There were lots of them. 1. Where are the Rifles? Bob Liebl, in looking over the rules, noted that he had been assigned a British rifle unit, but there were no 'special' provisions for the riflemen. They should fire more accurately, he said. Jim Butters backed him up. My comment was to the effect that if special rules pertinent to the rifles were added, we'd also have to toss in a rule that provided for their slower rate of fire. To me, higher accuracy, coupled with a slower rate of fire, seemed to be a 'wash', and we could just have them fire as 'normal' people. 2. Where are the Dragoons? Jim Butters wanted to know if there were provisions for a unit of dragoons to ride up, dismount, and pepper away at the enemy. No, I replied, when I epoxied a mounted dragoon to his horse, I expected him to stay mounted on his horse and serve solely as a cavalryman for the rest of the Napoleonic era. I refused him permission to dismount, even to hit the men's room. 3. Where is the Horse Artillery? This was asked by Jim Butters. To me, a gun is a gun is a gun. All artillery units in the battle were of the same ilk... they all fired and moved in the same manner. Years ago, bewitched by COLUMN, LINE & SQUARE, and similar rules systems, which gave horse artillery magic powers by letting it ride up and unlimber and fire even before the enemy caught its breath, I, too, had given horse artillery magic and mystical movement powers. And then I read a couple of historical articles plus several others reviewing some sets of Napoleonic rules. The reviewers were British, the rules authors were American. And all the Brits commented on the fact that the American-written rules all gave the horse artillery the same magic powers, and that, in fact, this wasn't really the case. Jim's comment was that he had witnessed a display of the Royal Horse Artillery, that the crewmen had zipped up the field (5 seconds), had jumped off their mounts (5 seconds), had unlimbered the gun (5 seconds), had loaded the gun (5 seconds), and had stood back and fired (5 seconds). I had no reply to Jim's comment. Perhaps horse artillery will find their way back into my rules sets. 4. Why is there no defensive fire? On the French movement phase (Phase (a) in the sequence listing), Jeff Wiltrout's French battalion charged into contact with Bob Liebl's British unit. Note that after the active side moves on Phase (a), there's a rather weak defensive fire reply by the opposition permitted on Phase (c)... it gets to select 2 units to fire before melee is resolved. Bob's choice of units to fire did not include the contacted unit... he had other priority firing requirements elsewhere on the field. Firing provisions that pertain solely to a unit being charged, firing on an oncoming enemy unit, have always bothered me. In many rules sets, for example, if Unit X contacts Unit Y, then even though it's not Side Y's fire phase, Unit Y is given special dispensation to fire on the attacking unit. But if Unit Y can fire, why not the entire side? In this particular Napoleonics set, I had limited defensive fire to only 2 units. Perhaps it should have been a certain percentage of the total number of units on the field. But if you closely examine the listing of sequence phases, you'll note that it's essentially a board-game sequence... the active side moves and fires and melees, and the non-active side does very little in reply. My emphasis in these rules was to give the active side free reign... it had won the initiative, and as a reward, it was permitted to move and fire as it desired (limited by the requirement to fire successfully). 5. Why can't the infantry form square? Here, one of Cleo Liebl's British units, in line, had been charged by Jeff Wiltrout's French cavalry. This was Phase (a) in the sequence, and looking at the listing of the other phases, there's no reaction for the defending infantry. And so the British unit had to take it on the chin. Defensive reaction, including firing discussed in Question 4, above, is a tricky issue. In my opinion, most rules authors simply avoid the issue. In several sets of rules, I've tried to implement the reaction of both sides just prior to contact, using what I term a 'Pre-Melee' deck of cards. Cards are drawn, and each one is annotated with a different action... "Defender tests morale", or Attacker fires", or 'Defender fires", or "Defender may deploy", or Defender may call on a sister unit to assist", and so on. There's usually around 10 such cards, and the card draws stop when a card is pulled which states "End of pre-melee phase". At that point, the melee is resolved. There was no such deck in these rules. In a prior movement, the British unit had advanced in line, even though it saw the approaching French cavalry. By not choosing to form square... tough! 6. It's only a dice throw... Bob Liebl repeated this several times during the battle when melees were being resolved. He tossed his 10-sided die, looked at the opponent's toss, and seemed to regard the opposing dice throws as the only determinative factor. And, indeed, they were important, but it appeared that Bob didn't take into account the probabilities set up in the combat matrix... it seemed as if he looked at the dice throw itself as the sole governing factor. I've heard this comment before, when the participants, in tossing their dice, look at the fact that there are 10 possibilities on each die, and hence, they say, the "wide swings" of the dice throws will cause wildly divergent results. That's why the old WRG rules used 'average dice'... attempting to eliminate these mysterious "wide swings" of the 6-sided die. 7. Where are the assault columns? Jeff Wiltrout brought this up. He laid out a British unit in line, and he showed how the French assault columns marched up, and so on. He said that the British line, deployed 2-deep, should fire more effectively than the 3-deep French line. And he said that if this was Napoleonics, that's the way it should be. Bob Liebl had initially mentioned the French column. In the game, the rules looked at two basic formations... 'march column' (stands deployed in a single line, one in back of the other), and 'not-column' (any other formation desired). Bob wanted to know why his troops in a column couldn't fire, couldn't fight, etc. I like the concept of 'march column' as a non-fighting formation... it permits the unit to avoid the rough terrain rules, and to proceed rapidly across the field. The penalty is that if it is caught in march column... Hard cheese!... it gets zonked. Bob, at first, thought this column should be treated as an assault column... I think we dissuaded him of this. Years ago, I had subscribed to Jean Lochet's publication (EAGLES AND EMPIRES?, EAGLES, EMPIRES & LIONS?... I don't remember the exact name), a well respected magazine devoted to Napoleonic warfare. In the mid '80's, in a series of 6 monthly issues, the magazine discussed the question... 