"Bruce Quarrie rules" Topic

I last wargamed napoleonics a (long) while ago and am painting a few battalions, squadrons & cannons before recommencing.
I enjoyed the Bruce Quarrie rules (1977 edition) as a good mixture of historical accuracy (ish/attempted) and playability, but I assume they have now been supplanted. (Were they too slow or not an accurate historically?)

I've seen the Facebook page on them (haven't joined yet!) but does anyone within TMP still use them, as you may have wider experiences?

Did people have problems with the rules, or perhaps like them for various reasons, or did they just get ‘out-of-date? If so, why are the newer rules better for you?

I used them and in modified form still do. I just like painting and collecting now, and am amassing British and French armies in plastic for a hypothetical invasion of England. The bases I'm using are all Quarrie-derived.

Rules move in fads. Featherstone era rules were hyper-simple, 1970s rules became farcically complicated, 1980s and 1990s rules became preoccupied with command and control. Some rules since then have abandoned any pretence of representing internal battalion structure, hence units are made up of "stands" that bear no relation to any historical formation. Figure removal seems to have gone out of vogue, so in some rules no unit ever shrinks in size. There has been a fad, perhaps based on people's diversity training at work, towards denial of empirically different levels of prowess between Spanish militia and, say, Prussian Foot Guards, who must be rated equal because we're all holding hands under a rainbow. This prejudice is, ironically, a reversion to the Featherstone era in which there were no unit quality distinctions at all.

I found Quarrie worked fine with smallish battles (maybe 15 battalions per side), but needed to be streamlined for anything larger. This is actually quite simple because a lot of morale and control test results are actually predictable.

The rules did not correctly represent firepower, for example – for firepower to stop an attacker, you had to inflict large casualties by firing lots of volleys at it, which is not how it went. The Prussians and Austrians are unplayable, unrealistically so. Of course he wrote the original Airfix variant of these rules aged I think 23, so probably nobody he knew had gamed with those armies.

He made a number of howling errors in his frontages and casualty arithmetic that require fixing.

With those issues tidied up, they still provide a good game, and there's nary a "zone of control" (what that?) nor a "stand" to be seen anywhere.

Well-spoken 4th CuirassierI

4th has said all I was going to say.

Loved them as a kid, we played enormous battles with thousands of Airfix soldiers over several days at school in the holidays. Happy days :)

We had a chap join our club and raved about the Bruce Quarrie rules. We found our old 20/25mm figures then tried them for three weeks. We gave up in disgust. The world has moved on.

I still own 2 or 3 spare copies of these rules. These threads are reminders for me to take them to a convention flea market as there is still interest in them, for some. Thanks!

There has been a fad, perhaps based on people's diversity training at work, towards denial of empirically different levels of prowess between Spanish militia and, say, Prussian Foot Guards, who must be rated equal because we're all holding hands under a rainbow.

Bruce Quarrie would've profited from some of that diversity training. It might've kept him from getting sacked as editor of a military publication because of his approving attitude towards ethnic cleansing in the 1990s Balkan War.

Not sure about ‘moved on', I think 4thC has more with ‘fads' – of course that makes Quarrie just one of the many fads. It's a very long time since I played with them but must dig them out for a look as I'm not keen on the bucket of dice game approach that seems so prevalent now.

Thanks for your comments 4th Cuirassier, and everyone else's.

Regarding frontages, I had identified that 1cm / gun was too much of a ‘round-up' as heavy/light/horse batteries had different spacing for manoeuvrability, and I assumed the cavalry were in two ranks and changed the frontages. But it looks like I will have to do some further investigation on frontages, especially infantry, as I assumed from the Bruce Quarrie rules were (roughly) correct.

@ Tomesy

The frontages issue is around consistency mainly. BQ calculates that a 3-deep figure's frontage should be 8mm; 2-deep 11mm; heavy cavalry 16mm; and so on. On his groundscale of 1mm = 1 yard, these are correct. He then concedes, however, that you can't actually fit a 25mm foot figure into either of those frontages. So he uses 11mm instead of 8mm – but then doesn't gross up any of the others.

