Napoleon's Battles 4th Edition Review

The 4th Edition of Napoleon's Battles had finally been released!

Why am I so excited? This is, in my personal opinion, THE rules set by which grand tactical wargaming in the Napoleonic era has been measured for over 25 years. The first edition of Napoleon's Battles was published by Avalon Hill and packaged as part of their book shelf series. When Avalon Hill was bought and ceased to exist, many worried that the demise of the rules set had come. Luckily Bob Coggins and Craig Taylor, the game designers, were able to acquire the rights to the rules and two further iterations of the rules have been published.
Sadly, Bob and Craig are no longer among us, but Bob placed the rights to the game in the hands of Javier Gámez and Antonio Diaz. This will let Napoleon's Battles live on for the next generation of young Napoleons and Wellingtons to test their mettle.

First Impressions:

Napoleon's Battles is being distributed by Caliverbooks in the UK. The price was £36.50 plus shipping and handling. The ordering process was simple and I received my shipment within 6 days of placing the order here in the United States. Caliver has never disappointed me with orders and their service is great.
I understand that On Military Matters will be offering distribution in the U.S., but this old gamer did not have the patience to wait.
The rules arrive as a single hardback book, 184 pages long. The standard to the production and quality is on a par with the released publications of Warlord Games and Games Workshop. The text is easily legible and and the rules are clearly subdivided.
The book is divided into the following sections:

Introductory Material, 25 pages
Standard Rules, 38 pages
Optional Rules, 39 pages
Scenarios and Battles, 22 pages and
Scenarios and Charts, 53 pages

Many of my comparions will reference back to the earlier editions of Napoleon's Battles, especially the 3rd edition, as many of you probably already own an earlier version. For those of you that have, here is a quick overview of the Napoleon's Battles.

Napoleon's Battles is grand tactical game of miniature wargaming. What does this mean? The rules are written with the idea that you are a commander, ideally a Corps or Army commander attempting to defeat your opponent on a large battle field. The main combat element in this game is generally the "brigade". A brigade is defined as between 3 and 7 stands of infantry. This is the equivalent. of appoximatly 1400-3400 men. This can be a regiment in some armies or multiple regiments combined to create a force large enough to match this size. The rules can be used for multiple scale sized figures and the Introductory m\Material section gives good guidelines as to how to make this happen.The key component of Napoleon's Battles is the use of generals and command and control. Unlike many games where the general is only vaguely important for being "in command" and is more important for attached combat modifiers, this system makes them the center piece of maneuver and morale. The quality of your general and the country's inherent command structure is what determines the ability of your command to be be a maneuverable attacker, or loans itself better to a defensive posture. The lowest general represented in the game is the divisional general.

If you are looking for the detail of company and battalion formations with skirmishers,etc. This is not the game for you. You (the upper level commander) are not concerned with those details and are concerned with moving divisions and corps against your enemy.

The Rules:

Although reorganized to be clearer the turn organization has remained mostly unchanged. Several "steps" in each phase as listed and clearly marked as optional when using specific rules, such as the optional weather rules. Many of the rules descriptions have been re-written to make them clearer and leave less misunderstanding. This has been well done and has eliminated a lot of page flipping to find a rule. ALL movement is now clearly separated out and marked in Chapter 4, Movement Phase. The prior editions had many movement rules interspersed in the combat section, making it difficult to find those rules at time.
The rules use quite a few pictures to clarify the meaning of rules. This rules set used actual photos of figures and graphics to display meaning, making it clear for the miniature gamer. Although there are some ways the rules are written that make it clear this was not written by native speaker, it is clear what their meaning is. The rules have been proof read and on a first read through there are no blatant misspelling and grammatical errors that would impact the enjoyment of reading the rules.

