"REPUBLIC TO EMPIRE" Topic

Here is a review of REPUBLIC TO EMPIRE by someone who participated in his first game during the recent Waterloo Weekender…

link

I can only second the comments made about the rules. IMHO these are the apex of Nappy rules out there!

Cheers,

Burkhard

Ringing endorsement, but it's been tough finding exact details about these rules, so I'll look forward to the AAR. I've been on the fence with them, and as they'll probably run me around 50€ it would be great to get an in-depth review. I wonder if it would be possible to make the 10 pp. description of play from the rules available?

Cheers,

Christopher

This might help:

link

Thanks Mark, that helped a lot. I'm now one leg over the fence and hanging on by the other knee. ;)

Dang, I thought this was a Star Wars thread…

Clonecommander

I'll pitch in and add a link to my experiences of participating in the RtoE demo game at Salute:

link

Can I ask a specific question about R2E this is related to the process length – my benchmark for judging the complexity of a rule set is the number of steps you make to gauge the effect of a musket volley.

For example, in WRG you had to make two calculations – indexing the dice result with the range and troop type on a firing chart, then dice and crossreference the number of casualties on the Reaction chart – 2 transactions. Whereas for example in In the Grand Manner you throw the dice twice for effect before you get to calcualte the morale effect – 3 transactions.

If the above makes sense, how many transactions would you have to make in R2E to gauge the effect of a musketry volley?

For some reason I have formed the view that the opening sentence of R2E is:

"Each player first deploys their 1,000 figure army on their side of the 17x7 table."

Since I don't have anything like this, I always conclude this is not a game for me, and move on to rules aimed at smaller collections.

I liked your review, but I guess all it did was reinforce my prejudice.

Cam

"Each player first deploys their 1,000 figure army on their side of the 17x7 table."

Every game I played has been with 28mm models on a 4x6' table with 5-10 units per side. There is a starter scenario on a 4x4' for four units against three here:

link

Despite the impression many people get when seeing the book, R2E is a fast game to play. Simply citing the six page play sheet (or taking the time to count the number of tables on it) as proof of it's complexity is absurd. There are seven charts for orders, but each of your brigades will only be acting under one at a time… ignore the other six.

Most of the charts are dependent on the arm of combatant. Oh, my goodness, there are three charts for movement alone! Well, yeah, one for infantry, one for cavalry, and one for artillery… you only need to look at one of those charts depending on which toy you're moving and after a few games, I doubt you'll need to refer to the chart at all to see how far infantry in attack column can move. Most of the charts provided work that way. There are three charts to cover fighting in built up areas. If you're not fighting for control of a village, you ignore those (and if you are, they replace combat and resolve modifiers from 'normal' combat). What people cite as an example of complexity turns the game into a six page book for me because I rarely need to refer to the book at all.

Sparker, you basically throw one d6 per Combat Group (4 models). Results of 4 or more hit. The number of dice is modified by the standard wargame conventions (training, cover, range). Yes, there looks like a lot of modifiers again, but typically you only need to apply two or three as many of the modifiers exclude one another (units will not be Veteran AND Recruit, targets will not be in both soft AND hard cover, etc.).

The fact that the game handles 3000 models on a 12x12' table over a weekend with so many positive comments from those played (and we are talking about veteran Napoleonic gamers here) should offer encouragement. I'll be running a scenario at Historicon on a 6x8' table with around 700 models total with a time limit of 3.5 hours.

Sorry for the rant…

Thank you for the comments about the QRS. I point that very fact out to browsers because people assume they'll be working through all the tables for every move.

I never understood the "if the QRS is bigger than a page then forget it" mentality. I've seen plenty like that only to discover only about 25% of the charts you need are on the QRS…

Quindia,

Thanks for the info – seems very straightforward…

Kind Regards,

Sparker

Quindia – Thanks for the comments and link.

When I think of the recent Napoleonic rule releases, the R2E brand is the most fuzzy for me. What pops into my head is "A Big and Beautiful Game". For me the "Big" part is a bit off-putting.

The more reviews, comments and game reports the better since I may have a false impression of the "Big" part.

Cam

Hmm – looking at my own posts I can see that I am asserting stuff that I don't know (although I can of course assert my feeling in the certain knowledge I am correct about my feelings – even if my feelings are wrong).

To pose it as a question – how important are figure numbers or number of bases per unit to R2E?

If I was to play with say 16-figure battalions on both sides, what would happen? Would the game play exactly the same but just not look as good, or would I need to kledge with the game to make it work?

If I am playing with 4 battalions (= about 150 figures) a side as per your link, am I getting a "full" game that I would want to play repeatedly, or will it feel like I am only getting an introduction to the game – and so will soon want to double or treble my figure collection to get the true rich experience the rules can give?

