"2nd attempt: anyone still.playing soldiers of napoleon ?" Topic

I have just bought soldiers of napoleon, and had a couple of solo games to learn the rules. I had a good couple of games, but I wasn't convinced about certain aspects of it, and I just wondered what others thought ?

There were lots of posts and reviews when it first came out, but nothing since. Has it sunk.by the wayside ?

There's a fairly active FB group, but they obviously like the rules so won't really get into house ruling anything. Just wondered what the general consensus was after the initial hype ?

I tried a couple of games but it didn't really gel for me.

Not really answering your question, but I play Soldiers of God on occasion. There is a Facebook group fo rthe whole series:
Soldiers of…
link

No, its a game system with Napoleonic flavouring, it is not a Napoleonic game system. Gave up when it turned out that the Imperial Guard are virtually invulnerable among other major flaws. Sold my copy while people were still buying it. Others at my club have done the same and have similar views of the other "Soldiers of" system

Thanks for the replies, I should have asked before I bought them.

I liked aspects of it, but victory points for random objectives and units taking massive disruption points and not being removed until the end of turn, which could be 12 cards away, sort of put me off.

Can anyone recommend a FUN game for a 6x4 ft table, 3-4 brigades aside ? I'm thinking general d'armee 2 is really for a bigger game than that ? (Don't like black powder)

We enjoy playing it, the card system does force you to make decisions. It is probably best played for smaller games which is the main reason I am using it for South American wars, most of the battles were small and the decision making results in some closely contested games.
If you're not keen try Valour and Fortitude, at least the price is good.

Second the motion for trying out Valour and Fortitude, the game moves right along.

No knowledge of these particular rules but so far as I can judge from this forum and elsewhere there seems to have been a slew of Napoleonic rules in the last few years which generally don't seem to get much traction beyond a relatively small circle of enthusiasts. A crowded market and lots of individual perceptions of what the player regards as working for them. At the end of the day it's whether the individual likes them irrespective of who else might be playing with them hundreds of miles away.I sense Valour and Fortitude is doing ok not least because it's free and has the weight of Wargames Illustrated and the Perrys behind it. If I was a player not a painter I think that's where I'd be. Though I'd struggle to think of a time when there was a dominant set of Napoleonic rules in the same way there was WRG for Ancients.

V&F seems a bit black powder to me. But both are popular. Just not with me.
I used to play a house ruled Rank and File, so might just go back to that and steal the skirmish rules. I was hoping for something with more depth. Or spend ages tweaking SoN which sort of defeats the point. I suppose I could actually try and play V&F rather than dismiss it outright. Weird there are sooo many rules, but none are quite right.

V&F- Free is best.

Universal Napoleonics… I wish there was a popular universal basing, scale, and ruleset that was generally accepted and practiced by 90% of Napoleonic wargamers. Back in the Empire heyday here in the states, half the games I saw were based and played in Empire. Even though I never cared for them much, it was not very hard to find a game.

Emperor of the Battlefield has grabbed me.

Easy mechanics to learn. No cards, so you make your own luck or use historical tactics and combined arms. Have a plan if playing the encounter game. It really helps. Roads are useful and not just for decoration.

I like 1:1 games controlling a corps of about 30 units. Also multiplayer affairs. It has been played at the last two Britcons and will be played at Warfare in November.

There is a website with more info and a shop, though they are available both sides of the pond.

Yeah, I found them a bit of a disappointment to be honest.

I liked the sound of the ideas behind them and still feel if you play them with the small unit sizes and small actions that people seem to, they may give a good evenings gaming.

The victory points/random objectives concepts feel to my mind like just a way of having a decision that both sides can accept as the way of ending a game.

The marriage of the cards to the fighting and movement processes, in the games I have played, doesn't quite gel.

You often seem to end up managing a crisis at one location, that is divorced from the rest of your Division, due to the need to prevent a collapse.

The effect of having your attention diverted in this way is well represented but the paralysis that's induced, particularly if the enemy manages to batter some units early on, is too restrictive.

Sometimes meaning you spend a game stopping a disaster and not much else. Fun once or twice but annoying when its repetitive.

The "resources" you manage and allocate on the cards actually represent what you Brigade command would have to sort for himself and there's too much in the way of decisions for you to be involved in, at the expense of the rest of your command.

Yep it's very much a resource management game. I played it solo to learn the rules, and as such it was quite fun because random cards came up that made me change my strategy on the fly, and made the games unexpected. Which is pretty good for a solo game. But as you say the limited movements and victory points means you spend you points in one area at the expensive of another. In a real battle the left wing wouldn't wait whist you sorted out the right wing. The worst bit was having a heavy cavalry unit build up huge disruption points but still able to charge again and again until the end of turn. I decided I would only play it again if I house ruled no charging if more disruption than stands. I liked the skirmish rules though. I was hoping it would become the new ruleset, but maybe I should play a human before I totally give up on it (with the house rule)

I think they would be good for solo play for the reasons you mention.

Then of course you can House Rule your brains out, when you are the only one to please and I think SoN would prove pretty adaptable.

Cavalry wise I can't really comment as we shut cavalry out of things in the games we played to keep things simple. To be honest its a bit of a muddle to create a Divisional game and then to introduce dribbles of cavalry.

If you were an infantry Divisional commander you didn't see them that often and more than likely the cavalry didn't report to you.

So including them into the decision making process needed to run the game is really only introducing them as what amounts to an NPC who eats resources.

Soldiers of Napoleon is not unique in this, there have been lots of rules that work to a certain level of command but end up adding bits to make it "Napoleonic". Players expect to be forming Square for example, but you don't need that if there are no cavalry around and there no potential "Glorious Charges" (in the Mounted sense) if there' not a Nag on the table!