"Napoleon’s Battles Redux" Topic

Hello – is there a more modern an updated version of Avalon Hill's Napoleon's Battles out there. I think even the 4th edition would not be well received by my gaming group. We loved these rules in the 90's but times change! Thanks in advance for the recommendations.

There's a group in Indianapolis playing their own version. Get me an e-mail address, and I'll try to get them in touch with you.

As someone whose club plays a (heavily modified) 1st edition NB, and probably will until we all go west, I'm curious – what would modernizing/updating the rules look like? What is it that modern groups look for in rules that disqualifies 1990s designs?

I understand arguments that NB may not well represent aspects of the period that a gamer thinks are important (that's why we've heavily modified it), but the basic game engine seems about as simple and ambiguity-free as a rules set at this scale could be.

Napoleon's Battles was my first real set of Napoleonic rules. I love them, always have. As someone that owns all the versions I'll probably end up playing 1st ed when I start back up.

NB was my 1st enjoyable set of Nap. rules and as longas I played then one Corp vs. one Corp they were great. The desire to plY large battles always led to issues. Now I just prefer simpler rules for anything, accepting stylized over realistic.

The 4th edition is available here:

link

I have a copy, but never played them

Kim

I have just sold my copy of 4th edition. I joined a club in 2017 which had had Naps Battles as their only Napoleonic set for nearly 25 years and as a keen player of the Napoleonic period I joined in, bought the rules and over 7 years became increasingly frustrated by some of the anomalies in the rules. I never really liked the opposed dice roll thing, but accepted it as a mechanism ( very frustrating to fire a number of units without scoring a single hit!). I also felt that is was far too biased towards the French, even when they were not being led by Napoleon. I also found the command radii very restricting, especially if playing Russian or Prussian.
The thing that has finally made me lose patience with the set are the rules on changes of formation; to get a brigade from March column to line takes two whole turns, involving a change first to column, then to line with all movement being based on the line speed of the unit ( which is usually about 1/4 to 1/5 of column speed ) meaning that many units are basically marching on the spot for an hour or so. In contrast, a brigade can occupy a built up area and deploy in a single turn and are able to fire from the cover of the BUA. That is not well thought out and, from my reading of Napoleonic drill manuals, does not reflect reality.
I started wargaming 55 years ago, have played many rulesets from modified version of "Charge" through Richard Butler's "Sound of the Guns", the original "Field of Glory", " Black Powder", "Age of Eagles", "Over the Hills", " Soldiers of Napoleon", General d" Armee " and Bloody Big Battles". All of them, even Field of Glory (badly written and laid out, but decent mechanisms) have given me more enjoyment than the pedantic slog through most games of Napoleon's Battles.

Manners, Steamingdave! I have no happy memories of NB myself. But Aspern asked a perfectly civil question, which deserved a perfectly civil answer. That the rules evidently are--or had been--pleasing to himself and his mates is sufficient.

When someone posts telling everyone how generally great or accurate NB is, or asks whether we'd recommend it, we can both tell our stories.

@robert piepenbrink
In what way was I being uncivil to the original poster? He clearly feels that Naos Battles is not a set of rules that will suit his group today. I set out the ways in which I find them unsatisfactory and mention a number of rule sets, including some modern ones which I have enjoyed more.
Free speech is not forbidden in my country, and I will not be lectured by you, or any one else, when I express my honest opinions.

We can discuss free speech in the United Kingdom in some other venue, Steaming. ("Pre-crime hate speech?" Really?) And I'd have done this privately if you were a paid member. But expressing an honest opinon of, say, a newly married couple's chances of happiness to the married couple, or an honest opinion of various children to their mother, can still rate as bad manners. Aspern clearly says "we loved these rules" and asks for an updated version, not a critique. Everyone else sympathized, tried to find him what he was looking for or narrow down the search. You came along and announced "well, you should love some other rules instead."

If when someone asks how to cook a steak you tell them to go vegan, you're not helping.

The 4th Edition is still the most "advanced" edition, but to be honest, most of its DNA is NB1. In fact, I often go back to my copy of NB1 because I prefer the clarity of the Avalon Hill rules layout. NB4 just adds a few more optional rules and some interesting ways to tweak unit stats to reflect history. It also allows the creation of smaller units during scenario design to better reflect historical OBs.

Some other changes…there is a (reduced) chance that units might self-rally without an attached general. Likewise a unit out of its general's command span can roll for activation despite this, but infantry and foot artillery can never get more than a half-move this way. There are also some changes to fighting vs built-up areas, e.g. A double hit is needed to remove a single figure from a deployed unit (like with unlimbered artillery) and attackers use their LN modifier even when in column, if attacking a BUA.

+1 Steamingdave2

Aspern1809 have y'all tried Age of Eagles? It's a fairly good rules with slightly abstract rules but play well. The skirmishing is too abstract for me, but you could modify them to fit your playing style.