During Call to Arms 2024 last year, K walked up to our little vintage game to tell us that he'd been a wargamer for years, and that he even had some 20mm Napoleonic armies. He uses them to fight battles with his son, who he had with him.
Well, one chat led to another, and a couple of weekends ago we met at his place for a battle. K uses the delightfully simple, fast-play and very entertaining rules to be found in Neil Thomas's Napoleonic Wargaming, published in 2009:
The rules don't have a catchy title, so I'll just have to refer to them as Neil Thomas' Napoleonic Wargaming Rules (or NTNWR). These are not the same as NT's famous One Hour Wargame rules.
What attracted me to them is that they have a variety of quirky but really quite fun looking game mechanics, while also being entirely compatible with my 4-bases per unit organisation.
The scenario we played pitted most of Wallmoden's Corps, albeit beefed up a bit with Prussian dragoons and the Russian Leib Grenadiers, against the flower of the French Army in 1813, commanded by K. He had much better cavalry than me but also a lot of terrible infantry, so it was going to be an interesting match.
As luck would have it, I was able to seize the wooded road in the centre with two of my best infantry regiments, the 73rd and the Russo-German legion. This was to have very important effects.
Wallmoden's left flank was cunningly refused, forcing K to make a long march around the flank to get at it. The Feld Battalion Bremen were only classed as levies, but the Prussian 2nd Dragoons, I hoped, would scare off any attempt to assault them.
On the right were the Estorff Hussars and the Lutzowers. These were by far my worst troops, so I hid them behind the woods. The Lutzowers were so bad they couldn't even form line and therefore had greatly reduced firepower. Not too far off, however, were the crack Leib Grenadiers and my Russo-German battery.
What makes NTNWR different is that it's an I-Go-You-Go system and firing, charging, melee and morale have all been radically simplified, so it clips along at a great pace and there's real scope for tactical suprises.
The really radical bit though, which has a transformative effect on the gameplay, is that close-order infantry units may only assault other infantry if they have a numerical superiority in terms of the number of bases they've got left. This forces players to attrit their enemy before attempting an assault, producing a linear style of deployment that, to my eyes, is very similar to actual Napoleonic warfare. When the charges finally go in, however, they're devastating, and there's very little prospect of recovery from a poor morale result.
K's sent three battalions against my centre to keep it occupied while manoevring against my left. I had every confidence that my Dragoons would make short work of his Chasseurs, however. The Guard Grenadiers looked a bit menacing though.
Supporting the attack in the centre was the Foot Artillery of the Guard, which had a much better chance of hitting than my Russo-German gunners. They were firing at long range at troops in cover, however, but K made up for this with some oustanding dice throws.
Sure enough, it was first blood to K, with the 73rd losing a base. I had them rated as only average troops, so they were quite lucky to survive the resulting morale test. This was not a good start, and my dice throwing was so dreadful that their much vaunted firepower was not having any effect.
If I'd been commanding the French, I probably would have assaulted the 73rd there and then, but K was worried about my dragoons and so decided to charge them with the 4th Chasseurs. This set off a running battle between the two that lasted for the rest of the game.
Meanwhile, on the left, K decided to have a pop at the Leib Grenadiers with the Empress' Dragoons. NTNWR seemed to suggest that three-deep infantry in line should have a fair chance against a frontal charge by cavalry, so I decided to give this a go.
And the ED's bounced right off! What was worse, they also got raked at short range by the RGL gunners and were then charged in flank by the Estorffs ...
.. who were victorious! I think K must have forgotten they were lurking behind the woods.
Things really started to go south for K from this point as the RGL and what was left of the 73rd finally started to find their marks, aided by the RGL artillery firing at short range. Within a couple of turns K's three centre battalions had sufferred catastrophic casualties, made worse by failed morale tests.
It wasn't all bad though. The 4th Chasseurs were also victorious, as it happens, but this still left K with only two viable battalions: the Guard and the 3rd Swiss. Neither had made much impact, however. Although the 4th Chasseurs had seen off the Dragoons, they were down to a single base, and the Guard was about to become rather isolated.
The Swiss, meanwhile, had spent the entire battle in the woods taking fairly ineffective pot shots at the Lutzowers. They were too far away to be of any assistance.
