"Black Powder Rule Help Please" Topic

After some thought I ordered these rules last week and got them today. I am planning my first game and have read through them a few times now but am not clear on a couple of points. I am hoping that someone can help.

Firstly, am I right in thinking that the only difference between what weapons are firing is range? So that smoothbore muskets fire at up to 18" whereas bolt action rifles fire at 36"? There is nothing in the rules to consider rate of fire?

Secondly, when I am firing on an attack column the morale dice modifiers mean that its casualties would be less than if I was firing on a line. Or the same as if I was firing on a line in cover.

Thanks in advance. The rules are certainly very pretty, but I am having a few teething problems with the rules.

Surely the rate of fire is represented with how many dice you roll dependant on what quality your troops are.

I don't know, I can't see that in the rules.

Apparently I roll four dice if my unit is large, three if it is normal size, two if it is small and one if it is tiny. There doesn't seem to be any adjustment for rate of fire or troop quality.

That's right GreenLeader. There are special rules in the back where you could model that sort of thing. If you wanted to represent poor or slow shots you could easily reduce the amount of dice rolled.

National characteristics are generally left to the players to decide on. There are examples in the back, but no comprehensive list.

Hi Coyote

Thanks. I have seen the special rules, and I can see that some units might qualify for this, but I can't see how I represent the fact that troops with bolt action rifles fire ten times as fast as men with smoothbore muskets. Obviously the range is longer, which is what the rules do, but what about the huge difference in the weapons rate of fire?

Also am I right about firing on the attack column in the open. It would take the same casualties as a line behind a wall?

Thanks for your help.

This might be off the wall, but surely "bolt action rifles" would not fall into the "Black Powder" period?

I am also reading the rules just now, but I gather 'casualties' in black powder are not so much representing dead blokes or wounded, as the effect of fire or melee on a unit. Attack columns are slightly more robust under fire so can withstand the effects better than other formations. March column, for example, if fired on from the front is treated as having been subjected to an an enfilade, and would be pretty much toast it seems.

Remember that BPR is based on Warmaster. A great set of rules, but it tends to greatly simplify all characteristics and blend any differences.

"The Lee-Enfield bolt action system was introduced in 1889"
- from Wikipedia.
The rules are supposed to cover up to 1900.
So bolt action rifles 'should' be covered.

The rules specifically talk about bolt action rifles on page 41 – they are included for completeness it says but the wholesale use of them by large portions of the army lies outside the scope of the rules. Players are encouraged to make whatever amendments they see fit is the player wants them to be used en masse – therefore I would be tempted to up the shooting dice by one, this would make a big difference although it seems a little addition.

I am no expert in this (or any) field but would imagine the units using BA rifles would be smaller etc so giving them a smaller base number though.

no modifiers for elite troops for firing>? What about morale for veterans, is this covered?

I think the important thing is, as El Cid has already mentioned, casualties in BP are indications of a whole lot of factors, not just hits per se. So if you made adjustments purely on the amount of hits possible, you would be forgetting all the other factors, and so it would be comparing apples with oranges.

It is for that very reason that attack columns , while probably in real life incurring more hits as such, in BP suffer less casualties because of the cohesive strength of the formation.

Bear in mind my comments above are based on two read-throughs, and I have not yet had an actual chance to play the game.

Angelbarracks … the modifiers for things such as elite, veterans etc are all built into the section of the rules where you play round with the unit stats or what they can do. Elites and veterans are definitely covered, as are newbie troops and so on, and much more!

"This might be off the wall, but surely "bolt action rifles" would not fall into the "Black Powder" period?"

The authors admit they are stretching a point but as they rightly say, the British Army's first Bolt Action was the Lee Metford (for runner of the more famous Lee Enfield) and that had a Black Powder cartridge.

As they play the Sudan Campaign where the Lee Metford was used ………….

I suspect the Bolt Action rifles in the Franco Prussian War would have been Black Powder too.

I saw that book at Fall In, very big, and lots of pictures. Very pretty. Too complex for me but it smelled really good as a new printing.

So the consensus here is that columns suffer worse from musketry than lines?

Im not sure I agree due to the lines greater frontage, therefore target area. Artillery is a different matter of course.

What isn't obvious from the QRS which everyone seems to have now or a look at the core rules is that it is down to the special rules given to unit which alter their flavour,
'… we wish to properly represent the unique characteristics of the troops under our command'
'The rules described in this section allow us to better represent the qualities of our fighting men …'

There are 24 special rules which cover all sort of qualities to customise the units …

There were no bolt action rifles in the Franco-Prussian War, although the rules incorrectly say that the French have them.

The more I am reading the more I am getting lost.

The way I read it attack columns suffer less than lines, although that is clearly probably wrong. I will work through what I am reading in order.

