I discovered that if you remain too close to NAPOLEON'S BATTLES (NB), you develop a cough, your eyes start to tear, and you want to drift off to sleep. This was my second game of NB within a month, and all the above symptoms appeared. Bob Liebl set up the encounter... two corps of Austrians plus two corps of British versus three French corps. Digression. Bob maintains that of all the Napoleonics rules he's played, all of them are pretty bad, and that, in essence, NB is the 'best' of the worst. Why play it at all? There's a hobby outlet in Northern Virginia, the Game Parlor, which sponsors games on the weekends, and Bob says that NB is the Napoleonics; rules set of choice at the Game Parlor. His reasoning is that, since the 'other players' want to use NB, so will he. But I'll bet that if the 'other players' at the Game Parlor were queried, they'd also reply that they use NB solely because the 'other guys' want to use it. This is closed-circuit reasoning, and there's no way out. I take that back... there is a way out... I simply ignore the Game Parlor. End of digression. In our scenario, Bob's table consisted of eight beautifully constructed 2-feet by 2-feet terrain boards, in a 2x4 configuration. We Austrian/British were permitted to set our corps up along our 4-board baseline, one corps per board. Bob also indicated that if we desired, one of our corps could be assigned to make a flank march and show up a little later on in the battle. We ignored this, preferring to have all our units on the table as the battle began. I commanded an Austrian corps, consisting of eight brigades of infantry plus one cavalry brigade. Each brigade is, in effect, a 'blob'... for example, one of my brigades consisted of 6 stands in assault column, 3 in the front rank, and 3 in the back. This 3x3 blob of troops remained in this formation for the entire battle, as did all my brigades. As I approached to about 6 inches of a French held town, I was tempted to change the formation of a couple of brigades into line, the reason being that NB doesn't like assaulting columns... they get a minus modifier in melee. But I was dissuaded of this because: (a) My assault blob was moving some 8 inches per turn, and if I kept the present formation, I'd make contact next turn. (b) The change of formation, assault column into line, would take a full turn to accomplish, exposing me to another turn of defensive artillery fire. (c) Even if I formed into line, NB doesn't give a line formation any advantages, in the fire phase, over the assault column formation. British troops, no matter what their formation, always get a positive modifier when firing, but we Austrians, regardless of formation, didn't get a bonus. We Allies had turned down Bob Liebl's offer of selecting one corps to come up on the flank of his French forces. But Bob took full advantage of the 'flank rule', and on the second turn, one of his own French corps suddenly appeared on the Allied right flank, smashing into the British and other units (I think there were some irregular troops). Our right flank commander, 'JT' Thomas, took it like a man... the fact that an entire French corps had mysteriously and silently tippy-toed along the flank of the Allied army and WHOOSH!... suddenly materialized and immediately made contact, didn't phase him. My own thought was that this wasn't the best of all scenario designs. The French flanking corps ate up JT's troops, routing just about all units with which it came into contact. And my own troops, attacking the town, weren't doing much better. A French heavy cavalry brigade smashed into my light cavalry brigade. Result... my light cavalry routed. The French cavalry, maintaining impetus, then proceeded to smash into one of my Austrian infantry blobs. My brigade had a 50 percent chance to form square... no use. Result... my brigade routed. Again the French cavalry advanced, and contacted a second Austrian brigade. And again, my troops failed to form square. Result... my brigade routed. What saved my corps from being eaten alive by the cavalry was that the horsemen were getting a wee bit tired. In each melee, they took at least one casualty figure, and when they reached a total of 4 figures, they were in disorder, and could no longer advance. Incidentally, I have to give credit to NB for mandating that whenever a unit is engaged in melee, winning or losing, it must suffer at least one casualty. There are many rules sets out there that permit a unit to engage in numerous sequential combats, and never-ever, as long as it keeps winning, will it take a single casualty. My other troops, in blob formation, were fighting around the town... you win some, you lose some. In melee, as in firing, the sides toss opposing 10-sided dice, and you score a hit if your own die - plus appropriate modifiers - totals more than the opposing die. Around Turn #5 or so, my troops ran out of steam, and I had 5 routing blobby brigades... that's 5 out of 9... which essentially took my corps out of the battle. Not So Good There were 8 people table-side, and I noted that 7 of them continually had not-so-good things to say about NB. The one silent player was JT's son, who just likes to wargame (he'd probably enjoy my own rules). And of course, in our battle, we encountered and discussed the ever famous NB 'gamey' ploy using combined-arms, wherein (a) You move up your infantry to within an inch of an enemy infantry unit, and (b) You then attack the enemy infantry with your cavalry, because (c)Your own infantry has now 'pinned' the enemy, hence it can't form protective square. I've noted over half-a-dozen articles in the hobby magazines about this ploy. All of them state that this is not the way a combined-arms attack should work. The texts state that (a) You first pin the infantry with cavalry, making them form square, and (b) Then blast the dense square formation with artillery, and (c) Attack with your own infantry But no, NB's view of Napoleonic warfare seems to differ from that of the rest of the world. And people go along with this crappola because the 'other guy' plays the rules. Back to PW Review July 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