"Your path through Napoleonic Rules over the years" Topic

So I;m curious what paths people have taken over the years in their gaming of Napoleonics.
So lets say you started with #1 and now play #5
in my case it goes
1 Empire 3
2 Empire 4
3 Napoleon's Battles
4 Volley and Bayonet
5 Blucher
Now some of you have probably played or experimented with 10-20 sets but try to keep it to the ones you and/or your group played the most

1 general de brigade
2 lasalle
3 republic to empire
4 general de brigade/general de armee/republic to empire

Little Wars
Practical Wargaming
The 6mm set by Geoffrey someone
Bruce Quarrie
Piquet
Shako
Lasalle
Neil Thomas

There were some others we played one or two games with…

Mike

In 30mm:
CLS II
CLS3

in 1/72 and 28mm:
Mostly Charge! or Charge for Dummies
Sometimes Napoleon's Battles, but not in my own group. No progression to be implied.

1n 15mm

Old Trousers
Various homebrews

In 5mm

Watch this space, but probably Wessencraft.

Bruce Quarrie
Napoleon's Battles
Empire
General De Brigade
Le Feu Sacre

I won't change rules again now – very happy with LFS. If I ever wanted to fight huge historical battles I think it would be 6mm and Napoleons Battles.

For me

Practical wargaming
Bruce Qaurrie
Empire
Napoleons battles
In the Grand Manner
General de Brigade

Still mostly play ITGM and General de Brigade

Cheers
Matt
French Wargame Holidays
L'Hotel de Hercé
Mayenne, France
"Walk the battlefield in the morning, Wargame it in the afternoon"

WRG
Quarrie
Corps d armee
Homegrown leopards and eagles based
Black powder maybe?

@Black Hat Miniatures

The 6mm set by Geoffrey someone

Would that be G W Jeffrey's book ‘The Napoleonic Wargame'?

Your question assumes I play one set at a time. I currently play (for Napoleonics):

Grand Armee by Sam Mustafa
Black Powder
Volley & Bayonet
Age of Eagles

I have in the past played:

Le Feu Sacre
DBN
Horse, Foot & Guns
A Johnny Reb III Variant
Various house rules…

I started with:
Fire & Steel (1982-2008)

Changed to:
General de Brigade, 2nd Edition (2008-2010)

Now use:
General de Brigade, Deluxe Edition (2010-Present).

I have considered numerous other rules, but I'm very satisfied with GdB-D.

God bless,
John T.

1. Empire One
2. Empire Two
3. Empie Three
4. Empire Four
5. Empire "Five"
Then I sold all my nappy figures and books and left Napoleonics. Still have the rules, but I'm finished with Nappys.

CSL at conventions
Legacy of Glory.
Napoleons Battles.
Flintloque.
Slaughterloo.
Grand Armee.
Volley and Bayonet.
La Salle.
Black Powder.
BLucher.

My druthers are Blucher and Grand Armee.

Aux Armes!
Basic Wargame Rules (Scruby)
Shako
Drums and Shakos for Large Battles

I have played a couple of games of Empire (probably I or II), and during college fooled around with a homegrown set roughly based on Arthur Taylor's rules. Occasionally have done some skirmishes using Old West Gunfight, Drums and Shakos, or even one Call of Cthulhu semi-RPG.

1. Candler with a bunch of house rules
2. Strategos N

I've also occasionally used Scruby's Strategy-Tactial Rules.

Oh man I remember Fire and Steel. First real rules I tried to use with my Airfix

1 some home written rules with airfix plastic napoleonics
2 System 7 rules with those beautiful card counters
3 tried to learn Empire and gave up
4 The Ebb and Flow of Battle (anschluss publishing) with their dice-less combat system
5 more recently Grande Armee from Sam Mustaffa
6 Blucher

Practical Wargames and 20 mm
Charles Grant The Wargame
Bruce Quarrie
Fire and Steel and cardboard
Napoleon's Battles and 15mm
Legacy of Glory
Sharp Practise and 28mm
Field of Glory
Black Powder

WRG
FOGN I
FOGN II

Currently loving and playing a fair bit of FOGN II.