If 8mm for a 3-deep figure has become 11mm, then the 11mm of 2-deep figures needs to become 15mm (11/8 x 11mm). 16mm heavy cavalry bases need to be 22mm and his 24mm light cavalry bases need to be 33mm. The 10mm for artillery becomes 14mm but it's too small anyway really, so I have gone with 20mm per gun. So instead of an 8-gun battery being one gun on an 8cm triangle, it's two guns on two such triangles.

The other issue is with casualty tables. He penalises 2-deep troops in melee by having them use a different table. in fact, he has already reflected the 2-deep versus 3-deep thing by giving them different frontages, so this is a double-counting. They should use the same table as each other which will give French versus British the correct headcount advantage.

There is a further error in the tables in that, being a semi-numerate English graduate, he confuses 33% less with 33% more. So the 2-deep fire table, which should be 50% higher than the 3-deep,is only 33% higher. So 2-deep troops are penalised not only in melee, but also in firing. The answer is just to use one of the tables and add 50% if it's 2-deep fire. I also knock off 2 from the fire score for each consecutive move of firing, because you're firing into more and more smoke and can't see anything.

I also found empirically that you need to reduce BQ's artillery casualties by about 2/3rds. If you work out the maximum casualties a battery could inflict on a line in 2.5 minutes and compare it to his tables, his are way too high. Canister should also become less effective, not more, at close range (it hasn't a chance to spread out properly).

The rules do the accumulation-of-losses thing to decide if charges succeed, weighted in favour of British and veterans by exaggerating their fire ratings. The fix that the group I played with adopted instead was to have the defenders declare fire at a specific range. They then test morale to see if they stand. If they do they fire at 1/5 effect (one volley). The attackers then test morale to see what they do.

The kicker is, this morale penalty rises for both defender and attacker the closer the range. If the defender has nerves of iron and waits until 30 yards' range to open up, the attacker is highly likely to be stopped or turned back. But if the defender's troops are brittle they will run if asked to hold fire till 30 yards. In that case the defender is better off opening at 100 yards or whatever. With adjustments for experience and nationality (the French take a lower morale hit in the attack, the British a lower hit in defence, reflecting doctrine; veterans lower in either case), you get realistic results without total carnage.

@ 4th Cuirassier
Thanks for you thoughts and detailed and considered appraisal of the rules. With the adjustments to counter the errors you point out, I think they are still playable.
I'm sure much of the commands and campaign rules are also open to adjustment as historical evidence has come to light since the 70's.

Regarding the frontages (1mm=1yrd) it was one of the reasons in went for 15mm, so the infantry ‘fit'. I've assumed that cavalry were in two ranks resulting in 16.5mm/fig for heavy and 25mm/fig for light (halving his BQ's 1 rank frontages).

Looking into the artillery there seems to be a wide variety of widths quoted between cannons (such is the uncertainty of ‘historical records'), and in ‘averaging' the different sources – which frankly depended on the situation at the time and topography – I have chosen 15mm/gun fir heavy batteries, and 12mm/gun for light/horse batteries.
As always, open for argument/discussion, which is part of the fun.

Right, 15s would probably fit, and then the base size issues go away. I agree you can suit yourself on artillery frontages as these were not set in stone.

The other thing I have scrapped is different movement rates by unit type, which are ahistorical. Between different nations sure, but within the same army, no way. Guards or line, column or square, they moved at the same pace. There's an argument based on contemporary writings that units could be allowed to move at quick step or double time units but risk becoming unformed if they do (unless French, who specialised in this); I've not tried this but it sounds interesting.

The three things he kind of omitted are a turn sequence sheet; some worked gameplay examples; and a clear explanation of how to do casualties on your personality figures. He just says (in the main text, not the rules) to use percentage dice. Inferentially, I think what he meant you to do is work out what percentage of losses a unit takes, then roll percentage dice to see if any commander who is with that unit is among those losses. So if they lose 15% and you roll lower than 15 for him, he is. There is then a 60% chance it's his horse that's been hit, so roll again and if you score 40 or lower the general himself is hit, otherwise it's his horse.

This has never been a big thing in games I've played, but I sorta wonder if the personality's risk should be higher than that of the unit he's with. If he's advancing towards the enemy through skirmishers, won't they all try to shoot him?

