Napoleonic 1808 - 1815
introducing 1809
Good old Osprey! Between these two books, they should give me a good feel for the 1809 campaign and the illustrations and photographs that are typical of Osprey publications, should help with some scenario building.
Superb on line resource
Someone at The Lead Adventure Forum posted a link to this amazing PDF resource.
The Austrian Imperial-Royal army 1805 to 1809, by Enrico Acerbi, is a 198 page book covering uniform plates, facings and orders-of-battle, together with information on reform and organisation etc.
Soldiers of Napoleon
I don’t often watch lengthy YouTube videos from start to end, but I thought that this was particularly well done.
(link at the bottom of this post).
Martin and Robin from the 7th Son Channel present their ‘learning’ game of Soldiers of Napoleon by Warwick Kinrade. When I say learning, it is fact a well presented game with the duo already having a good grasp of the rules and by the end of video, you will have a good understanding of the mechanics and will certainly help with a buying decision.
It is really helped along by a splendid looking table that helps convince that a good game with 28mm can be played off the domestic table.
At my last two or three wargame shows, I have picked these up - put them down - picked them up - put them down, totally undecided whether to buy. This video has really helped me.
Some headline features are that;
The rules use paces for measurement and so are scale agnostic.
A hand of specialised cards are used to progress the turn. Each card has three features. You can play it on a brigade commander to give a number of units orders, the cards have random order values. You can play it for the Special Event, for example the card might give you a round of enhanced cannonade to use all of your guns and you can play it for function such as Rally.
The system assumes that you are playing a small section of a bigger battle and so things are going on around you ‘off-table’ and some of those things may influence your game, so for example in their game, nearby British guns got a chance to target one of the on table French units. Success and failure on your ‘off board’ flanks might also influence your game.
In the video, each side has a small division of three brigades, which is the size of game I particularly favour.
The game is underpinned by Victory Points, which are earned throughout play from various situations, once a player scores enough VP’s to match the other side’s Morale Value, they win.
With a battle that potentially fills the table, the cards do help shake things up a bit to keep play flowing and interesting and so playing exactly the same game twice has the potential to play out differently each time.
I am not a huge fan of cards, especially those system that allow play of cards against the other person in a sort of ‘Gotcha’ style, with the card having no intelligent relevance to what is happening on the table. Here, the cards are tamer and have two functions sitting side by side.
One is to drive the command system and the other is to introduce special events to help the narrative, though it is interesting to note in one of the comments at the foot of the video, the poster says something along the lines of - you end up playing card play rather than playing a game of Napoleonics., an interesting observation that I don’t fully concur with, but they have a point.
The sticking point for me on cards is that it undermines solo play. It looks to still be playable solo judging by the cards that I saw drawn, but the hassle of managing two decks when gaming alone is something that I don’t mind passing on. Overall for me and my solo game, it is a solution to a problem that I don’t have, but for others, I can see it giving interesting games and bringing a strong narrative.
It would be the Austrians that interest me and their stats etc are in a second book and I must admit, I don’t like being pulled down the codex / supplement route. I will still carry on picking it up and putting it down at wargame shows though :-)
LINK
A focus on St. Amand
This is the game map for the Ligny battle, part of the 'Last Battles of Napoleon' quad. This version was published in 2015 by Decision Games.
The shot shows a close-up of two important villages, the main one is Ligny (top right), but of interest to us is St. Amand (bottom left), simply because I am working on a figures scenario for this area of battle.
It will have three linked scenarios, each covering the same ground. The idea is that anyone just getting into the period can game a slimmed down version of the scenario and then as their collection grows the 2nd and 3rd part can be added - same battle, just an escalation of forces involved.