We called it a day at that point. It was such good fun that we've decided to do it again with armies twice the size at Call to Arms 2025, which is at the end of August.There'll be two generals on each side to manage the mayhem.
For those wondering about my French artillery, I'm hoping to have something to show in a few days.
Have a great weekend,
WM
Superb looking game, lovely figures and table and seems the rules give a great game.
ReplyDeleteIt was massive fun Donnie, and really nail biting once the firefight in the centre developed. When your troops are committed like this there's not much you can do about it except hope and pray!
DeleteI still have my Frog & Toad version of these rules if you want them. I modified them a bit for games with more than 8 units a side and tidied up some of the looser bits. I’ve seen them mentioned around the bazaars meaning others have found them useful! They used to be on my wiki, but I don’t maintain it (and I can’t find it, either).
ReplyDeleteOooh, yes please Jeffers! Please do drop me a line using the message form on the top right.
DeleteDun!
DeleteNothing has appeared in my email inbox, Jeffers. Should I try to contact you via your blog?
DeleteI’ll have another go but for belt’n’braces drop me a line on the blog and I’ll delete the comment when moderating.
DeleteCan I have a copy too?
DeleteHi Jeffers. I left you my contact details on your blog. Cheers, Matt
DeleteGreat to see your troops back on the table Matthew and those rules look very interesting - seems like you had the best of it!
ReplyDeleteIt was high time that I got the Leib Grenadiers into action, Ian, and they did brilliantly! There'll be more Russians because of this. They have special rules that make them quite ponderous, but also very very difficult to beat if you tackle them head on.
DeleteGreat looking game and the rules sound interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt plays like M&M on steroids on the whole, but with added anxiety. There are a few rules that could be tweaked, we thought. Its forbidden to charge batteries if they're within 8cm of friendly infantry, for example. This seemed to make the right flank of my firing line virtually unassailable, which didn't seem very fair.
DeleteI was hoping to see some of Ks aforementioned 20mm troops, but since, in the end, you provided all of the troops, did you not essentially beat yourself? :) I'll second Ian and say what a treat it was to see all of your troops in action. I hope you will give K another crack at teaching you a lesson on the field soon so we can see yet another glorious battle report!
ReplyDeleteK's wee men are mounted in single rank strips of 4 figures each, as NTNWR recommends, which means they're not really compatible with mine, so we decided to use just my troops instead. We'll be fighting agin each other again at Call To Arms 2025 in about 6 weeks.
DeleteAll my battles are fought with my own wee men, I'm sorry to say. It's tragic, isn't it!
Well if you will insist on living beyond the end of the bus route, Matthew....if I had a fiver for every time I've beaten myself on the wargames table..... There is nothing tragic about seeing your lads in action. Pleased it's going to happen more.
ReplyDeleteAll I can do, Archduke, is pass on this sage advice: stay away from beautiful Kiwi ladies!
DeleteOkay, you've convinced me I need to look at this so I've just ordered a copy. The figures in action are a treat as ever but personally I find the terrain mat too distracting. In that first overview photo of the game after the picture of the book, the figures don't really stand out as the stars of the show, which IMO they undoubtedly are.
ReplyDeleteYes, my phone's tiny little robot brain had a bit of difficulty with that mat. K tells me that he mainly uses it for Fantasy and 15mm WW2 tank battles. I saw some of the latter. They were very impressive.
DeleteI think you'll enjoy this game system. I've just left my contact details on Jeffers' blog, btw, so here's hoping we establish contact.
Great looking game, look forward to seeing the next one.
ReplyDeletePaul
Cheers Paul. The next one will be quite a show with about 32 units.
DeleteGreat to see so many different troops and makes on the table.....I recognised the Hintons of course but others were unfamiliar although you must have featured them on your blog.
ReplyDeleteThank you Busker. There are Lammings (the 73rd), Garrison (one of the French line regiments and the Leib Grenadiers) and the infamous Der Kriegspielers (the RGL, Swiss, Estorff Hussars and the Feld Battalion Bremen). The Lutzowers are something special, being castings of a bespoke HH conversion done for a really major HH collector. Most of the French, however, are proper Hinton Hunts.
Delete