Thank god, I've never been in a situation myself, but if there is a massed column of men bearing down on me I think I would just be getting off as many shots as I can at the great mass rather than trying to pick out individual officers with a notoriously inaccurate musket. Although, skirmishing riflemen or sharpshooters would have more nerve to do this though, possibly picking out standard bearers (to win trophies) over officers who could be captured and exchanged. Not sure if there were any general orders at the time concerning this.

However, as line and general officers traditionally led from the front (so they could be seen by their own men – and hopefully not in the back) over the noise of the battlefield, so one would have thought there could be a higher chance of being injured/killed.

Napoleon's Marshals were famous for getting shot (injured/killed) on the battlefield whether in the front or charging around giving orders, such was the mass of ‘metal' flying around. So maybe dice is a way of deciding how (un)lucky they were. Unfortunately, battles hinged on such events.

…not shot in the back…

Increasing frontages for 25mm figures. Hmmm.
I'm not sure I would want to reduce historical accuracy to make the figures fit.
I think I would increase the man:figure ratio for 25mm to, say, 50:1, so a 100man company would be represented by 2 figures instead of 3 for 15mm figures. They may ‘look' a little light, but attrition made almost all companies/squadron significantly under strength.
This would also mean figures would take longer before being removed, and some of the tables would have to be adjusted for the different ratio.

Hi.

B Quarries rules were what got me into wargaming in general and Napoleonic in particular. His second edition was a good overview of Napoleonic warfare et al (at the time) and still have copy somewhere. Helped me learn by 33 times table to boot!

However the hobby has well and truely moved on and there are much better rule sets now available for whatever particular aspect of napoleonic wargaming your into. Much more rooted in modern scholarship on Napoleonic warfare. Most rules still seem to address the differences in quality between armies and troop types, just not same way as Mr Quarrie.

General D' Armee is our preferred, more complex set in our club / group but trying out Valor and Fortitude at moment for a quicker (and free) game. I like DBN for a quick club night game too.

cheers

Yes John the Red, BQ was my introduction to 'real' wargaming too and I have fond memories of some fun games.

I look forward to seeing the new edition of Gen d'armee. I think Lasalle II is also a great current set and there are plenty of others (in fact, traditionally as many as there are Napoleonic players . . . :~)

Cheers,
John

Johann

agree re the fond memories

I was tempted by Lasalle II as have Blucher which I have enjoyed. How do you find Lasalle II ?

cheers

Thanks for your comments John the Ref & Johann. Looks like I look into General D'Armee

@ 4th Cuirassier

Ooops
My comment above is not quite right.
I'd forgotten that frontages and figure:man ratio (& ground scale) are intricately linked. I should have applied some basic maths.

So, to maintain historical accuracy, if the figure frontage has to be increased to enable 20/25mm figures to fit, proportionally the figure:man ratio also has to be increased.

For 15mm, 33 men equal 1 figure in three ranks in 11 files (in 8 yards or 8 mm), and in two ranks of 16 files (spread across 11.6 (16x8/11) yards or rounded down to a 11mm frontage.)

Equally, taking BQ's frontages for 25mm figures, of 11 mm frontage per figure in three ranks would equal 15 (11x11/8) files which gives a 45:1 figure:man ratio. And this ratio for the two rank formation equates to 22 files over 16 (22x8/11) yards or 16mm frontage.

The same approach also needs to be apples to the cavalry frontages.

So, if frontages are changed so must the figure:man ratio if the ground scale is to be maintained; and other tables in the BQ rules relating to figures also modified.

So, if frontages are changed so must the figure:man ratio if the ground scale is to be maintained; and other tables in the BQ rules relating to figures also modified.

IIRC this mainly affects the casualty infliction tables; I just changed these to percentages anyway and stopped mucking about with 'figures' as a unit of game currency (except for figure removal for aesthetic purposes – until I collected 6mm figures and stopped bothering with that too).

if the figure frontage has to be increased to enable 20/25mm figures to fit, proportionally the figure:man ratio also has to be increased.

