I have in front of me the June, 1999 issue of WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED (WI), Issue #141. On page 37 appears a set of Napoleonic rules by Peter Brown, who asks the question: You may be wondering if there really is a need for another set of Napoleonic rules... Of course, Peter's answer is "Yes!", and he proceeds to state that he "... was very much influenced by FIRE AND FURY and DBM...", and that as a result of his efforts "... the rules worked OK". But the most interesting comment he reserves for the scale: He used 15mm figures: I found that I was not happy with the 'look' of the game. In hindsight, I feel I would have done better to use 6mm figures rather than 15mm. Peter's focus was on the little guys he placed on the field. Having satisfied himself that he had, indeed, achieved the nirvana of Napoleonic wargamingism, he wanted the battle field to 'look' Napoleonic. I took Peter's rules to a PW meeting, to test out his table-top procedures, and to see if "... the rules worked OK." I used my 15mm armies, and set up an engagement pitting one small French corps against a small British corps. There were five of us table-side, and from the very beginning, even as we placed the troops on the table, Peter's Napoleonic Rules (NR) generated lottsa discussion. The first point that was raised concerned unit sizes. What was a 'unit'? NR's only reference to 'units' states that "An infantry division contains one staff stand, about 22 infantry stands, and 1 or 2 artillery stands." And that's it. How about battalions, brigades, regiments...? Large Scale NR is a large scale game. The text states that each infantry stand represents 600 "real" men, and a cavalry stand represents 300 "real" men. Given, therefore, that a single stand is about battalion size, how should we arrange the stands to implement the rules system... by regiment, or by brigade... or what? For example, the 22-stand infantry division represents 22 x 600 men, or 13,200 "real" men. Influenced by DBM, Peter used DBM 'pip movement', and he requires that the division officer toss a 6-sided die, and use the resultant pips to maneuver his men. A single pip can move a stand or a group of stands (a group, just as in DBM, consists of stands touching one another). If all the stands in a division form a huge block and are clustered shoulder to shoulder, a single pip, therefore, can move the entire 22-stand division block forward. So far, so good. But now, a player remarked, "I've used a single pip to move my division forward. I've got 5 pips left. Why can't I keep moving forward with the rest of my pips?" This particular player commanded the cavalry division, which had a movement distance of some 10 inches per pip. If his cavalry advanced for all of his 6 pips, that would result in a 60 inch movement across the field... definitely a fast moving game. The cavalry guy argued in favor of being allowed his 'big move'... after all, this was a 'sweeping Napoleonics game', and if the rules said nothing about negating such a procedure, surely it should be allowed. But he was voted down. This was the best of all possible worlds... Napoleonics by democratic action. But now the issue was raised as to how many pips one could spend on a group of stands. If one, why not two? More discussion... and we eventually settled the issue by mandating that a maximum of 2 pips could be spent on a group. NR states that all procedures in the sequence are simultaneous, and that the basic phases of the sequence are 5 in number: First, orders, i.e. tossing a 6-sided die per division to get the pip allotment. Second, movement Third, firing Fourth, shooting. For some reason, Brits "shoot", while Americans "fire". Fifth, close combat On the field, each side had 3 divisions (a small corps)... 2 infantry and 1 cavalry. Hence each side's staff division commanders, on the order phase, tossed their pip dice. NR also makes reference to the corps commander... and if you read carefully, the rules state that the corps commander also gets a die. But now, having read the rules so carefully, what does the corps commander do with his die roll? Personally, I know what he can do with it... but that's not at issue here. And so we had more discussion. One possibility was that each side should toss 4 dice (3 division commanders plus the corps commander), throw out the low roll, and keep the highest three. Another possibility was to have the corps commander's die total divided amongst the divisions as needed. We settled on the latter provision. Digression I should note that NR eats up 2½ pages of the WI magazine. In this small amount of text, there's no way an author can furnish sufficient explanatory material to fully flesh out his rules. We, at table-side, decided that we didn't fault Peter so much as we did the editor, Duncan Macfarlane. In a magazine such as Hal Thinglum's Midwest Wargamers Association Newsletter (MWAN), Hal's readers toss just about anything at him, he catches it, and plunks it down in the magazine, untested. After all, he's got almost 150 MWAN pages to fill... and if you send him a comment on your last wargame, he prints it; a rules set, he prints it; a statement that you mount your 15mm figures on 2-inch stands, he prints it. However, that's MWAN, while this is WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED, a slick, glossy, expensive, 'professional' publication. Shouldn't the standard of WI's content be a wee bit higher? End of digression. Back to NR. We're in the firing phase, just prior to resolving combat. Several stands are in contact, and the question arises... do the units-in-contact fire at one another, or is firing nulled as in the DBM procedures? Discussion. Discussion. Here, the Napoleonic Democratic Rules Committee (NDRC) decided that this wasn't your ordinary, every day, DBM game... that these little guys had loaded muskets, and they could, indeed, issue pre-melee fire at each other. We move to a cavalry charge... French Cuirassiers contacting the thin British line. NR's procedures state that the firing stands total their fire factors, add a 6-sided die, and that this total is to be compared with that of the target's. Standard DBM procedure. The close-order British foot have a basic fire factor of 2, we add a die to it, and now we look up the Cuirassiers' factor. And we look and look and look and look. There is no factor for the Cuirassiers! In combat, the Cuirassiers have a factor of 8, but for the fire phase, we're all at sea (if I may mix my metaphors). Discussion. Discussion. Eventually , the NDRC gave the Cuirassiers a factor to match that of the firing units... in essence, there was a 50 percent chance that a firing stand would cause a Cuirassier stand to be pushed back. And now we're off to the melee itself. The British stands had a 5 factor in melee, the Cuirassiers, an 8. Adding a die to each factor, the Cuirassiers had a 79 percent chance to push-back the Brits, and a 12 percent chance to double the infantry, and destroy it. If the Brits had foregone their firing, they would have been deemed to have formed square, and received a +3 bonus, giving them a factor of 8, which matched that of the Cuirassiers. Here, neither side could have doubled the opponent, and so the combat would have resulted in a series of push-backs. NR mandates that "... troops inflicting a push-back-result after combat must follow up..." NR thus wants the British squares, if causing the French horse to fall back, to move forward and maintain contact. These are tough squares! And so the battle progressed, as we at table-side fought the 2½ page rules set as fiercely as the British fought the French. At battle's end, I handed out my Simon evaluation sheets. Four people filled them out... I declined to do so. Each question is answered with a number from 1 to 10, with 10 indicating perfection. The average grades are given below. Analysis Score The rules provide a fast moving, entertaining game. 6 The number of references (charts, tables, dice throws) is adequate and not overwhelming. 4 The rules give "the flavor of the period". 4 The various types of units are proportionately represented in terms of their relative capabilities. 4 The rules allow you to carry out the tactics of the period as you know them. 4 In terms of the scales (time, distance) of the rules, units carry out their functions without distortion. 5 All members of the NDRC agreed that NR needed a lot of work before it would be ready for prime time. Back to PW Review April 1999 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com