"'69–71 which Napoleonic rules were most popular?" Topic

A friend and I are digging into Don't Give Up the Ship and this started a discussion speculating which Napoleonic rules (ground war) we would most likely have played if were players at the time.

If region matters, then East Coast in New York metro and Long Island for one, as well as Virginia for the other.

My guess would be Column, Line, & Square followed by WRG's 1750-1850 rules, but those did not appear until 1971.

I was there. Column, Line and Square. There just wasn't anything else. And most important; it was what everyone else was playing.

Frappe, authored by Ray Johnson was played by a large group in the Chicago area…tactical, using a hex grid drawn on a table. His group was featured in a 1971 Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine article about wargaming. I played those rules or a version of it in a big Napoleonic game at GenCon 1973 or 74 in Lake Geneva.

Played a home- modded version of "Charge" for our Napoleonic games 50 years ago. No idea what commercial rule-sets were around then. Played Peter Gilder's " In the Grand Manner" at a couple of games in mid ‘70's, with the Hull and Grimsby clubs, but that was when the rules were still in the form of Xeroxed sheets, before Peter published them.
First commercial Napoleonic rules I used regularly were " To the Sound of the Guns" by Richard Butler, sold by Tabletop Games of Nottingham. This was in the early 1980s. Still got them, but not played for about 25 years.

Loved WRG 1750-1850, only gave it up in the last decade. To the Sound of Guns was my first set but OMG it was to complicated for my 16 yr old brain in 1989.

We used the London Wargames Section rules, which gradually got modified with house rules.

In the specified time period, here in NG we 'happy few'
were playing what is now known as _Before I Was a Marshal…_

While CLS was probably the single most popular rule set, it was not by any means a majority favorite. Things were highly fragmented, with local house rules probably accounting for the majority of the games.

I remember watching Richard Butler demoing 'To the Sound of the Guns' at a Midlands (UK) gaming day (possibly in Leicester, might be wrong – correction welcomed). Richard was a regular competitor in the UK National Wargames Championship when Newbury Napoleonic Rules were in use, and had put together his own set in an attempt to simplify (i.e. speed up) the Newbury rules game play. I was watching the game with Maurice Roth (one of the Newbury Rules authors – the other being Trevor Halsall and later, Jim Kew). Richard made a big point of comparing the relative simplicity of TTSOTG firepower casualty calculations compared to the Newbury Rules and the similarity of the results. Maurice didn't look impressed.
Just a bit of UK gaming history for you ;-)

Frappe! was the first real rules set I played, and we used house rules derived from it for about 20 years afterwards!

Was "Quarter Brass" a rule set of the time?

CLS or WRG

CLS in the Midwest. And it must have been fairly popular overall, given that magazines ran articles on adapting it to other periods. That's always a sign of a popular set.

Fire and Steel miniature rules based on the System 7 cardboard units. It was a fun game.

I acquired a couple of the Shire Publications books via The Soldier Shop: John Tunstill's "Discovering Wargames" from 1969 and Arthur Taylor's "Rules for Wargaming" from 1971. I don't know how popular these were, but they did get some exposure in the U.S. "Frappe" and "Column, Line, and Square" are two that I remember from the period (though never played).

I was into Avalon Hill board games and later SPI etc. I wasn't even aware of miniatures gaming until the early 1980s and then only ACW.

First rules I remember when I first started wargaming were by London Wargames Club. Do not remember a lot about them as a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Think it was in 72/73.

Please ignore my question about "Quarter Brass."

I saw this in an very brief single sentence report on GenCon I that there was "Napoleonics (Quarter Brass)." I finally worked out that it was a game of Napoleonics of the Battle of Quatre Bras. Reports I have been given by an attendee was that the the Napoleonics at GenCon I were run by Fred Vietmeyer and his group, which would indicate CLS. Can anyone confirm this or have a different memory from being there?

*sigh* highjacking threads, at least it is my own thread.

Malchor, I can still find a few other MWNWC of that vintage--and there are now only a few, even counting me--but I need a year and a place. "GenCon" is inadequate.

At a guess, remember the MWNWC was basically a confederation of local clusters. Probably some of our regular players from in and around Chicago. Bob Cory would have been the most senior, and I think Richard (Rick) Crane was also from the vicinity. I know he had connections up that way later--published Tricolor and worked for TSR.

Follow-up. The Tricolor article on Wikipedia makes Rick Crane even more the obvious tie-in. He'll be publishing for TSR in 1974, and is described as knowing Gary Gygax in pre-TSR/D&D days. (Which means he must have been very young at the time. He was pretty much our youngest regular player when I knew him. But he was a very sharp CLS tactician.)

My recollection of Tricolor was that it used stripped-down CLS basing. (Rick wouldn't have been about to rebase everyone: few of us ever did.) So when you get a description, keep in mind that a proto- or test-game Tricolor might have looked a lot like a CLS game to a passer-by.

Anyway, Cory is long dead. Rick Crane is described as being later a hedge fund manager, but I lost track of him many years ago. Give me a year and place, and I'll check with people I can track down.