Well, you can either alter the man:figure ratio to keep the ground scale at 1mm = 1 yard, or you can reset the ground scale instead. If a figure takes up 8 yards of real space (and Le Feu Sacre agrees with Brucie here), and a figure takes up 11mm (which most plastics do), then 11mm = 8 yards, i.e. a yard = 1.375mm.

This has the drawback of shrinking the playing space, plus you really need to make your own bespoke ruler whereon 100 yards are marked off every 13.75cm instead of every 10. In practice I've found that ignoring it and going with 10cm = 100 yards still works fine. As long as the unit frontages are relatively correct, it all still plays OK. The issue with going to a 45:1 man:figure ratio is that French Waterloo era battalions become nine figures in six companies, for example, while Prussian and British ones become 13 figures in eight Zugs or ten companies respectively. None of these works as well as 33:1.

We kinda have to accept that Napoleonic battles are simply very hard to "simulate" on a table. Whatever set you play, you're going to have accept there'll be some inaccuracy you're prepared to overlook, which in your reading of the period is OK to do, because it's not that important. Others will choose to tolerate different inaccuracies, which is why there are hundreds of sets of rules.

There are issues common to pretty well all rules I have seen that are basically insoluble:

1/ if you represent different battalion formations by the arrangement of the same figures, squares proportionately are always the wrong size.

2/ all formations purporting to be a line or column are also too deep. The more ranks of figures you have on bases, the more inaccurate the depth.

3/ units that peeled the third rank away to skirmish kept the same frontage, but became two ranks deep. As we don't have a detachable third rank, the only way to represent this is to detach a third of the figures (if possible given base sizes and count) and either shorten the frontage (incorrect) or space the remaining figures out more widely on the original frontage (also incorrect).

4/ If you space cavalry miniatures at distances that look realistic in the figure scale, i.e. boot to boot, they conflict with the infantry frontages. That is, you can get an Airfix, HaT etc cavalry figure into about a 15mm frontage. If 15mm equals 11 yards, as it does for infantry, then your cavalry figure is 11 riders wide and is hence 22 riders in two ranks. A cavalry unit will thus contain 50% more figures than an infantry unit of equal headcount – 600 men are 18 foot minis but 27 cavalry, and so on. A cavalry regiment of 400 men will contain the same number of figures – 18 – as a 600-man infantry battalion.

5/ When a column attacks the centre of a line, most of the line can't fire. At 200 yards they can because the ends of the line are firing at a relatively shallow angle across their front. But at point-blank range, the ends would be firing inwards along the length of their line, which didn't happen. So in line vs column encounters, the line has to bend into a u-shape for the ends to fire. Descriptions of this happening are vanishingly rare.

There are others. Abstracting them away, or inventing stuff like "zones of control" to rationalise away oversize bases, sidesteps the issues rather than solving them. Zones of control are an especial peeve of mine; at Waterloo, cavalry rode through Wellington's gun line and among his squares. What was this "control", exactly? Which contemporary writers mention them, or talk of "stands" or "elements"?

John the Red is right to say that "the hobby has well and truely moved on", but to say that current rule sets are therefore better assumes that this movement is linear and has a direction. It may not – it may be circular, and return to previous points. For example, Glenn Pearce, a current rules author who posts here occasionally, asserts that there are no differences in unit quality from one army to another, that formations are a needless detail, that it doesn't matter what figures go on a base, and that Napoleonic and ACW battles don't look any different. These principles are are a return to Donald Featherstone's of sixty years ago. In DF's ACW rules, a unit was half a box of Airfix figures, in four stands of five figures. You rolled a dice for each stand and whoever rolled lower lost a figure. Napoleonics? Same. SYW? Same. FPW? Same.

So I question whether where rules are now is necessarily further ahead than where they were in the past. Quarrie's rules were better than Featherstone's but WRG were worse than Quarrie. For my money we just go through a cycle of complexity – > simplicity -> complexity moderated by some current preoccupation or trendy mechanism, until someone thinks of a new one.

great post (even the bits I disagree with!)

4 – some rules of course do precisely this, including WRG 1685-1845 and GW Jeffrey's first set, IIRC.

5 – this is absolutely true, and seems to be a wide-spread calibration error: company-frontage attacks were stopped (or not) by the firepower of ~2-3 companies, not the whole battalion. A whole battalion would just 'win'. BQ's rules could probably handle this without too much modification, actually.

