"Solo Napoleonics - which rules?" Topic

Decided I'm going to look at doing Napoleonics before Ancients although either way, I'll be going solo. I have determined that I can fit up to a 5' x 3' table in my office comfortably and still have room to walk around and sit at my work desk, so a little smaller than average but not terribly so with the 15mm figures I plan to use (10mm was tempting but 15mm is more of a standard in the event I'd find other opponents sometime in the future).

As far as rules, I'm looking at various rules; for whatever reason, I am not a fan of Sam Mustafa's rules like Lasalle or Blucher so I want to avoid those. For a scale, I'm leaning toward Divison or Corps, with a battalion being the maneuver element. I am currently looking at General d'Armee or Shako 2; I kind of like how Shako 2 requires you to write down orders for units, which seems like it would work great solo, but it seems a bit hefty elsewhere in the rules, possibly due to being an older set of rules. On the other hand, GdA has clearer rules but more of a "God's eye view" (although for solo play I could work around this, possibly by doing written orders anyway).

There might be other rules I'm missing as well that can also work without much fuss, so I am open to suggestions as the only thing I've decided upon is 15mm and the only restriction I have is the aforementioned max of 5x3 for the game table.

Thanks for any help!

-Wayne

Wayne,
If you are not opposed to a gridded board, take a look at Bob Cordery's Portable Napoleonic Wargame. Works well solo, and can easily be scaled up or down.

If you can find a Shako 1 copy, it has a big battles supplement, along with a 7YW supplement.
We played Shako 1 and 2 for years and it plays well, for the most part. Prepare for house rules…
Regards 10mm, get an Old Glory Army Card and get a 40% (I think) discount! You'll be able to build up both sides rapidly and cheaply! You can add other manufacturers later. And 10 mil is becoming very popular!

I like Black Powder which has a lot of unpredictability but not sure how easy it would be to go solo – I think it might work if you wrote down orders for both sides and then let those random command dice decide how they execute them

Another vote for 10mm – I have too much 6mm to switch but if I was starting fresh it would be in 10s

You could convert Field Commander Napoleon to miniatures:

link

I just bought a copy for that purpose….

Field of Battle by Brent Oman, now in it's 3rd edition, works great solo due to the sequence deck and other mechanisms.

link

Even better in terms of less control over the action if more radical would be Piquet itself, Les Grognards 2nd edition.

Peter

Peter is right, I play solo offten, the game plays well as yu get the oppourtunity to play both armies impartially

Mark,I have been using Field Commander Napoleon also.

It is a great solo game mechanism and runs campaigns for each era of the Napoleonic wars, gives you chits for all the armies for your OOB. When units encounter each other on the map board,I set up the miniatures battle accordingly. I like simples rules for this, going with Neil Thomas', which are well explained and historical enough for me.

But the real secret is the use of Nic Burt's Adjutant Introuvable as the AI engine for your battlefield opponent. It works great, is affordable, and not too hard to learn. It runs your opponents moves and actions pretty logically and the games are a lot of fun.