"The Good the bad and the ugly of Empire rules" Topic

Peterborough WGC-

Yeah, it seems that the website is horribly formatted. That was my impression, anyway. Sorry you went through all the trouble.

I also liked the the telescoping time stuff that allowed for reserves back behind the lines to move quickly and re-deploy.

This rule is the ultimate in suckitude. I was playing in a campaign game and got caught by two French corps (moving 8 hexes on the turn versus my 2 hexes, to get back to the safety of the walls of Dresden) just outside of Dresden. I was told that in order to escape, I had to survive for 10 turns or something like that.

All right, says I, I will hunker down in the farthest corner of the table because it will take the French 4 or 5 turns to march all the way across the table from their starting point to my hunker down hole.

Fool! The French corps commander wags his finger at me and says something like, "regardez le telescoping time" and he pushes his whole army forward to within a foot of my army, all in one move.

I hate that rule.

One of the first things you realize when you open Empire V, is that you should have some background knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars. Not a brief glance at a Time/Life book, or seen a documentary on TV. No, some kind of working knowledge of the time period would be helpful, as many of the actions in the rules are tied to how units actually behaved, or reacted to events.

Which leads to a second point. There are "beer & pretzel" gamers, who prefer to roll a dice for a combat result, instead of making any calculations for the same. And, there are more serious gamers. You need to be a serious gamer to take on Empire V. Not for the faint hearted.

I am an artilleryman at heart, and by career choice (20 years Army). I love to see massed batteries of any country on the tabletop, so this was one of the attractions of Empire V. The size of the units at first took me aback, as in the Der Kreigspiel rules everything is double. Infantry battalions were usually 24 figures, cavalry 16-24. Seeing a divisional cav charge under those rules might involve up to 100 figures, and was quite an impressive sight indeed. I had to realize the scale was 15mm not 25mm, and so things would most certainly be reduced.

I liked the range of army lists, though eveyone takes issue with certain ratings. At least it seemed all-encompassing, as most rules sets only give special ratings to a handul of personalities.

I enjoyed the fact that it was not "move-counter move" system, and that the defender had options not usually available in other rule sets at the time. I like the fact that you can actually occupy buildings and not have one whole village under the control of a block of troops. Street fighting was great!

I liked that fact that most players showed up with a history book under their arm, of either their favorite or most dependable reference work. The game took on a learning experience, as often times books were cracked to justify a certain order of battle, or an explaination as to why units behaved or reacted as they did. It became a great teaching tool, but also I usually came away with a nugget or two of information that I had been previously ignorant about.

In one game, we had a debate about pass thru fire from infantry shooting at charging cavalry. We went round and round about what actually was happening when one of the guys went and called Scott Bowden himself. He was very kind and answered all of our questions in about 10 minutes. Say what you want, but I have never done that with the author of any other rules set, especially since the call was from Germany with a 6 hour time difference. We caught the poor man at breakfast!

This rules set may not be for everyone, but it certainly is for me…

A lot of the -'s we changed in our rules. I personally use 48 figure units. no problem.

We use 2 impulses for everyone for consequetive hours enggage. speeds things up.

amongst a few other things.

overall though we thoroughly enjoy the rules at our weekly gigs.