Oh. For those who track weird prices. I saw Tricolor listed for $469 USD on e-bay. I think I got $5 USD at a Lancaster flea market--but not easily.

Robert Piepenbrink, Quarter Brass was reported to have been at GenCon 1, 1968 in Lake Geneva. This was report by one of the Twin City guys, only two of them made it to the 1968 GenCon.

At that time, I was still making my own. My first set of formal rules were the TSR series Tricolor and Chainmail.

I'd say "Quatre Bras" and probably Cory and company including probably Crane then, playing CLS II. Ted Haskell would be another candidate. But Haskell and Cory are both dead, and I have no contact information on Crane. Not sure there's anyone else alive who would know, but convention photos might be informative if there are any.

@Chad47
The Stoke Wargames Group Napoleonics room was using the Stephen & Julian Reed rules 'Napoleonic Warfare' in about March 1973 when I joined. Pretty sophisticated compared to the LWS rules and undoubtedly inspired by the first few editions of WRG's Ancient rule sets.

Hard to say since I would have been 13 in 71……:)

Did start playing CLS in 1978 and still do having played 2 weeks ago.

Mild progress on the GenCon 1 Napoleonic game!
According to this, Ray Johnson was the organizer.
link
The name's familiar and the right vintage. I vaguely connect him with Duke Seifried, but I could be wrong about that. Can anyone else help?

Ray Johnson wrote Napoleonic organization books published by RAFM., a Canadian company. Duke was in Dallas with Heritage.

Ray Johnson is the name on the cover of Frappe! published in 1970 with Duke.

Duke was in the earlier Dayton, OH group as well, with John Chandler.

Where both involved in the CLS group in 1968?

Ray Johnson was active in the Chicago area, was a meteorologist working at OHare…published Frappe! in the late 60's, early 70's…I first met him at GenCon 1973 or 74.

Frappe was early 1970's. So the candidates are:
--Some sort of playtest for what would be Frappe.
--The pre-CLS Dayton game with uniform 20 casting battalions.
--Melee (Seifried)
--CLS I
--CLS II
I'd say probably CLS I, but that's a guess. For what it's worth, CLS II was regarded as a recent innovation in 69-70 even in the core area.

robert piepenbrink and oldnorthstate (and everyone else), thank you for the added context!

Strange no mention of Donald Featherstone or Charles Grant.

The first move to formal games for me was Charles Grant's Battle (1970) which was WWII and then "The War Game" in 1971. Although aimed for Mid 18th Century my group was using it for Napoleonic and AWI (ie whatever Airfix figures we had) by 1973. Then Airfix released their rules and we changed to that about 1977.

I started playing in the South Suburbs of Chicago in about 1978. We started with some homemade rules that would probably have been better if one of our members wasn't doctoring the statistics to suit his Francophilia. Then we found CLS and that's what stuck. I still have a huge CLS army in 15mm but can't find anyone interested in playing.

"Napoleonique" by Jim Getz (also with assistance from the ubiquitous Duke Seifreid) was published in 1971, although I myself didn't play it until 1975.

Napoleonique, 1970, IIRC. Jim Getz.

Grande Armee by P. Rice and D. Lowry?

"Strange no mention of Donald Featherstone or Charles Grant."

Most of the contributors to this thread seem to be Americans. I don't think there was quite the same 'cross-fertilisation' of ideas that we are more accustomed to seeing today.

I started as a schoolboy in the early 1970s and Featherstone, Grant and Wise were available in my local libraries. The only American gamer and rules I'd heard of back then was Scruby, and only then because Featherstone referred to him and his figures.

I think that, for most of us, the rules we remember from that era are going to be local ones.

Malchor, since you mentioned "Don't Give Up the Ship", I will add that the Twin Cities Group was playing "Strategos N" in that period. I doubt much of anyone else was.

AS to WRG, their Napoleonic rules were only published in 1971, so probably didn't have much impact here before '72.

"Fire and Steel" was much later, being published in 1978.

WRG was the set of rules i used, picked up my copy in 1979. I think it, as well as the army list, was published in July 1979. There was something before that which used a simultaneous fire/move system, similar to the early WRG ancients rules, but i have never seen a copy. Empire was around back then as well, 3rd edition came out in 1981, so the earlier editions must of come out before than. This is my first attempt at listing all the Rules i am aware of.

I started with Featherstone in the US. A guy I knew in college had picked up a copy somewhere. We added our own ideas to it. It was pretty basic, as I recall. This was in 1971.

oldnorthstate Ray Johnson lived only a couple of blocks from me on the North side. The article in the Tribune I have stashed some where the figures in the article were 54mm Historex figures beautifully painted. I knocked on his door and he let me in to watch a game, I was a teenager, but I was a History Nut.

I don't think there was quite the same 'cross-fertilisation' of ideas that we are more accustomed to seeing today.

Yeah funny that, 50 years ago eh?

The Internet has a lot to answer for, as they say! 😄

Was I really ever 21?

Napoleonique, Bruce Quarrie's Napoleonic Wargaming (1st & 2nd editions). We thought about Frappe but decided it was too detailed so we started with Napoleonique.