1. I have an average sized unit so I roll three dice.
2. I am in line so I do not modify that.

That gives me the number of hits. My opponent now rolls his saviung throws which are called Morale Saves.

3. My target is an attack column so my opponent adds +1 to his saving throw, the same as he would if he were in line behind a wall.

That seems to be it.

Can anyone help me with that. It is obvious to me that I am doing something really wrong, but I don't know what.

I do understand that as I get used to the rules that I can introduce special rules, but I am just trying to work out the basic rules for now.

Oh, and how do I differentiate between the Dreyse Needle Gun and the Chassepot. They are both breech loading rifles, but were very different weapons with their range and performance.

You are playing it right. Being in attack column gives soldiers a morale boost that allows them to ignore casualties caused by shooting.

Don't forget that it doesn't shoot (or not very well, can't remember exactly)

The idea of the rules is with 5-800 people shooting per unit small differences in weapons are less important. However, give the further firing weapon an extra 2 inches of range.

Morale saves are not armour saves. The game does not track casualties or remove figs.

So when your line suffers three hits (a dozen or more virtual men falling to the ground screaming in pain), the morale save is done to determine how much shock and loss of cohesion these losses have on the unit.

The column does not suffer less casualties. It is less affected by them.

It is more affected by artillery fire though because the carnage is spread more throughout the ranks.

Yep, people are still confusing casualties in BP with the dead/wounded. They're not the same thing.

Casualties in BP seem to mean much more than just killed and wounded, but also disruption, keeping raw troops in check, morale, desertion etc etc … overall cohesion, in other words.

Your column has more cohesion, even if it might be suffering more actual casualties in real life. After all, cohesion is one of the reasons they had columns in the first place.

There were no bolt action rifles in the Franco-Prussian War, although the rules incorrectly say that the French have them

Er…Chassepot?

As mentioned by Trajanus early bolt action rifles did have black powder cartridges, the changeover to smokeless powder being c.1890s for most nations.

I will try these rules for FPW, but my hackles are beginning to rise. There was a very significant difference between the Chassepot and the Dreyse – adding 2" seems unlikely to reflect this. Yes, massed firing masks some weapon effects, but the differentation between the rifles – and between the effectiveness of the artillery – is, for me, one of the defining factors of the period.
The Prussians stopped using attack columns for a reason: I suspect they make a much clearer target at long range than does a line.

Greetings

The sidebar on p41 says 'Players who are keen to reflect known range advantages within a specific historical context (Dreyse rifle versus Chassepot for example) are invited to make such adjustments as they see fit.'

Basically BP is as much a toolbox as anything. The authors make clear that adaptation is fine. I think having played it a few times one could work out what you wanted to change for the FPW (or any other war) to fit your historical perspective without 'breaking' the underlying system.

As far as FPW tactics are concerned the use of company columns was supposed to get troops through the beaten zone faster than half battalion or battalion columns or lines (which are slow) but even these tended to end up as disorganised swarms in the face of heavy fire.

Regards

Edward

It is my understanding that a core assumption of these is that they will be used by people who tinker with rules.
So they are not so much a complete ruleset as a framework.
As such, there is an assumption that you don't agonise over the designer's own intent. You think about your own intent and apply that to the rules.

Down our club, when someone picks a set of rules they like then it is pretty much a given that they will be making some sort of changes to them.
Strip out the bits you are likely to change, stick some ideas in the back of the book and that's something like blackpowder.

It looks to me like I am going to have to sit down and do a lot of tinkering here. Almost a rewrite in order to get the rules to work for the Franco-Prussian War. The ranges need to be very different and the Prussian use of columns will need a complete rethink.

I am also still concerned that at 18" range a smoothbore musket is equally as effective as a bolt action rifle.

For thirty pounds plus I thought I was getting a rule set that covered 200 years of warfare, not a tool box that relied on me building my own rule set using a range of components, some of which fit, some of which don't, and large areas that need me to build my own sections in order to make the rest of the rules work.

I shall persevere, I am running a game on Wednesday, and post my game report on Thursday.

A little bit of a thread hijack here. Reading about the "overall" effect of how the Black Powder (BP) rules work reminds me of the overall effect that the Piquet:Field of Battle (FoB) achieve. Both allow for large, multiple movement segments and cover the same time periods. Both measure losses in morale (called "Unit Integrity" in FoB). Sounds like BP still keeps a traditional turn sequence with a random amount of movement segments during the move phase. FoB has the same thing but the turn sequence is broken up by using cards to represent the various phases of a turn (ie movement, shooting, melee, formation changes, morale). So you can get even wilder movement swings than in BP (I could draw, say, 3 movement cards in a row and with good die rolling move 3 times on each card – thus moving 9 times while the opponent just sits there – of course, the opponent can do opportunity fire while I'm moving.