REPUBLIC TO EMPIRE is figure based rather than stand based, i.e. units fight in multiple of 4 models and casualties are taken as a number of models. Stands are only a convenient way to speed up moving units around.

You can use 16-model battalions, but they would be extremely weak. What I normally recommend to people with collections built on that scale is to combine two battalions to make 32-model regiments and treat them as battalions. You can see examples of this even in the battle report in R2E where the first leger of three battalions is represented by two units, one of 36 models (1st battalion) and one of 48 models (2nd & 3rd battalion). This could easily have been three units of 36, 24, and 24.

You could treat the 16-model battalions as 18 (the minimum unit size I recommend, but still a weak unit) or 24 (but now the frontage of the units will start to strain the suspension of disbelief in relation to movement, firing ranges, etc).

As far as playing a "full" game with four units per side, I don't know any game that does that beyond skirmish level. You will be limited to all infantry engagements or quirky 'capture the cannons' or other specialty scenarios, but it can be done. I've run the small intro scenario four times and enjoyed all of them, but that's not really what the rules are designed for. Certainly that's fun for a one hour game, though. Again, I've never played in one of the 'big' games that seems to put you off – I don't have 2000 models either so all of my games have been 5-10 units (2 brigades or maybe 3 weak ones) per side on a 4x6' table.

As one of the main playtesters we fought many games ranging is size from one brigade per side up to larger battles involving a couple of Corps per side. Like Clarence I don't have thousands of figures in my collection so when we fight the larger actions they are always a compilation of many peoples collections. The reason that many of the game photos in the rules show large numbers of figures is because they were either multi-player games or demo games at conventions where gamers usually want to see more than a few units per side. There is no need for you to have huge armies before you can use the rules.

If i were using 16-man units i would just "double up" and treat each figure as two. Just track hits individually aadn i think everything would work just fine.

As Mark says – my 15mm battalions are 18 figures (6 bases of 3, 1:40), and I just count each figure as double for 1:20 games and use a micro d6 or roster for casualties. I don't happen to like the look of double-ranked figures larger than 10mm, but the practical and aesthetic differences have never gotten in the way of using various rules.

Although followed the hobby for several years never actually played a war game so apologies in advance if this comes over as a very basic question with a simple answer. I purchased Empire rules many years ago and though never played them, I based my figure collection on their 1:60 ratio, so typically my average French battalion is 12 figures strong and organised on 6 2-figure company bases. I like the visual appeal of the separate identity of the various companies of voltigeurs and grenadiers etc and don't really want to move away from this mind set. I have now purchased Republic to Empire and the question I have is, is it possible for me to play R2E and keep my present set up (without doubling or quadrupling my figures into larger units) and if so, how do I need to 'tweak' the rules to accommodate this? I should add that in keeping with Empire, my cavalry regiments are typically 8 to 12 figures strong, again with 2 figures per base and the artillery are based as single models and represent 2 real guns.
Many thanks,
Phil

As explained above, REPUBLIC TO EMPIRE is a model based game. Without some kind of 'counts as…' rule 12-models units will not be effective. Since casualties are recorded via roster, you can simply treat each stand as four models rather than two. There's always a way to make a set of rules for your collection!

Quindia, thanks for the quick response. At the risk of coming across as completely thick, I just want to make absolutely sure I understand what you're saying. I'll repeat the disclaimer that I'm new to all of this! Taking my 12 man French battalion as an example, instead of treating it as 3 lots of 4 figures, are you saying that I can take each of my individual 2 figure company bases and count them as actually representing 4 figures, giving my 12 man battalion the effect of 6 groups of 4. Have I seen the light or do I need to stand in the corner with my dunce cap on?!
Phil

looks like you got it Phil

Thanks, Coyote :-)

Coyote is correct and so are you. My 24-model units are mounted 2 deep so your 12-model units will have the same frontage (and more accurate depth).

To Coyote and Quindia, thank you very much. That's been very helpful.
Phil

I think that Scale Creep Miniatures is right.

"If i were using 16-man units i would just "double up" and treat each figure as two. Just track hits individually aadn i think everything would work just fine."

I always have played with a 1:50 man ratio with battalions of 8, 12 or 16 men. I still don't have R2E but I think its the kind of rules I was looking for. Designed for the period, with good artillery rules, orders and a little bit for dedicated people. I don't like DBA style where two lines of Hoplites act as a Sumo combat for all the game.

I'm going to buy them and simply I'll use battle groups of 2 instead of 4. My 12 man unit will act as a 24 man unit.

In the end, we the "rule-buyers" are who will play the game and unfortunatelly there are few chances that someday I will be playing with Quindia himself.

If you can come to Historicon, you can play in a game with me!