"Soldiers of Napoleon- Using basing from other rules" Topic

I'm seriously considering purchasing Soldiers of Napoleon rules for use with British and French 28mm forces in Spain.

The two Divisions (plus cavalry and artillery) are based for General de Brigade but have been used untouched with Black Powder for a few years just following their Small/Average/Large unit ideas.

I see that SON goes by numbers of stands, which works OK for the French Infantry who are all in units of six, which appears to be the maximum but the British don't match up so easily being more of a mix of numbers and having no light companies. These being modelled with them being permanently detached to the Brigade Skirmishers, as they were.

Obviously it would be possible to just field the British as is and call them whatever number is required but do the rules allow for permanent skirmishers who are not classed as Light Infantry, Jägers, Rifles etc and what would be their numbers and basing?

I wrote some blog posts on my impressions of SoN and how to make them work for me using four stand units. link below.

link

Thanks for the response. Interesting to see you have chosen to go down in unit size. Well, not down exactly 4 stands is within the suggested range, as I understand it.

Our concerns are more with maintaining the current General de Brigade sizes. Big units being a long time preference, if somewhat of a curse when trying other rules over the years. Its that old time and money invested thing. Not a hope in hell of having reduced size Battalions on the table and the idea of changing bases is totally unthinkable! 😄

Talking of bases, are those single gun models representing a battery and if so, is that the SON preference, or an adjustment you chose?

As General de brigade is a great rule set, I wonder why you going to all of the trouble of re-scaling to accommodate a new rule set?

Hello

However, in consequence of units having a constant frontage when in line (okay, that's the fudge – I love fudge)

My understanding was that a unit:

cxxxxo cxxxxo cxxxxo cxxxxo cxxxxo cxxxxo
xxxxxs xxxxxs xxxxxs xxxxxs xxxxxs xxxxxs
54/54 = 0 losses

When suffering hits would do this:

cxxxxo cxxxxo cxxxxo cxxxxo cxxxxo cxxxxo
-xxxxs -xxx-s -xxxxs -xxxxs --xxxs --xxxs
45/54 = 6% losses

…so the overall frontage would remain the same

If they'd suffered a lot more then they'd need to regroup, and when (or if) returned to the battle they'd re-equalise the subunits:

cxxxo cxxxo cxxxo cxxxo cxxxo cxxxo
xxxxs xxxxs xxxxs xxxxs xxxxs xxxxs
42/54 = 22% losses

Absolutely correct regarding Equalisation. Its an area a lot of people overlook.

Regarding the frontage remaining the same, that depends on who the participants were. The French used to fill forward from the Third Rank and I would imagine other nations with three lines of firing did the same.

However, the British closed on the Centre so their firing line gradually shrank. This was noted in accounts of Albuera, for example, where the British line shrank to match their opponents during the course of the fighting.

Of course this may well have been an extreme example, given the nature of the fight but as far as I know, it was just a compressed instance of the doctrine being used.

I have to confess I have a pretty relaxed view on base size v frontage.

Very few, if any, rules make a serious attempt to accurately portray frontage and equivalent ground scale. Taking off a stand to show losses, or not, would be a whole lot more vital if the on table measurements actually meant something. Ground scale tied to frontage and proper movement distances being generally absent, so worrying about how many men a stand represents and the degradation of that number has its limitations.

Equalisation would mean that all the sub units would be as equal as possible at the start of an action but where you get some thing as broad as saying a stand is 100 – 150 men that could mean anything. Its just wargames accounting, not a representation of a real Company or even two.

My original question was purely to do with SON's game mechanics, asking if fielding seven or eight stands, would give an unfair advantage over a maximum of six in the rules. If Fire was purely calculated by the number of stands present.

Rules look intriguing…

Goonhammer – Solders of Napoleon

The action on the tabletop being only a portion of the much larger battle raging on to either side; with card-driven impinging circumstances offering some friction.

Re unit representation – Perhaps use stands as grand-divisions rather than platoons?

English would then have four (ex-detachments), French would have three. A three-battalion English brigade would then have twelve, as would a four-battalion French.

The Goonhammer review mentions squadrons (refreshing!) so perhaps one stand = two squadrons.

Thanks for posting that review. It explains what attracts me to these rules very well.

The generation of a narrative for the actual game you are playing is something I'm looking forward to seeing how it works in practice. Could be a welcome change from the old "line them up an push lead around for an evening" style we are all familiar with.

I hope the fact that the rules are card driven doesn't put people off. The balance of play in this instance looks to be well thought out, as the review suggests.

They certainly have manged to avoid the "hand building" style that detracts from some card orientated games, which I find a major turn off.

Back in the day I played "Longstreet" for a while, which although it admitted to a degree of encouragement for players to build attacks, or other manoeuvres, through card combinations, could easily fall foul of this trait.

We had a guy who possessed a photographic memory and the ability to string cards together, which owed a lot to card counting. It often meant he could game the system better than any of us, as you could retain cards from turn to turn in the rules. I'm delighted to see that option is not available in SON!

This is a good video review of SON for anyone interested.

YouTube link

Purchased the Rules at the weekend and on a couple of read throughs, they appear to be all I hoped they would be.

They should be easy to pick up, given the relatively small amount of the book that is actually the game, as opposed to "This is Napoleonic's" and all the history along with associated bumph regarding the two Campaigns that are included with it. Army Lists, Unit descriptions and Stat Lines etc.

That comes with the territory I suppose, if you have a grasp of any period, new rules will always have a chunk of stuff you pay for and don't need!

Pleased to see that the required mechanics for moving, changes of formation, shooting, melee etc etc, is clear and simple and will allow players to concentrate on the Command and Control, which the game appears to be about and why it interested me in the first place.

Also appreciative of a lack of endless tables and a simple system of base line numbers of dice with a straight forward but logical, plus one D6 for this, minus two D6 for that approach.

Practical learning starts with Game Number One on Wednesday which I have to say I am rather looking forward to!