Napoleonic Play Test

Today my friend Steve came over for a play-test of a heavily modified version of Jeffrey's 'Napoleonic Rules for a Large-scale Wargame with small-scale figures' (not a very snappy title but it has some interesting ideas and mechanics).

Most of the changes concerned: translating the rules to work on a hex-grid; 'simplifying' the order system, replacing textual orders with a brief code; and, some ideas to ease book-keeping (peg-boards) and calculations (look-up tables).

The photo below shows the armies as set up; Steve commanding most of my French (on the right) against about two-thirds of my Prussians (on the left).

This was a fairly big game for a play-test, but rule machanics really need to be tested at the intended scale for a fair test.  And now, just for the sake of it, a couple of close-ups to show the troops (all Heroics & Ros) in a bit more detail.

In the game, orders typically take a turn or two to arrive, and are recorded on small chits as shown below in the example of a French order below.

In the order above, 'A1' means the order is to attack and the axis of advance (AoA) is directly ahead.  For the French '1' means directly towards my side of the table and the other hex vertices are numbered clockwise from this direction.  The order was sent in Turn #1 from the divisional commander (B) to one of his brigades (B1) - sorry about the soulless naming of commanders and units (actually Jerome Bonaparte to Bauduin).  

The book-keeping was done on a peg-board which allowed the recording of casualties and disorder suffered by each brigade (artillery batteries are also treated as brigades).

Each brigade's order (either Attack, Support or Defend) is also recorded, but if the brigade is reacting to a change of situation (COS) the order is moved to the 'COS' slot indicating its order is currently suspended.  They will not revert to their order until either they receive a prompt from a commander or another COS allows them to do so.

Combat is initiated when opposing brigades come into contact.  The relative strengths are compared and the dice (d20) thrown are modified by tactical factors.  This may result in one side or the other routing immediately, if not then the combat will last for a number of turns after which the same dice are thrown for combat resolution - which will always result in one side or the other retreating.  In the latter case a marker is put down indicating what is happening as shown below.

This marker ...

Shows the combats odds (force ratio of the two sides) is 'Band C', in favour of the Prussians (placed behind them), will last for one turn, and the Prussians have two tactical advantages when throwing the dice.  Later in the game we also added the turn number in which the combat would be resolved to remove any confusion.

As for the battle, the French put in a big attack on the Prussian right ...

... which saw both Prussian brigades on that flank forced to retreat, each sweeping the other along until retreat they reached the edge of the world and fell off!

Prussian success elsewhere, including driving back a massed column attack ...

... was nowhere near as decisive and the Prussians decided to call it a day and retire before the French could re-organise for a second push.

While I now have several pages of suggested modifications to think about, we both felt the battle flowed reasonably well and gave a much better feel for difficulty of controlling an army by generals limited to what they could see and communicate by mounted courier.  

So, all in all, a fairly successful play-test but still a lot of points to ponder and some careful thinking to ensure that any changes introduced only streamline the game further rather than adding complication and slowing it down.