'Did the French attack in assault columns?' In the first issue... yes, they did. In the second issue... no, they didn't. In the third issue... yes, they did, and so on. The result of this 'yes, no, yes' business was that I gave up on the assault column question. If you're French, you can attack any which way you want. In melee, the Simon system says you place your lead unit in contact with the enemy, and then both sides dice to see if a nearby sister unit will run over and help. There's a 70 percent chance that the sister unit will do so, and if the dice throw is failed (a toss above 70), the lead unit fights alone, since it gets only one chance to call for assistance. I do this to prevent the 'gotcha' effect... it prevents the active player from contacting a single enemy unit with as many of his own units as he can cram into contact. Unfortunately, this may, on occasion, prevent side-by-side French units, in assault formation, from participating in a combined single attack. The second issue here concerns the British firing more effectively than the French. I've heard this many times, all of it from wargamers. I haven't seen a single source yet that definitively states the case. Logic would have it that, because the Brits placed more men in the firing line, they should have more fire-power, but I've never seen it in print. 8. Why does canister reach out only to 10 inches, while muskets go out to 15? Bob Liebl inquired about this. Canister should outrange muskets, no? Each of my 15mm stands measures about 1-inch by 1-inch. Place the five stands in a battalion in line, and the total battalion frontage of the unit is 5 inches. Considering that the frontage of a battalion is pretty close to 100, perhaps 150 yards, the battalion frontage gives you an approximation of the range of muskets, around 100 or so yards. This distance of 5 inches, therefore, should be the effective range of the muskets, but the rules state that musket range is 15 inches. These muskets, therefore, are 'over-the-horizon' muskets, firing little balls way, way beyond what they should. I do this for two reasons... first, to speed up the game, and second, because what I term the 'effective' range of the muskets is not the range at which you'd actually get hit with a bullet, i.e., the 'kill' range. It's the 'morale range'... troops seeing muskets being aimed and being fired at them are affected by the fact that someone is trying to kill them... hence they'll take a morale test, and the resultant losses won't be actual casualties, so much as men failing the test and running away. And why did I give canister a 10 inch range? No reason, other than that I've seen that giving cannon too long a range lets them dominate the battlefield. This is solely a gaming ploy, nothing more. 9. I won't accept the responsibility of firing and missing... Jim Butters uttered this quite early in the game. We French had the initiative, and when we diced to see how many French units had to fire successfully to maintain the initiative, the result was "2". Whereupon, I turned to Jim and said: "You fire the first unit. Select a unit and bang away." 'Twas then that Jim drew back ,and refused to toss dice, stating that he didn't want the responsibility, if he missed, of having our side lose the initiative. And this coming from Jim "Scorched Earth" Butters, mighty warrior, terror of the battlefield! What is the world coming to? 10. The entire side can fire? This happened late in the game. The British had the initiative and determined that they had to fire 3 units to maintain the initiative for the next bound. And they did so... the 3 units they selected successfully hit their targets. But now, having complied with the minimum mandatory requirement, the rules permitted the entire British line to open up and blast away. The result was quite unexpected, even to me. BANG! BAM! CRASH! Every British unit across the table fired away. In the usual run of wargames, when it comes time for a side to fire, all units do so, and no one thinks it strange that such a simultaneous volley occurs. But here, we'd become so used to having only a few units fire at a time, that this one continuous volley by the entire side took us by surprise. Jeff Wiltrout and Bob Liebl had a possible solution for this, which was to permit the side to keep on volleying until one unit missed, at which time, the firing would be cut off. This would force the firing side to carefully select the higher POH units to fire first. 11. I have 2 units in melee, he has 1, I win the combat, and I suffer the same number of casualties as he? Bob Liebl mentioned this. One of his British battalions contacted a French unit. He diced to see if a sister unit would dash over to assist (70 percent chance) and was successful. The French commander, Jeff Wiltrout, failed to bring in a support. All units in the melee immediately received a casualty marker, even before we figured out the resultant combat casualties and who won the melee. Even though both sides failed to successfully strike at each other, Bob won the combat, Jeff's' unit retreated, and Jeff's battalion took another casualty. This gave Bob 2 casualty figures (one on each unit), and 2 casualty figures on Jeff's losing battalion. Bob had 2 chances to strike Jeff's battalion... one strike from his lead unit, one from the assisting unit. He failed both. Jeff had only a single chance. What seemed questionable to Bob was that, despite the fact that he outnumbered Jeff by 2-to-1, and won, his total casualties equaled Jeff's. And the reason was due to the fact that each unit had received an 'automatic casualty' as soon as it entered the combat. I instituted this 'automatic casualty' ploy because I've seen too many rules sets permit the winner of a melee to emerge unscathed. There's no diminution of the strength of a unit, despite the fact that it can continually engage in combat after combat, as long as it wins. A case in point is the DBX series of rules... units, or elements, engage in combat after combat after combat, and even if they lose, they suffer no wear or tear. Only if the opposition's dice toss doubles that of the unit's, does a 'bad thing' happen... the unit is destroyed. After the Battle I should note that after the battle, which was essentially declared a draw, the participants evaluated the rules. Do the rules give the 'flavor of the period? A resounding "No!". Were the unit capabilities distorted in terms of the table-top scale? A resounding "Yes!" Can you carry out the 'tactics of the period? A resounding "No!" I guess I'll have to try again. Introduction 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