Alright, working on something a little different that's almost ready to share with you guys.
I have a general interest in 19th century warfare but wanted to put my own spin on it.
The result is a set of rules aimed at, somewhat ambitiously, letting you play battles ranging from Napoleon through 1914, hence the title.
With any wide range, this will mean rules that are a bit further on the abstract side of things, rather than an in-depth simulation, but I think it manages to hit the high points.
This also means by design that it's aiming to be an "okay" game for each period of the 19th – to early 20th century, rather than a "perfect" game for any one of them.
The goal is for a full battle to play out with somewhere between 10 and 15 units on each side, with 4 stands per unit.
So a modest investment, army wise.
Troop types reflect different densities and weapons, as well as levels of artillery technology.
The rules use a modified IGOUGO sequence which works well enough for the battlefield flow of the period.
You receive a number of "command dice" which are rolled to obtain actions that are harder to pull off, notably "Shock actions" (charging, rapid fire, pushing through heavy terrain) and rallying attempts to restore your forces.
If you don't get enough to do what you need, you'll need to send one of your officers to lead from the front, which may of course get them shot dead.
FiveCore players will no doubt recognize the rolling of dice and looking for 1's and 6's ;)
Better armies and better leadership gives you bonus dice here.
Movement is fairly easy. Turn before moving, move in a straight line, a few quirks based on how your troops are deployed but nothing too in-depth.
If you love determining fractions of movement based on facing changes, sorry.
Tabletop formations are considered to be slightly abstracted. In essence, you issue an overall order (which broadly comes down to "stand and fight", "advance" or "dig in") and we assume that the job of arranging who goes in a column or line or how many men skirmish is handled by the local officers.
We use the positioning of your troop stands as a visual reminder instead.
So troops in a "Battle" deployment, ready for firefights, are set up in a line, while troops in an "Advancing" deployment are in a column.
Doesn't mean the entire battalion (or whatever) is in a line or column, just that this way we can tell whats going on, with no markers.
Troops can "Disperse" into a defensive formation taking cover behind walls but then it requires a Shock action to get them going on.
As troop formations get more open, the requirements to disperse ease up. Closed rank troops have to be behind a wall or similar, while open order troops can be in any feature, and troops in "assault order" (WW1 "move and fire" tactics) can disperse anywhere.
Charge combat has the possibility of being broken up by defensive fire, if it isn't, roll a handful of dice and count out the results, which may cause stands to be destroyed, shocked or the unit to be pushed back.
If the enemy doesn't retreat, you go to hand to hand fighting.
Fire combat works in a similar fashion. Tally up your dice (with modifiers giving you more or less dice), roll then and check for particular numbers. Each 6 destroys a stand, each 5 shocks a stand and each 1 pushes the unit back.
Typical handful of dice is anywhere from 3-6, rarely more than that.
The cool thing is that you just roll one handful of dice and you get your casualty and morale results from that.
There's no chained sequence of dice throws (roll to hit, roll saving throws, roll morale, roll fall back distance, that sort of thing)
Nice and reasonably simple. Almost no math.
Only one type of marker needed on the table (to mark shocked stands). Consistent mechanics between charging and firing and you'll find little bits in there to cover everything from tribal mobs to gatling guns.
If all goes well, I'll have the beta/early/test version up to download and check out in the next day or three.
Initial tests have been pretty positive but I need people to poke at it and break it, so that's where you all come in.
looks at some new terrain products, which use space age technology!