Legenski’s horsemen were ‘blown’. ‘Twas in the 4th Turn that the Russians went completely to pot. Peck’s brigade was driven back out of Ritskoi, Swill’s brigade in Borov was down to 7 CL, and the mighty Legenski cavalry were wiped out, their CL being reduced to zero. A true victory for the French and yes, another exciting and historically accurate representation of the Napoleonics era. Back to PW Review July 2001 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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