The other reason I bring up FoB is in response to GreenLeader's query about modeling differences between bolt action and smoothbore weapons. If you were to just look at the charts for FOB (basically 1 page) it would look like the only difference between bolt-action and smoothbore rifles is the range, just like in BP. But in the card decks, there are extra cards specifically for the bolt-action rifles which means they'll be able to fire more often during the game.

"The Prussians stopped using attack columns for a reason: I suspect they make a much clearer target at long range than does a line"

Funny how they had forgotten by the time my Grandfather was using them for target practice in 1914!

I think the intention of the rules is laid out very clearly – to enable gamers to play a social game in an evening with whatever figures are at hand and within these constraints to make it feel as historically correct as possible. Now some things and players will fall outside these constraints and that is what other rules are for.

I for one wouldn't really know much of the nuances between troops and weapons from one period to another BUT BP gives me and my mates a set of rules we can use to use our diverse sets of figures with without having to learn a number of sets of rules – decide which special rules are enforced that game to give period flavour and away we go. They are never (and I don't think it was the intention to) going to give ultra period detail to any of the 'genre' within the 200 year period. However I do think they do it a lot better than most will imagine while still keeping the same set of rules so gamers like me can enjoy different periods and still feel we aren't battling against the rules as well.

For me they do what they say in the intro and for that I and my credit card company (if not my bank manager)are very very happy …

Rich

"I am also still concerned that at 18" range a smoothbore musket is equally as effective as a bolt action rifle"

Surely that's only a real issue if you are playing a game where one side has smoothbores and the other has bolt action rifles?

Otherwise, its just questionable, because you know one should be superior to the other. Unless it comes up in a game its not that vital.

"I thought I was getting a rule set that covered 200 years of warfare, not a tool box that relied on me building my own rule set using a range of components, some of which fit, some of which don't"

To some degree I have empathy with this view, although those who read the Wargames Illustrated interview, would have seen the "tool box" idea mentioned quite clearly. I think its also mentioned, or alluded to, on the Warlord Games site.

However the matter of "a range of components, some of which fit, some of which don't" does come with a deal of subjectivity. Few of us have never purchased a rule set which hasn't had things we just plain don't agree with!

I for one like the "tool box" element as it allows me to add detail to the level I, not the author, wants. Also they don't always get their history right and this allows me to differ in my views.

My area of empathy is that many times over the years on this and other forums, I have seen expressed a view that authors and publishers should make such concepts as a "tool box", or what rules will, or will not do, plainly visible.

A couple of lines on the back cover with the words "tool box" in them might have sufficed. Although those buying over the Internet would still come up short!

As it is, I like many others have purchased countless rules that not only don't 'Do what it says on the tin' they don't actually say anything on the 'tin' in the first place!

It just so happens this time round having read matters in advance things have worked in my favor!

I agree, Surferdude … that is exactly what the rules are for, and where they derive from. They are the set of rules that a well-known group of wargamers, painters and sculptors have devised over the years to get their troops moving on the table and play out enjoyable games that capture period flavour without excessive detail.

I haven't got BP in front of me to quote directly from, but I recall reading where the author says something along the lines of that if you want a game with more detail or realism, there are other sets of rules out there that serve that purpose. He says this without disparaging other rules or extolling BP above them – he merely states where BP stands on the rules continuum.

He also says the rules are fully adjustable (this is I guess where people are getting the idea of a toolbox concept). But I don't think BP was ever intended to be only a toolbox that players would need to adjust before the rules could work, as has been insinuated above. From my several read-throughs, and from the history of how the game developed and has been played over a number of years, it looks to me a totally playable game straight out of the box.

I can't wait for my first game!

I have another rules question. I don't have the book in front of me at the moment, but in the advanced rules sectio where they talk about battalion squares, it says something about how cavalry charging a square do not get any charging bonuses. It then specifies that they get neither the normal charging bonus, nor the bonus for cavalry charging. I looked back through the hand-to-hand combat section, but didn't see anything about a specific bonus for cavalry charting, just the normal +1 to hit when charging. Am I missing something?

Could they mean the lancer special rule? Also, isn't there a special rule for heavy cavalry too? Like you, I haven't got the rules in front of me, so working on memory here! Hopefully someone with the book can clarify.

Heavy Cavalry get a +1-3 bonus when charging
Some troops might have a terrifying charge test too.

The lancer bonus is on their opponent's morale saves when the cavalry charges.

I have preordered the rules, and after reading them I am disappointed. Yes the book is shiny and glossy, full of very nice pictures but the rules themselves missing something. I think I will use Rank & File instead.

Ah, thank you arteis and malcolnmccallum. I had missed that, as I haven't read all the special abilities yet. That makes sense now.