"Napoleonic Command first game." Topic

We had our first ever game using this set of rules at the club on Wednesday. These look like a very promising set, quite different to anything i've ever played before. The game was a fictitious scenario set in the major theatre of the Napoleonic wars, the Peninsular. The report can be seen here-

Link

We plan on doing a few more games in order to get fully up to speed with the mechanisms of this system. Next up will be another one using 28mm figures on Wednesday.

Most interesting. Please keep posting reports on your games with this system. I'd be interested to know how many turns you played and how long it took. I purchased a copy of these rules.

Our armies are all dwarves. 15mm rules.

Looks like it was cold in your game room.

I think we had about 6 turns but the first two only involved movement with no testing. I'll keep a better record of the turns for the next report. I particularly like the redeployment rule but you have to watch your spacing in order to get the most out of it.

The Dwarves thing was a bit tongue in cheek, after all i have recently started 4 new periods in 10mm! Including Napoleonics. The room was a bit chilly by British standards as someone had turned all the heaters off.

I'm very glad to see these rules getting some attention with the second edition. I was an early fan of them, and had the good luck to play with Jeff K.

There's a lot of interesting twists to the rules. The Threat/Cohesion and Fatigue system is what catches your eye at first, but the way the redeployment phase works is very important. You not only have to react to your opponent during his turn, but you also have to set up your own next turn, which means that if you spend too much effort reacting you literally lose the initiative, and both sides are always watching and thinking.

I agree that these rules demand a bit of thought to get the best out of them in the way you describe for the redeployment phase. This is what makes them seem a bit closer to reality than most other rules. This isn't simply a matter of chucking dice all of the time, although not having to do so takes some getting used to.

Nice report Mick.

One thing to watch is to use your officers to bolster your most treatened unit. You have to guess this in advance since you can 't move them in the redeploy phase.

I'm interested in your thoughts as them as a 28mm set.

Finally you game captured the feel of one of War Artisan's play test games.

We actually used that with one of the French Dragoon squadrons. He was lucky enough to survive the dice throw when they were defeated. Come to think of it though, i'm not sure we took his presence into account when calculating the threat so we may well have got that wrong.

I think it will work fine with 28mm but will find out on Wednesday night. I'll definitely be doing a report on it.

Interesting comment on the play test game, we must have been doing something right!