The historical scenarios provided are much smaller in scale than the prior edition's release. As they are integrated into the book, the format limits the ability to make the size larger. The downside? The OOB for the armies are very small and can be difficult to read for many people. Although label and stats are provided the stats are equally difficult to read. This problem continues on when you get tot the information sheets provided beginning at page 157. There is a lot of data squeezed into a small space. The pattern continues on the Game Card. The size of the text makes the sheet not very usable as quick reference as many players will be peering over it closely to try to read it. The designers will be offering PDF versions of the Data Sheets and the Game Card online soon and hopefully they will be more legible.

In the back of the book are provided sheets with Templates that can be photocopied as well as markers for Rout, Disorder, React, etc. These would also be nice as a printable format online, and may follow in the future. The templates are the same as the earlier editions, so the nice hard clear templates that the prior publisher sold can still be used.

Changes from Prior Editions in the Standard Rules:

Passage of Lines: Prior to this edition, movement through friendly units was free. That has changed in this edition. A unit will still become disordered passing through a disordered or routed unit. That has not changed. The big change is when a combat unit (infanty,cavalry) passes through a friendly combat unit. The moving unit will now pay a movement cost as if passing through rough terrain for whatever depth of the unit they pass through. This will dramatically impact the quick passage of a rear guard up through a compact divisional command, but will only minimally affect a column passing through a formation deployed in line.

Artillery Fire on Built Up Areas: The new edition has added the feature that allows for artillery to permanently reduce the cover modifier and area offers. If the firing artillery doubles a unit's modified roll, not only does the unit take the designated casualty, but it also reduces that area's modifier by -1 down to 0. In addition, if the damage occurs, a die roll is made to determine if a fire occurs. If it does, a unit in the area automatically becomes disordered, and at the end of the fire phase must attempt to put the fire out.

General Fire modifier on BUAs: In order to inflict a casualty on a unit in a BUA you must double their roll, both for Artillery and combat units. This will make it much harder to dislodge a unit without assaulting the area.

Fighting in Build up Areas: Infantry units fighting over an area will fight with their line combat modifiers, both attacker and defender. A unit deployed in a town must be doubled in order to have a casualty inflicted.

All-Out attack and dismounted cavalry are now optional rules.

Optional Rules worth looking into:

Optional rally rules. A unit normally must rally only when a general is attached. With this rule a -3 modifier is taken to represent the lack of a higher level commander present. If a an unmodified 10 is rolled things go REALLY bad and a unit performs a rout move of at least 1/2 its rout distance toward the table edge and take another casualty.

Multiple Player Games: This is a new addition, allowing for the usage of mutliple players on each side to add the difficulty of battlefield communication. Orders and messages are used to discuss information between commands on the friendly side. Messengers are used and only when your "personal commander" and the teammates "personal commander" are touching on the tabletop make you discuss freely. This is recommended to be a timed action to eliminate long letter writing. Messengers may be killed and messages intercepted.

Moving Artillery Modifier: I love this rule, this limited the effect of creeping artillery fire, adding an additional -2 modifier if ANY movement factors are used.

Double Batteries: This addresses the infamous Russian effect very well. A battery of 10-12 guns will now take 3 hits vs 2, and only be -2 with a casualty/-4 with 2 vs a -3 with a normal battery and 1 hit.

Abilities: They have listed almost two pages of abilities to add to units at a cost from the standard unit cost. This can be positive and negative and the opponent does not know these abilities before the battle starts. This considered to add "fog of war" to the game. I could see this easily for scenario building where units performed above or below their usual effectiveness.

There is much more than what I have listed here, but if its peaked your interest please give the rules a try.

All-in-all this is a great set of rules that are worth the price asked by Caliver books. The packaging is well done and seems durable, the type is clear to read and the structure well organized, and the rules changes make for some intriguing changes to the tactics of fighting. I look forward to trying the rules changes on the table top and seeing their effect on the game.

Until next time, Enjoy and Happy Gaming.

