I finished painting two 12-man units of Napoleonic infantry. This was, indeed, an occasion for me... I've never been able to keep up with the talented people who can turn out painted figures by the hundreds. Especially those who claim to love their work. Painting, to me, ranks on a par with driving bamboo splints under your fingernails. Anyway, after much anguish and pain, there they were, 24 men good and true... a superior 4-color paint job - boots painted black, guns brown, uniforms white, and skin painted flesh... and I thought I'd celebrate their debut with a new set of rules. But first things first... one must name one's units before they go into battle, and here I chose to grace my new units with the proud name of the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Armenian Freedom Fighters, the AFF. Those well versed in the history of the Napoleonic era are, no doubt, familiar with the exploits of the legendary AFF, formed in 1804 by King Zhlug of Armenia. The 2 battalions of the AFF constituted half a brigade. The rules permit 2 to 6 battalions per brigade, and the number of men in a battalion varied from 6 up to 12. On the field I set up a British encampment: 2 brigades of British troops in the camp, another brigade whose units were assigned picket duty, a reserve brigade, and a cavalry brigade, 5 in all. At the start of the scenario, only 2 French brigades were on the field, all others came on via the baseline. The French objective: destroy the British encampment. As with most of my rules sets, It was my intent not to remove figures as casualties were incurred. This left 2 alternatives: a unit data sheet on which to record losses, or a number of markers placed on a unit to denote the decreasing strength or morale level of a unit. For this game, I chose both: a. (i) On the first run-through, each battalion was given a data sheet on which it crossed out boxes whenever it took a hit. After some 10 to 15 boxes were crossed out, the battalion was no more. (ii) For the "second edition" of the rules, the data sheet recorded, not losses, but morale failures. Each battalion had only 4 boxes, meaning that 4 successive failures to pass a morale test, and the unit was removed from the field. b. (i) Each brigade was given a number of mounted officer figures, a maximum of 6 officers per brigade. The Morale Level (ML) of a battalion was defined as a base- of 40%, plus 10 points for every brigade officer present. (ii) We started the game with each brigade assigned 4 officers, so that every battalion's initial ML came out to be: 40% + (10 pts x 4 officers), or 80%. The first scenario went well for the British. The British encampment was never even approached by the French, hence the French objective - destruction of the camp - was not achieved. But the game did make obvious the fact that the rules were not perfect. Amazingly historically realistic and accurate, yes... but perfect, not quite. We tried a couple of games thereafter, each time fine-tuning the rules. And after a couple of variations, there emerged The Battle of Puerco Gordo. Back to PW Review July/August 1993 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com