"Choosing Rules and Basing" Topic

Truly, not sure why I panicked in the face of the cross-posting option, as this is really a post for the "Getting started in … "

Having hovered around a start in Napoleonics, and researched my armies in fits and starts, I thought I'd make a determined effort to do something practical, and, of course, as a newcomer, I had many questions …

I thought I would start off with the basic basics.

Please bear in mind that my ignorance of gaming is profound.

Perhaps it might be as well to set out some parameters. Of course, the parameters of choice may change as my understanding progresses, but my initial preferences would be:

- A generous, not to say indulgent, figure ratio. For me, the look of the thing is important and I, personally, find it easier to fool myself into believing my stand of figures is a battalion of men if there are 20-40 of them. So, I would like a 1:20 ratio.

- The size of battle is accordingly limited, but I have hopes of the sort of battle, or part of battle, with 15-20 battalions a side.

- Figures: While there are some wonderful 18mm and 28mm ranges, plastic 1/72nd has a nostalgia appeal and I can afford the quantity of troops I need this way. It is familiar and evokes childhood Airfix Waterloos, but allows me to take advantage of the improvements in quality and variety that have taken place since.

- My leaning is towards a set of rules that captures enough of the characteristics tactics, troops types and conditions of Napoleonic Wars to engage the interest, but which is not too complex, ponderous or slow.

- Added to the list of attributes for this Holy Grail set of rules would be well-written for ease of understanding. And not too expensive.

- Rules that are not too prescriptive about how I base figures and the dimensions of bases.

So, given the above preferences, how might you guide someone who has never played a wargame in his life, to an entertaining evening with a bunch of plastic battalions?

Are you mad?
YouTube link

My vote, Blackpowder- Warlord Games.

Sillypoint

20 times less mad, but whether that's sane enough …. Always good to hear the Barry Lyndon sound-track, though.

Thanks, I shall take a look at Blackpowder.

Black Powder is pretty easy to get into and you can have them based just about any way you like.

You can easily accommodate varying basing in games between friends, so unless you plan to play competitively, base how you like. But base in small increments. If you use steel bases (my favorite: cheap, won't warp, magnetic) you can make movement stands out of sheet magnet for whatever rules grab your fancy that day.

Since Black Powder isn't fussy about basing, you might look up another set of rules and base them for that, just in case you change your mind later.

Our group plays Shako 2 using 12 figure battalions and 6 figure cavalry regiments. We can play a game using 4 to 8 divisions a side in 3 hours.
There's also scenario books available. Fields of Glory by Chris Leach and 1805 by Michael Hopper.

I rebased all of my Napoleonics on to 40mm x 30 mm bases to play FoGN. I use 15/18mm figures and get 8 infantry and 2/3/4 cavalry ( according to type) on a base. Infantry battalions are 32 or 48, cavalry 12 to 18; like you, I like to see enough figures in a unit to suggest it might be a proper unit. I also play Black Powder with them.
If starting from scratch, I would probably base them like my SYW figures, 4 to a 20 mm x 20 or 25mm base for infantry and 2 to a 25 mm x 30base for cavalry. The smaller bases can easily go onto steel movement trays and give a bit more flexibility in formations. They are also OK for playing Age of Eagles.

If I were starting from scratch in 1/72 and making my battalions 20-40 castings strong--neither a bad idea, mind--my inclination would be to base individually with steel under whatever my basing material was, and then use movement trays as was convenient under the rules.

I keep hearing nice things about BP and Shako, so by all means look at them. At least find some veteran player to walk you through a game or so of each. For myself,for a battalion in the 24-36 range, if I don't break out the 30mm castings and play CLS or something with CLS basing, I'm inclined to go seriously old school--a stripped-down Peter Young Charge, Featherstone horse & musket, Glidden's False Against Steady Troops or Larry Brom's Before I was a Marshal. They were all written for about that level, And the Charles S. Grant scenario books have battles (mostly) the right size.

There are no wrong ways regardless. And good luck!

General de Brigade; 1:20 ratio and most of the scenarios are at divisional level, which will meet your battalion numbers. A good set of rules that gives an excellent portrayal of Napoleonic tactics. Also, GdeB has a blog with many active users and the author who give good advice on the use of the rules.

I recommend individual basing of your figures as EC implies, which will allow you reconfigure your figures to various unit formations. Further, individual basing will permit you to easily adjust your figures to any rule set without having to re base your figures.

Westerner,

One thing which you need to decide is whether you are prefer basing in two ranks or a single rank. There are devotees of both, and most rules opt for one or the other, although it is normally possible to modify most rules to suit your basing.

You also need to decide whether you like rules with casualty removal, or those which indicate casualties with some form of marker. Again there are devotees of both.

For historical accuracy I would vote for General de Brigade as a good set of rules. Another accurate set is Republic to Empire. Both are designed for a 1:20 figure ratio.

Black Powder does not have a fixed figure ratio, and puts units into categories of large, standard, small and tiny, defined by frontage. It is a fun game, but can be criticised as being too generic (it covers all of the 18th and 19th centuries, not just Napoleonics). There are supplements for various period within that, and some are better than others. There were two supplements called Albion Triumphant, the first covering the Peninsular War, which contained a number of misunderstandings about the way in which the British Army of that era operated (both General de Brigade and Republic to Empire got such matters right). The second Albion Triumphant, covering the Waterloo Campaign produced new rules to correct those matters.

