"Old Skool Simple Campaign Games for Napoleonics" Topic

Anything out there similar to the old Avalon Hill games? Simplistic mechanisms and system mostly to tie together a few tabletop games and give them a little meaning.

Minipigs, look through old magazines in the flea markets. They used to do this from time to time. I can distinctly recall a northern Italy and a west coast of Spain campaign--both Napoleonic--and something in the Low Countries titled "Cockpit of Europe" which was Marlburian, but could work for any horse and musket with a little tweaking.

I would advise keeping a file of maps of historical battles in the appropriate part of the world, even if the battle itself was uninteresting or somewhat out of period. It smooths the transition from map to tabletop.

Snappy Nappy rules (corps-level) are built around the idea of fast, multi-table campaigns that can be played in a day.

ESR, at "the wargame company", has campaign sets with the individual battle scenarios linked together as a campaign.
Your troop stand can be easily used as a unit. Players run corp level "Forces".

G'Day Gents

For Avalon Hill you have Waterloo…I have used it for a campaign system to move divisions and then fight it out when divisions were in contact…then resolving the action with figures. We had quite a bit of fun using this boardgame and figures together.

The boardgame Wellington's Victory is another that I have used in conjunction with figurines.

Best Regards
Art

I took a quick look at Snappy nappy, they spend a lot of time repeating how easy and simple it is to use without actually telling me what they are. I'll look for better reviews. However, the campaign rules are meant to be gamed using a paper map which reflects several, real contiguous gaming maps?

ESR seems too "enfoncer" in historical scenarios. As far as I am concerned, the campaign could indeed be somewhat stylized, but the battles should also be randomly originated when two forces clash.

What about these rules? WARFARE IN THE AGE OF REASON – 3rd Edition: Miniature Rules two-player campaign system called Enlightened Slaughter with the first module: The Habsburg Empire Strikes Back (Silesia 1758).

Anyone try these out? I dont know that i want the rules for miniatures, just the campaign system. Not just the price of the rules but the fact that it's 172 pages!?

Perhaps have a look at some of the games from Kevin Zucker published by OSG and Clash of Arms.
Napoleon at Bay (1814), the Emperor Returns (1815), 1809 (published by Victory Games), Napoleon at the Crossroads (1813), The Eagle turns East / the Habit of Victory (1807). These are mostly out of print but appear on auction sites from time to time.
These games are at the strategic level. If you want something more Operational The Library of Napoleonic Battles series (OSG) might meet your requirements.

Try The Generalship Game in Paddy Griffith's Napoleonic Wargaming For Fun (Ward Lock, 1980; republished by The History of Wargaming Project),which uses point to point movement on a stylised map and a novel 24-hour time track to plot the general's activities. There is a simple battle resolution system, but you can transfer the actions to the tabletop instead.

There's no well designed strategic boardgame for the Peninsula?

Take a look at Wellington's War by Pacific Rim Publishing.

I remember a technique years ago where your created a stack of glued together matchboxes perhaps 6 high by 10 wide. You put nits of paper represnting units in the matchboxes and moved them to another matchbox, when two brigades division et from different sides ended up in the same matchbox – fight!

Peninsula games list at link

@Prince of Essling and Lascaris. Thanks for the useful info.

@Sir Able Brush. I believe there was a time when wargamers played correspondence campaigns by snail mail too :)

Have you considered "Berthier" computer- moderated campaign system? Setup would take a little time compared to a boardgame, but it is scaleable and provides limited intelligence to players. A friend and I have used the system for a Russo- Japanese naval campaign, division- level AWI campaign, and are currently fooling around with a brigade- level 1920s operation in Sicily (fictional, of course).

I liked this post

link

as a convincing answer to the original question