"Brigade Size Games - rules recommendations?" Topic

I'm looking for rules to play small, 25mm Napoleonic games but NOT skirmish. I'm thinking of from 6 to 10 battalions per side (battalions of 18 to 24 figures) with a battery or 2 in support; maybe a few squadrons of light cavalry and/or dragoons.

Any ideas?

General de Brigade, rules for 15mm or 25mm. They have a web page with a forum. Use google or Yahoo search engine.

cheers

Just my (current) personal favorites:

Lots of detail: From Valmy to Waterloo.

Good detail: General de Brigade.

A bit abstracted: Shako.

Piquet's "Les Grognards" or "Field of Battle".

I particularly enjoyed my first Napoleonic game of the latter. FoB removes some of the more controversial features of the original Piquet, but still keeps the unique flavour of those rules.

General de Brigade. Accept no imitations.

GDB definately

Your not specific enough. Dont buy general de brigade if you want something napeoleonic. Its just a bashemup. Blood and guts if you like that sort of thing but very unoriginal IMO.

Valmy would suite a small game though it is designed for bigger games. It certainly doesnt lack details and is one of the most realistic.

shako

Take a look at 'In the Name of Glory' Napoleonic rule's on the yahoo site groups.yahoo.com/group/itnog

You can also download for free 'Off to War' Napoleonic rule's.

Worth a look

General de Brigade. It's my 6th set of rules and I'm staying with it.

I would stay away from rules sets such as General de Brigade simply because you will not have enough figures even for a small battle! Most battalions at that scale demand at least 30 to 40 figures, its simply not good economics. I just cannot understand why people will play with a rules set such as GdB when you only have a limited amount of figures. Take my collection for example, I have about 30 French infantry battalions excluding everything else which with a rules set such as Shako or Valmy to Waterloo will give me a good Corps game. At the Gdb level I would only be able to field a small division!! One has to remember regardless of the aesthetic appeal of large battalions that the principal manouver element in the Napoleonic wars was the Corps and not the Division.
Cheers

The principle "stategic" formation was the corp, once you get to the blood and guts of the battle your using divisions and briagdes to take towns, plug a gap on the line and so on.

I play GDB and find the enjoyment of playing at brigade/ division and at times corp level to give the feel of what it was like to be in the mix of fight holding that ridge line or defending that town.

additionally if you have 30 french battalions then that gives you approximatly about 2 campaign strength corps plus artillery and cav. Thats a fantastic collection!!! based on that you could do senarios from bavaria, russia, italy and the peninsular very nicely and fight out the smaller actions of the time!!!.

Bear in mind that once you start playing most of the major campaigns and take a close look at oobs average battalion strengths start to drop below 30 and that makes things a little more accomodating.

The other thing about GDB i would like to say is the support forum has a host of friendly open-minded people willing to help all and sundry on napoleonic gaming :)

I like strategic level games such GA that allow me to play at a higher hirearchy, but don't rubbish the people or the ruleset just becasue you don't think its right for you.

At anyrate GDB is not for everyone and that fine no issue there, personal preferance is always a huge factor in this period as in other periods.

Well, you can have batallions of 30 to 40 miniatures, but not necessarily. I have played GdB with units of twenty-four figures at most- GdB are at a 1/20 figure ratio, and if you look at some of the unit strengths of the French and Russian armies at Leipzig, many were down to about 400 effectives or so. I have read of others that play GbB on a 1/30 figure ratio.

Personally, I like to field a brigade or division at most, as each individual regiment or batallion retains its own identity (and flag!) rather than being swallowed up in the faceless mob.

For a lot of gamers, too, the aesthetic is a big factor in the enjoyment of the hobby. For me, units of 8-12, 28mm miniatures representing a batallion leave me cold, and I suspect this is why some people do like gaming with the larger units. Different strokes I guess.

Blimey Stavka that was well timed lol……