I have been wargaming with 1:72 plastic Napoleonics since 1969. You might find some ideas in the Napoleonic section of my website:

link

Unless you are going for solo gaming, as some do, then a factor may well be what other wargamers in your local club are doing.

Rod

I'll vote for GdB at 1:20. A line of 3-4 battalions actually is looking a bit like a line of battle rather than a colour guard or skirmish screen. The scale is small enough so that napoleonic tactics are actually used and modeled in the game. You don't have corps going into square or smoothbore musket fire going out 3000 yards. A negative is that you can not fight the full extent of a major battle.

Thanks to all for these suggestions.

General de Brigade seems to coincide well with the preferences I outlined, and has the apparent advantage of being designed for the period.

I might have added that I also quite like the sound of the old school rules mentioned by Robert Peipenbrink, and, if individually based, why can't one remove casualties?

It might not be the fashion, but the fact that figure removal is old hat and casualty markers is new hat is not in itself a reason for me to prefer the latter over the former!

So, a further question arises from the posts of Robert Piepenbrink and Iron Duke suggesting basing individually.

Robert Piepenbrink's suggestion of using magnets really appeals.

If using magnets to adhere to movement trays, what are the best materials to use?

I have seen some 0.5mm thick A4 size magnetic sheet for sale. It says it can be cut by knife and scissors.

As I have a number of figures undercoated and based individually on 40 thou plastic card, I would prefer not to un-base them. Perhaps the magnetic sheet can be glued to the underside of the plastic card bases.

The next consideration is a magnetic metal in sheet material that can be cut readily to a bespoke size for battalion-sized movement trays.

If Robert or anyone else who has already invented this particular wheel could give me a pointer here, I'd be grateful.

I realise that I should have said "Robert Piepenbrink's suggestion of using magnets really attracts", but I was one coffee short of my full powers!

I think that removing figures to keep track of casualties is not a good idea. I believe that a unit that was taking casualties would keep the same number of files(maintaining the width of a line of battle for example), but strip the rear ranks of people. (as apposed to the ACW, where I think the width of the unit would shrink- so width (files and stands/battalion) reduction is representative of practice).

Therefore I usually use counters to keep track of unit losses. I use flocked pennies to record single losses and then pennies marked with a "5" or "10" for higher losses. If a battalion has say 36 figures, a loss of 12 figures would still leave it as two ranks with the same frontage. By the way, with 33% casualties, that unit might not be viable an might have actually disappeared.

When changing formation, I believe that the drill could not handle maneavuring and evolving into different formations with a mixture of 2 and 3 rank files, so they would consolidate files to wind up with fewer ranks, all with 3 files. At that point, you might consider removing a stand from a multi-stand battalion, even though the actual historical unit would probably still maintain the original number of companies/peletons.

Please feel free to comment on this opinion. I'm open to learning from studies and history.

1968billsfan, that sounds like a very sensible reason for preferring casualty markers, thank you.

My view

Removing casualties is fun, but do you want people touching your figures more than necessary? BP bases don't get removed, so casualty markers are used instead. My figures are multi based using "traditional" base sizes – each figure occupies 15mm by 20mm, and I mount them double ranked on multi figure bases – so a standard French company is 6 figs, on a 45mm wide by 40mm deep base. A standard Prussian base is 8 figures, so 60mm wide by 40 mm deep. The French battalion has 6 bases (so I can model grenadier and voltigeur company distinctions, for 36 figures) whilst my Prussian battalion is 32 figures strong – four companies. My Brits vary, but I favour 40 figures, allowing me 4 grenadiers and 4 light infantry to a unit.

My second view – if you are part of a club, or want to be, then base to their standards. I was lucky (?) that I went 1/72 so I have had to do everything myself (ish) so I got to set the standard for my bases. Originally for GdeB (and following Peter Gilder's Grand Manner basing conventions).

Have fun

Using Carnage and GLory computor moderated rules- neither casuality removal or marker for that are required.

For the number of figs and battalion you wish to play. single fig stands will be very fiddly, especially clean-up of placing the individual figs back to the proper units.
I have mine at 4 or 6 per stand ( 2 rank troops vs 3 rank troops) and for a good size game, even that feels fiddly when at 40 units x 5 avg per = 200 bases for a mid size tactical game.
For Gen de Brig- you may want to look at his new rules coming out ( name of rules escapes me at the moment).
For grandtactical play of whole battles ( Marengo, Talavera, Thann1809, etc) with the number of figs you propose to use Es Sans Resultant will work well… so don't rule them out.

Good luck

MG

Westerner
Robert's suggestion regarding old school rules is a good one. I would throw Charles Grant's Napoleonic Wargaming into the mix, if nothing else the pictures will inspire you (I've already mentioned that elsewhere!) and he uses big battalions, which sounds like your style.
FWIW, I've used Black Powder and Shako and binned them both in favour of Neil Thomas (substituting his Napoleonic artillery rules for those in the Introduction book). You may need to play with the basing as NT uses a rough 1:50 figure ratio but that should be easy enough.
There are no right answers here: just do what suits you and don't worry if you try umpteen sets of rules before you find one you like. We've all done it!
Regards

While old, I think that Wellington Rules (which I believe are still available on both Wargames Vault and On Military Matters) may suit your needs.

Buck Surdu

Black powder for 'figgers'
Commands and colors for tabletop board games
Columbia games WATERLOO for an operational game, my three cents worth. Figgers? I'd go 10mil….