Martin

Practically all of the above until I discovered General d'Armee.

1. Denial and isolation;
2. Anger;
3. Bargaining;
4. Depression;
5. Acceptance.

regards

David F brown

WRG
Empire 3
Empire 4
Age of Eagles (and staying with them!)
Thanks for asking.

Quick Rules
Le Jeu de la Guerre
Column Line & Square
Pas de Charge
On To Richmond variant
Napoleons Battles
General de Armee

WRG 1685-1845
Bruce Quarrie (Napoleon's Campaigns in Miniature)
Flirted with To The Sound of the Guns and Newbury Rules, flirtations that turned cold before they could be upgraded to dalliances. Ugh!
Age of Eagles and Napoleon's Battles 1st Edition
Napoleon's Battles 4th Edition

Empire 3
Napoleons Battles
From Valmy To Waterloo
Shako
With Eagles to Glory (home grown, developed by a friend)
La Feu Sacre
General de Brigade
General de Armee

System 7- counters
Battles for Empire(Buck Surdu)-15mm
Empire 5- 15mm
Grande Armee- 6mm
Rank and File- 15mm
Piquet- 10mm

With having played for over 40 years, there are really too many to enumerate. Picking five as "most played" (and not counting various home brew rules in this):
CLS
The Complete Brigadier
Napoleons Battles, sundry editions
Volley and Bayonets
Black Powder

No longer played:
Home brew rules for many years
Black Powder

Still play:
Rank and File – modified
FoGN and FoGN2
March Attack – modified

1. FRAPPE
2. Empire 2
3. Empire 3
4. Napoleon's Battles
5. Age of Eagles
6. Experimental Regimental Fire & Fury
7. Shako 2 ( currently using )
8. Black Powder 2 (tinkering with)

Fire and Charge (Scruby)
Frappe!
House Rules
Column, Line, and Square (away only)
Empire 3 (away only)
House Rules
Shako (away only)
Piquet
Field of Battle

Superb answer evilgong. Are you now in gaming Nirvana?

1. Age of Eagles
2. Napoleons Battles
3. FoGN
4. Age of Eagles

Over the years I have bought many sets, but these received the most playing time:

1. Column, Line, and Square using Airix, Der Kriegspielers, Rose/Gammage, and Scruby miniatures in the early 1970s
2. Fire and Steel using 15mm (Minifigs, Heritage, and Battle Honours mostly) in the later 1970s to the mid-1980s
3. Empire (II or III) in 15mm (mid- to late 1980s)
4. Eagle Bearer computer-moderate rules in 15mm (mid to late 1990s) in 15mm
and after a hiatus of more than twenty years
4. Republic to Empire in 28mm starting about 2009
5. Sharp Practice 2 (the game of choice) in 28mm since 2016
6 General d'Armee in 15mm (slowly rebuilding a 15mm collection with ABs) -- only played one game so far…

1. Empire 2
2. Empire 3
3. Napoleon's Battles
4. Grande Armee

I haven't played Napoleonics in many years.

1. Empire 2
2. Empire 3
3. Napoleon's Battles
4. Age of Eagles

Empire 3
Column, Line & Square
Legacy of Glory
Imperial Lances
Age of Eagles

Some big breaks in between some of these.

1. Quarrie Airfix
2. Empire 4
3. Revolution and Empire
4. Grande Armee

Will stick with GA for 6mm big battles, but plan to use Age of Eagles for future French Revolutionary Wars project.

1) Charles Grant
2) Empire 3
3) Napoleons Battles
4) Shako
5) Grande Armee

Haven't played Napoleonics in years.

Hiya

>>>>>>>>>>>>
Superb answer evilgong. Are you now in gaming Nirvana?
>>>>>>>

No. I dabble in Blucher, FogN, Black-powder if somebody is hosting it – having most recently drifted away from N@W.

Looking forward to trying Battle Empire (ADLGn) when released in English later this year.

