"Napoleonic rules of the Honour: Blucher variety." Topic

Greetings all,

Was looking at the preview pages of Sam Mustafa's new Honour rules and am particularly taken with the ideas and scale of the Blucher module. I really like the idea of a single base representing a battalion, especially after seeing Gunner Dunbar's cracking collection:

TMP link

What an excellent level to put things at, grand tactical but retaining individual battalions as the basic movement unit (I never really liked the brigade as the basic unit systems). Since we are all likely to be waiting in great anticipation for blucher's appearance for at least a year and a half can anyone point me towards rulesets of a similar level to have a look at? One battalion to a base?

Cheers,

Josh
Outflanked! outflanked.blogspot.com

Hi Josh,

A number of people have asked me about BLÜCHER, so I suppose I might as well post an update here:

At present, it's just a collection of sub-systems: a movement system, a combat system, a command system, etc. It's part of the HONOUR series, so it will use that sequence of play and basing, and the same basic terminology.

Work will begin in earnest after the release of LASALLE, the first of the HONOUR games, coming out in late Autumn (probably Nov/Dec.) I'm presently a bit ahead of schedule, but who knows.

By mid-Summer there will be a new HONOUR website, with a Forum, Scenario-Wiki, and various ways to interact with the project as it develops, so let me thank everybody for all their offers to help playtest, but I need to concentrate on getting LASALLE out the door first.

For those interested in BLÜCHER, I expect to have a unified Beta set of the rules by about 1 Jan, 2010, ready for blind playtesting. This will all be chronicled on the website.

One of the fundamental points about the whole HONOUR system, of course, is the quick interface between the different scales. So if you're doing a campaign, for instance, and your group generates a small action, you can fight it out using LASALLE, or a big action using BLÜCHER, and so on, and your figures will fit perfectly for any scale level, as the games adjust automatically: a battalion of Young Guard infantry in BLÜCHER is a battalion of Young Guard infantry in LASALLE, rated in the exact same way, just depicted at a different "zoom" and thus with rules that emphasize different things.

best,
Sam Mustafa

PS – for the temporary website, with various tidbits and examples:

sammustafa.com/honour.html

Paddy Griffith;s Napoleonic Wargames For Fun has an "Army Level" game where one stand = 1 battalion/battery.

Written orders and simultaeneous movement may put some off of these though.

In just about every first person account that I have read in the horse and musket period the author speaks of battalions and squadrons, those seem to be the terms that professional military men of the day used when referring to armies. It makes sense that the rules we use should reflect that fact. I have been slowly remounting my Napoleonics to just that style, one stand is a battalion or squadron or battery, for a home grown set of rules that I have been toying with. But as a big fan of Sam Mustafa's rules I was extremely excited to see that "Blucher" seeemed to be exactly what I was looking for. Can't hardly wait for its debut.

I'm also interested in a set at this scale. I have tried Polemos General de Division, but it was not for me.

Yeah im looking foward to this big time. My hope is that it will be a true game of strategy where you can feed troops into battle and reserve/concentrate forces at the right time

For rules with a slightly larger scale, the recently published Snappy Nappy uses 2 stands = 1 brigade (although games have been done with 2 stands = 1 regt). The scale is designed to make a player a marshal in comand of a corps.

Dennis from OMM
onmilitarymatters.com

Thanks for the info on BLÜCHER Sam. It sounds like Honour is going to be a really interesting system of rules. Looking forward to seeing the new website and for the BETA rules, I shall have to start a couple of little armies in preparation!

Josh

Hi
I also am really excited about the "Honour" Series.
I'm a HUGE fan of FPGA, so I'm very keen to get my hands on "Blucher". That said, LASALLE also looks to be a great set.
I think sam is on a winner with a set of rules that cover the various "Command levels".