Divisional Commander Review

As well as playing various GW game systems, I love to play historicals as well. Napoleonics is especially high on my list. I have played Napoleon's Battles since the 80's. For those of you not familiar with the rules, Napoleon's Battles was the brain child of Bob Coggins and Craig Taylor, and is a grand tactical set of rules. What is grand tactical? Grand tactical is primarily concerned with you as the overall commander of a battlefield army. This means keeping control of your army's ability to maneuver, reach its objectives, and retain your fighting force's ability to exist on the field as a fighting force. The rules are not concerned with such things as flanks, how the battalion/regimental commander has you exactly deployed, or specific morale of your battalions. That is the responsibilty of your lower level commanders. Why do I explain this? It is because Divisional Commander is a games system to compliment your existing army for Napoleon's Battles, but is set with much for detail as standard tactical rules set.
This last year, Capitan Games purchased the ownership and publishing rights of Napoleon's Battles, and have determined to offer 3 levels of rules for your Napoleonic enjoyment. Divisonal Commander answers the tactical needs and we will be looking at their rules.



First Impressions:
Ordering Divisional Commander was rather easy, and the shipping was quite prompt. The rules arrived in excellent condition, although I seem fortunate in that respect. The envelope for the rules was rather beaten and it was torn in several locations, especially the corners. I can only assume the hardboard backer that they placed inside the envelope with the rules absorbed most of the punishment. Capitan Games would do better with a more sturdy envelope, especially when shipping overseas.
The rules themselves are a softbound set with a rather excellent look. The look is that of a journal at first glance with handsome artwork and a professional look. The spine appears to be solid and well glued. The outer skin is firm and should hold up to reasonable usage rather well.On the inside the text is for the most part well sized and easily legible. The exception is the Index, the Orders of Battle and the country datasheets in the back. These definitely need a better eye and lighting to easily read. The Orders of Battle are not a problem as a person would read them in detail, The Index should have been larger as this should be a quick reference during games and be easily legible at a glance. The datasheets would have best been layed out in landscape format with one country per page vs the portrtait layout with two countries per page. Capitan Games has alleviated this problem by offering pdf downloads of the datasheets and quick reference sheets from their website.
The pages are layed out nicely with a watermark used on each page. Although clearly visible, the watermark does not interfere with ease of read and add character to the rules. I've seen comments that the rules do not have enough margin to the spine, but I do find that to be the case. The typesetting is clear and the neat, a very professional and legible format. The graphic explainations are clear and easily understood.
The rules have used and amusing tool for the their rule clarifications and explainations. They have the image of a British Colour Sergant (CS White), which is used repeatedly throughout the rules to highlight important facts in the rules, give explainations, and point out key areas.

The Rules:
First note for the veteran Napoleon's Battles gamers. This is NOT a rules set mirroring the NB rules, providing added detail for a lower level of command. These rules use a completely turn organization and game mechanic than Napoleon's Battles. The plan was simply to let you use your miniatures with these rules without having to rebase.
The basic maneuver units are battalions of infantry, regiments for cavalry, and a battery for artillery. The scale is 10 cm = 150 meters. Each figure represents approximately 20-40 men, and a battery represents 3-4 guns. The designers have provided conversion for the use of other scales, but the rules measurements are designed around 15mm figures being used.
This system uses a wider variety of formations compared to NB, seven for infantry, and five for cavalry.
The game system as a whole is an orders based system, with the orders being general orders (Attack, Support, Defend, etc) that are placed by the corps/divisional commanders. It is easier to make this orders if you are in command radius of your higher command. The brigade commanders place more specific orders which are restricted based upon their orders from above. If, for example, your upper command places a "Defend" order, no orders may be given at the brigade level that would move the unit closer to the enemy units. As expected at this level the manuevers a much more detailed than the Napoleon's Battles set. Much of the ability to execute the orders given then falls on the quality of the commander and this ability varies based on country and the ability of the individual.
Small Arms fire, Artillery and Melee are based upon dice. In order to cause casualties in the shooting phase for small arm fire, each stand will roll a die and must beat a standard value based upon range. The better the troop the larger the die (these are called shooting dice) that is used. Poor quality troops might only use a d6 while the best might use a d12, making the change to do a casualty much higher. Artillery damage is based upon gun size and accuracy. This means you might miss your target, but you could still do damage, including to your own troops if you try to place that fire too close to your ranks. Quite a feature i like. We've all come across those gamers that try to "thread the needle" with their fire. Now this gamble might have consequences.
Melee is fought in a somewhat similar technique as small arms fire, a die is rolled for each stand. These are called Combat Dice and the die used is based upon the quality of the unit. Only those stand in direct contact get to actually roll dice, the others are either reinforcement stands or non-combatant stands. The reinforcement stands can do damage although it is minimal compared to those rolling dice.
Morale is used throughout the game in many situations including when a unit begins taking levels of casualties in their unit. Other checks include when being charged, the charger's ability to close, etc. Once again a die is used to determine this, and having attached leaders can be a great asset to keeping a unit in the fight.