[My history goes something like; home-brew based on Grant, WRG, then trying whatever is shiny and new, mostly to abandon them]

DB

1-Sabre et baïonettes
2-Les Aigles
3-Newbury Fast play
4- De Bonaparte à Napoléon (DBN)
5- Silex et baïonettes
6- 1er Empire V3

Napoleonic wargaming exist too in non anglo speaking Countries ;-))

1. A set in the old Airfix Magazine
2. Charles Grant "Napoleonic Wargaming"
3. A home grown set using blocks (ala Kriegsspiel)
4. WRG 1685-1845
5. Paddy Griffith "Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun"
6. Napoleon's Battles
7. Piquet – Les grognards
8. 1824 Kriegsspiel
9. Volley & Bayonet
The last three are likely to be the next ones too

Also dabbled in Corps d'Armee, George Jeffery's VLB system, Shako, Huzzah, Polemos Napoleonic and Blucher.

Cheers
David

1.Tricolor (by TSR in the 70's)
2. WRG
3. Empire (3rd edition I think)
4. Napoleons Battles
5. Age of Eagles
6. Black Powder

I currently still play both the last two sets, Age of Eagles in 15mm, and BP in 28mm.

1- Empire V – the more complicated the better
2- From Valmy to Waterloo – still complicated, great!
3- Age of Eagles – lets make it simpler.
3- Napoleons Battles – Also simple and fun
4- General de Brigade – Not too complicated nor too simple
5- Abandon Napoleonic games and go into WW2

Also, my applause to evilgong. His list resumes the life of any wargamer with rulesets.

Column, Line & Square, 2nd ed.

@JimDuncan

>Would that be G W Jeffrey's book ‘The Napoleonic Wargame'?

Yes – wasn't sure of exact title – small A5 booklet with card cover…

Mike

Well my first set of Napoleonics was a "starter set" in 15mm that one of the wargaming magazines was selling, forget which one tho.

It had a ruleset in it (tiny little booklet thingy) , but it was incomprehensible (there appeared to be no shooting, two different was to resolve melee, artillery didn't seem to do anything, and mysteriously the number of sides the dic had varied from set to set…) so we gave up on that before we'd actually finished reading it.

Experimented with my own rules for a bit.

Then somebody released Black Powder. Still play it now. Napoleonics thats actually enjoyable…Some might say if you're enjoying the game its probably not really Napoleonic, but to such people I say "pah!" and "phooey!", and blow raspberries…

I seem to have had some career progression:

1. WRG 1685-1845 (being a brigadier or division commander, fighting small generic actions)
2. Nothing for a few years (furloughed?)
3. Grande Armee (general i/c maybe 30,000 men, fighting medium-sized historical battles)
4. Nothing for a few years (peacetime? POW/exile??)
5. BBB (marshal or emperor doing the whole of Leipzig, Borodino etc)

Happy to discover the other day that these guys have ended up in a similar place to me: :-)
wargamingftb.net/?p=4009

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!
link
bloodybigbattles.blogspot.com

Always thought I'd like to get into Napoleonic war gaming and even picked up a few rule books over the years. All seemed complicated and tiresome. Then I bought Commands & Colors almost on a whim. You didn't have to buy and paint any figures. Everything you needed to start playing was in the box. Not really miniature figure gaming, but fun simple Napoleonic gaming using blocks to represent units. Best part, it can actually be enjoyable played in just a few hours time.

*Charge! (although, strictly speaking, 18th Century, I was too young to be concerned)
*WRG (the 1970s one with flinches in it)
*To the sound of the Guns (though I didn't play it much)
*Not Quite Marengo (my 'homegrown' spin on NQM)
*the 'Big Battles' variant of Shako

That's 50 years of wargaming although mostly 'other periods as well'. Never been a butterfly – very happy where I am right now.

Phil

In this order:

Nap's Battles,
Volley & Bayonet,
General de Brigade,
Shako,
Black Powder

1 – Home brewed set
2 – Napoleons Battles (various versions)
3 – Volley & Bayonet
4 – Grand Armee
5 – Shako
Current – Blucher