@ Whirlwind

Yes, BQ and others have charging units take a morale test at half-way, wherein they score lower – and possibly falter – the more casualties they've taken. This encourages defenders ahistorically to open fire at the maximum range of about 150 yards, so as to inflict as many casualties as possible before the morale test.

The variant I play allows the defender instead to declare fire against attackers at a specific range of his choice. There are progressively higher morale penalties for both of them the closer the range at which this volley is delivered. Casualties are almost wholly irrelevant because it's only one volley and there are usually only half a dozen figures firing it. What matters is whether your unit will stand – or charge home – when fire is held until 30 yards' range.

If the defenders stand they get to fire, and if this stops the attackers, a firefight develops. If the attackers are in column they usually Retreat as a result of this firefight, because they are either gradually out-shot by the line, or become unformed if they try to deploy. Either of these tends to unhinge them.

If they advance already deployed in line and are halted, then the ensuing firefight is quite even. The line at this point may want to countercharge, because the attackers may still be wavering, whereas if you let them win a firefight it could soon be your unit who's wavering.

Attacks where the attackers lose a third of their strength to volleys don't happen. Essentially this approach gives you d'Erlon-at-Waterloo results where, even though stopped, the attackers may seriously pressure the defenders – who need to come up with something to change the game.

I know they're iconic and all that- I have the little red original PSL book and a 1st edition of Napoleon's campaigns in miniature- but I thought they were a useless set of rules.

I felt the games moved with an absolutely glacial pace, both because of the interminable mental arithmetic required for every tiny (and there were lots of them) sub-action one had to perform, and because the move lengths were so short that the chances of actually achieving anything like a breakthrough or surprise move was negligible.

A more minor niggle, but one which showed how shaky the rules' basic premises were, was melee. Here the stacking up of attack factors etc meant that elite units, especially heavy cavalry, would just massacre each other. For Hussars etc, with much lower factors, it felt like they were fighting with their sabretaches rather than their sabres. The whole concept of margins of combat capability was completely overlooked.

We started out using the classic Young and Lawford 'Charge!' set, albeit the 'advanced' version, and we went back to them for years after trying a few Quarrie games. Charge was as simplistic as the Quarrie rules were spuriously elaborated, but in my/our view they gave a much quicker, more satisfying game. Move distances were long enough to make the next enemy action was much more difficult to predict, and that made you really think about actual tactical problems like how to deploy reserves.

Neither set (or really any of the others back then), attempted to introduce and command and control. In a strange way the leaden minutiae of the Quarrie rules did, entirely inadvertently, reproduce a kind of combat friction, but not one that was stimulating to engage with.

Sorry- I know that's all a bit negative. If they brought people into wargaming, they can't be all bad!

We also have to remember that for many of us here in the U.S., BQ was one of the few available rulesets around in the 1970s. I enjoyed them at the time and our group made changes to them that aligned with how we thought they should go. But overall, we had fun and enjoyed them.

Extremely wide files is something I've encountered in several otherwise carefully thought-out rules sets over the years, the figure:man ratio (given the ground scale) being better suited to 10s than to 15s.

It seems to me most reasonable that infantry should have the same file width whether formed in 3 ranks or 2. (Regulation might be 22", perhaps wider given how some armies carried the musket. Shaking out in action perhaps to 30" seems not terribly implausible. I like the common ca. 24" assumption.)

Actual files for cavalry should be half again as wide — but including an assumed gap between squadrons of 1/3 frontage brings that up to twice the effective width (ending up with 1/6 a squadron width on either flank of a line of bases).

Overall, I think Quarry asked good questions; some of his answers have been improved upon in terms of historical research, more elegant mechanics and user-friendly presentation. This is of course largely a matter of opinions, but I think probably he would agree with some of those assessments!

I find that recent trends in fashion are, relative to my taste, a mixed bag, but again I find variety a spice of life.

Quarry's book may be worth reading just for engagement with the ideas, even if the rules set one ends up using is something more tailored to fit one's own preferences.

Just adding a note to say thanks for your thoughts on withholding fire 4th Cuirassier. An interesting mechanic.