Conclusion:
Divisional Commander is an intriguing set of rules which provides a much greater detail to gaming than the grand tactical rule of Napoleon's Battles. These rules are not for the gamer looking for a quick play set, but if you are a gamer that wants meat and bones Napoleonic detail, and the ability to show the features of this era's warfare such as skirmishers, elite troops, multiple formations from square to echelon to open order, this might be the rules set for you. This doesn't mean that rules does not have its weaknesses.
The following items bothered me as I read through the rules, and will keep a gamer from being able to just pick up the rules and start pushing troops around without some considered planning. The designers have made with the rules with all the necessary data needed, but at the same time made them vague enough to not let me just push around a unit as is. As an example I will take a Russian Line Infantry Battalion. The data gives me options in Experience, Drill Points (these are used to change formation), Morale, Shooting Dice, and Combat Dice. All of these come with a top and bottom range, but no guidance as how best to assign these values. This is left to the gamer to determine if the battalion deserves to roll a d6 or a d8 for shooting and/or combat. Is their morale a 3, 4 or 5? How is this possbility tied into their experience? Although the rules include historical OOB's (Orders of Battle) for 4 historical engagements, they do not include what values the designers feel should be assigned to each unit. This would have gone a long way to give a new player insight into their rules what they would consider the "standard" unit would have for values. Is the aforementioned Russian battalion on the whole a better shooting unit, so a d8 would be used with a lower d6 used for the second line battalions, or is reversed that most would use a d6 and only the combat hardened units would use a d8? This is the great gray area in the game and will cause a lack of standarized play with the rules where personal bias for or against a country can strongly effect the outcome of a scenario.
Capitan Games plans of releasing scenarios for the game, and this will probably go a long way to remove the gray area and provide guidance for scenario design. Until then, this is rules set is not a set that is ready to play "out of the box" without research first.

Happy Gaming!

O&G Rampage Prep Part 3

I'm down to two weeks to Rampage and I'm getting under the gun, but hopeful to have everything painted in time. I just finished another special figs for my army.

I was at Adepticon 2014 with a friend and made a visit past the Forgeworld area and picked up their Orc command set. These two are now completed and I'm happy with the outcome.

I initially had in mind to use this as the command for Big Uns regiment, but after completing the standard bearer, I feel that this should be my BSB. The fig is just so much more dominant that the standard GW fig. I will use the GW standard bearer as my Big Uns standard now.

Time to get back to the paint table and push out some figs now! MWR here I come.

Adepticon 2014

I unfortunately this year did not get to take part in gaming at Adepticon, but was able to make it for a while for the Saturday session. My friend Kevin and I had a blast! We love looking around at all the games new and old and getting to reconnect with some people we haven't seen in a while.

We also got to stop and see a friend of ours that was working there as a vendor his name is Forrest Harris and he is very talented. If you are into Wild West miniature games, or need buildings for your Malifaux game check out his website.

www.knuckleduster.com

We spent quite a bit of time in the 40k hall checking out the team tournament and the vendors. Here are some pictures from the 40k hall.

