"Rules that cover the use of topography" Topic
11 Posts
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Kevin C | 17 Feb 2018 7:57 p.m. PST |
Wellington was a master at using topography to his advantage in order to conceal the strength (or weakness) of his forces. Is there a good set of Napoleonic rules that takes this aspect of tactics into account? |
Extra Crispy | 17 Feb 2018 10:26 p.m. PST |
I'm not sure this is a rules issue so much as a table layout issue. After all, the rules can dictate the benefits of being uphill, or whether tall crops block LOS or give cover. But it's still up to the players to take advantage of the terrain with their tin troops. The bigger issue is often our table terrain is only able to capture major features. Changes in elevation of a yard or two barely register on a topo map. But such a minor detail can be dead ground and if missed, give a sharp enemy a covered avenue of approach. But our tables are flat, our hills hard edged…. |
steamingdave47 | 18 Feb 2018 7:06 a.m. PST |
BattleGroup has a "spotting" throw, which, amongst other things, might represent the observation problems caused by the kind of small features mentioned by Extra Crispy. For larger features, simply leave forces off the table if they cannot be seen from any point on the opposition side of the table, could be marked on a map. |
Nine pound round | 18 Feb 2018 3:08 p.m. PST |
Interesting- I just finished building a board to use in Peninsular games out of inch-thick styrofoam. Went to some effort on the undulations, but I still get a rather unsatisfactory combination of tall hills and steep slopes with perfectly flat lowlands. I think next time I will stick with inch thick foam for the base, but I am going to build the contours up out of quarter inch foam, which will make it easier to capture the contours. Period maps probably didn't show contours, but modern ones do, although two centuries can make a major difference in the lay of the ground, of course. Older contour maps are hard to come by, but they do exist- the recent translation of Pascal Bressonet's study of Jena and Auerstadt has contour maps of those battles that were done in the early twentieth century. |
evilgong | 18 Feb 2018 3:19 p.m. PST |
Various rules for horse and musket or other eras allow troops not visible to the other side to be mapped and kept off table until spotted. It does require the owner of the hidden troops to produce a detailed map to avoid uncertainty when the troops are indeed placed on the table. I like the system, especially when combined with other ways to keep troops of table via reserves or flank-marching. The downside of the system is that players will hide troops, just because then can and not part of a strategic plan. Nothing wrong with allowing players to make mistakes, but it also means players will exhaust game time seeking out all the hiding spots and re-deploying troops that were put there for no good reason. A play balance is to allow only some troops to be hidden. You'll find any number of enthusiastic debates about the quality of competing Napoleonic rules, I suspect few live and die on their treatment of terrain and battlefield visibility. Regards David F Brown |
Nine pound round | 18 Feb 2018 4:24 p.m. PST |
Yes, as Extra Crispy points out, the minor undulations are hard to catch, given that most maps (and rules) use contour intervals of multiple meters. That being said, I do feel like more accurate terrain models would help to make moves like reverse-slope defenses more attainable. But building a scale terrain representation is a feat of craftsmanship, and the information that's needed to do it may be hard to come by- I remember reading in one of Shelford Bidwell's books that even at the start of WWI, terrain maps of France did not incorporate contouring. So some significant research is probably required in any case. |
Nine pound round | 18 Feb 2018 4:40 p.m. PST |
FWIW, I went back and looked at the Bressonet maps- and the contour interval is twenty meters (65 feet, or four contours in my favorite rules set, "Revolution and Empire"). That's a pretty coarse measure! But there can't be too many maps of Napoleonic fields that apply modern terrain contouring techniques to a period datum. It would be interesting to see what sorts of topics maps are now available online. Most ministries of defense have the world mapped and gridded, but I doubt their data are accessible! |
4th Cuirassier | 19 Feb 2018 3:06 a.m. PST |
Google Earth does contours and indeed cross-sections. If you wanted to construct a tabletop based on a real location you could simply take slices across the terrain via Google and model those. It is astonishing that this stuff is free. Period maps are one of my things and are very interesting. Certain features hardly ever change over hundreds of years. I have found maps of woods in Kent that were the same shape in 1805 as they are today. Likewise boundaries between fields; unless the same person owns both sides of the boundary at the same time, the boundary never moves. |
Nine pound round | 19 Feb 2018 7:12 a.m. PST |
Interesting- will have to play around with that a bit. That's an interesting point about the ownership patterns, but it makes sense. I was thinking more of the effect of expanding urban areas and railroad and highway construction, which alter the land with cuts and fills. |
4th Cuirassier | 19 Feb 2018 7:34 a.m. PST |
Those definitely do wreak change. I guess what happens is that plots are bought up and new boundaries develop around them. To give you an idea of what I like looking at, here's a map of Chartridge, in the Chilterns northwest of London, made in 1898: link And here is the same place now via Google Earth: link If you look at the woods to the west, south of the road (top left in first link, centre left in second), you can see that apart a bit of replanting, they are exactly the same shape now as 120 years ago. There is a keyhole shaped paddock alongside that's also exactly the same shape now as then. The same is true of most of the field boundaries. The moral is, if you're fighting a historical campaign, you probably don't really need paper maps any more. If you start with the place in Google Earth, ignore motorways and railways, and search for "old map Chartridge" (or wherever) to show where any town boundaries used to be, you're pretty much there. |
M C MonkeyDew | 19 Feb 2018 9:38 a.m. PST |
If you can find a copy of Chameleon Eclectic's old Fields of Honor rules you should. Rules provide for dead ground, crests, visibility limits according do different ground scales on the theory that for a game where an individual unit is a platoon you should have more detailed terrain then if each unit is a regiment, in which case folds in the ground, etc, will disrupt vision over long distances. Very clever, written for 1820's to 1900-ish but all the weapons and formations for Napoleonics are in there just not provided as army lists. Also a great system of orders and couriers if you like that sort of thing (I do). Bob |
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