@ LBR

You're welcome. If you're interested the reserved fire table I use looks like this:

range*morale penalty*French / veterans attacking*British / veterans defending*
250-300*0*0*0*
200-250*-1*0*0*
175-200*-1*0*0*
150-175*-2*-1*-1*
125-150*-2*-1*-1*
90-125*-4*-1*-1*
60-90*-4*-2*-1*
35-60*-6*-4*-2*
0-35*-8*-6*-4*

So a generic British line battalion is being charged by a French one. We'll assume there are other French battalions advancing against other British ones standing alongside, i.e. similar combats are taking place or are imminent to either side. We'll further assume everyone's skirmishers have neutralized each other, that any artillery has fallen silent as the troops close with each other, and nobody's taken any losses yet.

The British player elects to reserve fire till the French get to 35 yards. He has to test morale see whether his men will stand if he waits that long.

Base morale 7;
Add the difference between two average dice – say +1 ( = 8);
Strength at start of move: full +2 ( = 10);
Formation: formed +2 ( = 12);
Supported? Yes +2 ( = 14);
Flanks neither secure nor insecure: +1 ( = 15);
Defenders first fired at: 35 yards – 4 ( final result = 11). For anyone other than British and veterans, this last would have been a deduction of 8.

A result of 10+ for the receivers means "do whatever you like", i.e. in this case they do indeed get to stand and to fire a single volley at 35 yards' range.

The oncoming French are already deployed in line 18 figures wide. Of the 18 figures in the defending battalion, only 13 are directly opposite the attackers because of the wider frontage (the French are on 11mm each, the British 15mm). The 13 rounds to 14 figures firing, but essentially only ¾ of the defenders can fire.

British line fire factor is 2; plus fire die roll let's say +1; +3 for the range, for a total fire score of 6 which for 14 figures (firing two deep) gives 178 casualties. That's for a whole move, however, i.e. five volleys and we only fired one. So the casualties are 1/5 of 178, which is 36 men.

36 men hit by a volley fired by ~450 men at 35 yards' range. Sounds about right?

So next the French test their morale.

Base morale 6;
Add the difference between two average dice – say +1 ( = 7);
Strength at start of move: full +2 ( = 9);
Casualties suffered this move – up to 10%: -1 ( = 8);
Formation: formed +2 ( = 10);
Supported? Yes +1 ( = 11);
Unit is: Charging + 1 ( = 12);
Defenders first fired at: 35 yards -6 (final result = 6).
For anyone other than French and veterans, the last deduction would have been 8 rather than 6.

A result of 6 for a charging attacker means "Halt".

So the point-blank volley has stopped the French and we now have two lines face to face at 35 yards' range. The British can now fire the rest of their move's volleys, but that's risky because have simply stopped and nothing stops them returning the fire. This could result in a quite equal close-range firefight. Or, if the British now charge, the French have to see if they in their turn will stand when firing at less than 35 yards' range. Usually they will Retire or Retreat, so there will be no volley and no mêlée either.

If you are the Austrians, Prussians etc defending, generally you want to start firing at the French somewhere between 90 and 150 yards out. Any sooner and you won't trouble them, but leave it any later and you risk your unit retiring spontaneously.

If you don't deter the attackers enough to stop them closing with you, a mêlée ensues. I kind of don't think mêlées really happened outside buildings, so if one happens, I just go straight for the morale test in the next move to see who stands and who doesn't. I don't bother to compute mêlée losses unless one side is running away.

The result of the above is that if the French are indeed stopped by the volley and countercharged, they will probably rout next move, having suffered only the 36 musketry casualties. The defenders won't take any casualties at all. This means the defeated French will rally very quickly – as soon as they're not being fired at, typically. Unless they have been followed up by cavalry or something, this seems to me to be a more typical outcome than losing a third of their numbers to firepower and mêlée, which hardly ever happened.

The modifier that unhinged the French attack wasn't the -1 for musketry losses but the -6 for the range at which it was fired.

Have occasionally come back to this thread over the last few months, wrote a little bit about some of the ideas in it on my blog: link

"The Prussians and Austrians are unplayable, unrealistically so"

That.

I tried to play Austrians. It was a labour of love :~)

Cheers,
John