 

 

Kudos to the gentlemen at Battlefoam for being so helpful. We also checked out the Warhammer Fantasy championship tournament. Lots of gamers and some real fun. There was some REAL fine work at the tournament and below are some of the pictures of the best I liked.

 

 

 

The highlight of the day? Getting to meet Graham McNeill and spend some time talking to him. I love the work he has done and recommend his work to anyone wanting a good read. He has a real passion for writing and you can tell he puts his all into his work. I loved getting his insight on the direction of the Horus Heresy series and how it is developing. Add to my list the upcoming book being released. It looks like a page turner.

Last buy not least, a few shots from the painting competition.

 

 

O&G Rampage Prep Part 2

Progress is continuing on my O&G Army for Midwest Rampage 2014. The tournament calls for 3000 points and as of today I have 839 points painted.

Here is my current progress I am trying to get my Black Orc unit painted up.

 

 

The centerpiece of the unit is a Black Orc Boss being carried by 4 other Black Orcs. I picked this up about 20 years ago in Germany and believe the manufacturer was Grenadier. I thought that it would add character to the unit and be a great unit filler. Here are a couple details:

 

Musician and Standard Bearer

 

Big Boss

 

 

I used a Dark Angels Green for a base coat on the Black Orcs, did a wash of Nuln Oil, layered with Waaagh Flesh followed by a highlight of Warboss Green. I defintiely wanted the Black Orcs to have a much darker tone than the standard Orcs.

Armour was painted with Boltgun Metal followed by a wash of Nuln Oil, drybrushed then with Ironbreaker. The leather parts were painted with Oiled Leather from Reaper Paints and washed with Devlan Mud.

 

Regarding basing which I am doing uniform throughout, I am using products from Woodland Scenics. after painting the base brown I lay down a thin layer of white elmers glue and dip the model in a container containing "Burnt Grass". After this has dried, I randomly place droplets of glue and dip in a a container of rock I chose. This is followed up by a fine green grass. If the base allows for it such as the trolls, I will add lichen to act as small shrubs and add "Field Grass" to act as dead foliage.

 

Now that I have these parts done, I am down to a giant and night goblins for my newer miniatures. Everything else is at least 20 years old and it will be nice to get paint on them and have a very unique looking army. Unit later....

O&G Rampage Prep Part 1

Well Midwest Rampage is approaching on May 17th and I am needing to build my O&G Army up. Painting has begun but has been painstakingly slow. Personal life can really cut into that hobby time.

I am needing to have 3,000 points of my army painted and am determined to get a completely painted army on the table this year. This is saying a lot as much of my army is now over 25 years old. Many of my figs date from the late 80s and have never seen a drop of paint. This makes my army also unique as I have a high percentage of metal figures in comparison to many fellow gamers.

This is my unit of trolls, completely painted and ready to go. I used GW color Rotting Flesh (Old color) as a base with a flesh wash then drybrushing the rotting flesh back on. I then came back and dry brushed with a mix of Rotting Flesh and Bleached Bone. Final drybrush was just Bleached Bone. I wanted to go for a more stoney look than a human fleshy look and I love the effect.

And this is my Mangler Squig. I used the new GW paints on this and the Paint system for Khorne for the mangler color. Base - Khorne Red, Wash - Carroburg Crimson, 1st layer - Wazdakka Red, 2nd layer - Squig Orange, drybrush - Kindleflame, glaze - Bloodletter. this was my first test with the techincal paints from GW and I used the Nugle's Rot on the tongue for a wet effect. I used the Typhus Corrosion and Ryza Rust for a good rust effect on all the chains, etc. I love the effect it gives. I've decided to go with yellow cloaks for the Night Goblins in my army. I love the look over the usual black. I used Leprous Brown as a base on the clocks, a shade of flesh wash, then layered in yellow working it lighter until a drybrush of complete yellow.