"Using the Age of Napoleon board game with miniatures" Topic

Hi,

I have and enjoy Age of Napoleon by Phalanx games. I would be interested in playing out the battles generated on the tabletop.

I am curious if anyone else has attempted this before, and has ideas about how to convert the army counters (leaders with various movement, strength, and command values) into a tabletop battle. My rules would either be Blucher or V&B.

Thanks!
Dave

set up a fixed ratio of Age of Napoleon strengths vs V&B points. There is a V&B variant for GDW Soldier King that might give you some ideas.

Hi Dave, I too am a fan of Age of Napoleon and was recently pondering using Commands and Colors to resolve the battles.
I would be very interested in seeing what you do with this.

My initial thought is to create a ratio based on the total strength of the opposing armies, based on which colum they find themselves after all battle cards have been played.

For example, an army with 22 points attacks an army with 18 points. There is a single column difference, which would correlate to a certain percentage difference between the two armies. For example, in Blucher a base army is 200 to 300 points. So if the smaller army is 200 points (the smaller army being "X"), then the larger army would be X + 25%, with the larger army having the obligation to attack.

I like the deployment card system in V&B, and I think that can also present interesting scenarios for non-equal forces.

You dont have to convert movement poits, because they onyl inform you about movement on the map. You dont have to convert Command values, because they have the function to command other corps.

So you only habe to convert strength points. In the game strength points also reflect the tactical ability of the general. (Napoleon has high strengt value, not because he has so much troops, but because he is such a good tactician and gives his troops a morale boost.) I would ignore this and only transfer strength value into army strength.

I would make a list, what an corps counter represents with a given strength value. That way ypu can have different armies for different nations. I wouldn't give a point system, because that leads to min-maxing. Generals have to do with what they got. I wouldn't make the difference in strength linear, no fun in small armies having no chance against bigger armies.

Example: A 4 strength french corps could be 4 Brigades of Infantry, 1 small Regiment of Cavalry, 1 battery of Artillery. A 8 strength french corps would be 5 Brigades of Grenadiers/Guards, 1 big Regiment of Cavalry, 2 batterys of guard artillery. On the other hand a 4 strength russian corps´could be 3 big infantry brigades, 1 Regiment of Cosaks, 1 battery.

You only need a system, how you translate the battle outcome into battle outcome of Age of Napoleon. Shouldnt be to complicated.

(With this system your guard artillery, after loosing a battle could become normal artillery in the next battle. Who cares?)

I appreciate your thoughts.

One of the reasons I was thinking a relativistic process would be more appropriate than a straight-up translation of points to figures is to avoid the situation where the army strengths are too disparate to make for a fun game.

That is why I thought about using the lower point value as the base, with column shifts representing greater numbers. But the defender in those circumstances would also need a scenario advantage (defending, works, etc.) to provide sufficient balance to create a fun game.

Historically, battles occurred because both armies were willing to fight (Corunna being a notable exception). So assuming that the weaker army is willing to fight, there needs to be situational aspects which would help "level" the playing field, as it were.

Thanks,
Dave

While I have not specifically though about converting Age of napoleon into a figure gaming format, I have been thinking about converting board-games into figuring gaming for many years, in most cases my experiments have failed. The only real success is the ancients Lost battles, but I have been looking at converting simple board-games into figure games for Napoleonic using the old SPI Quad games. This is a Video describing the attempt. So far the experimental games are working out reasonably well, surprisingly well actually. The links to the SPI Board-games are in the video description for those interested.

My major issue is to reproduce the playing area and I am now thinking about making some special playing areas to do this, starting with Marengo. Board-games main focus is reproducing historical conflicts, so starting positions and terrain placement tends to be rather critical.