Basing?

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madmike111
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Basing?

Post by madmike111 »

Any chance we could have some info on basing and scale early on?
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Post by nikgaukroger »

No dount that will be available to those on the beta test.
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Post by robertthebruce »

Basing, and "Batallion or Brigade, this is the question" :lol: :lol:

Waiting for the beta Rules impatiently.


David
Last edited by robertthebruce on Tue Jan 20, 2009 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by madcam2us »

Battalion as in the smallest unit on the table is the battalion or Battalion as in the smallest unit is the company????

Same goes for Brigade....

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Post by spike »

madcam2us wrote:Battalion as in the smallest unit on the table is the battalion or Battalion as in the smallest unit is the company????

Same goes for Brigade....

Madcam.
Do you mean 1 base in the BG is a Brigade, Battalion or Company?

Spike
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Post by madcam2us »

yes to all!!!

all non-british should be easy enough to parse.... 6 companies = 6 bases to a BG

LF/skirmishers more of a problem.... But if they take the NapF&F approach, this won't matter....

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Post by willb »

1 base to a company will be fairly low level. You could do Hougomont, but not Waterloo.
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Post by madmike111 »

1 base to a company will be fairly low level. You could do Hougomont, but not Waterloo.
Unless the rules allow you to fight Waterloo on a large table they wont crack the big time. I would recommend something along the lines of Napoleon Battle rules.
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Post by spike »

madmike111 wrote:
1 base to a company will be fairly low level. You could do Hougomont, but not Waterloo.
Unless the rules allow you to fight Waterloo on a large table they wont crack the big time. I would recommend something along the lines of Napoleon Battle rules.
I am intererested in the project but this thread is giving me reservations, on the scope of the rules, so comments from someone who has seen proposals is welcome. I also have ideas on what I think can be done to achieve a higher level of command simulation.
If you are looking at BG's being Battalions (4-6 company bases) then I don't think I as a player would be interested to play at this level.
In period I want to be Welington with 6 brigades and a unreliable Spanish Ally with 2 more, not Major General Sharpe commanding 6 battalions, plus 2 artillery batteries.
Osprey histories deal with this "high level" command activity, not Battalion action, so my opinion is think further up the food chain and let players act like generals, rather than the traditional games where players units form nice squares of infantry on the table.

Spike
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Post by pyruse »

I agree that higher level games are better, and if we stick to the same scale as the base game, each base is about 250 men, so a battalion would be 2-4 bases, and a brigade would be 8-20 bases.

The trouble is, many players expect to see Column, Line and Square, and Skirmishers, and if the basic unit is not a battalion, they are going to be disappointed, because Brigades don't form Column, Line and Square, and Skirmishers are happening at a level below what you can see on table.

If I want a good quick game with battalions as units then I can play Shako, which is slick enough to allow quite large games.
If I want to play big battles, Grand Armee is excellent.
Age of Eagles is good for intermediate sizes.
All three of these use compatible basing.

Therefore I'd say FoG Napoleoincs muct do two things:
1. Use basing compatible with existing rules (Shako is a good example of how to be flxeible in this regard)
2. Bring something new to the party. The three sets of rules I listed above are all very good, and all have loyal followings. What compelling new stuff does FoG Naps bring to the table? Why would I want to play it rather than one of the existing sets?

I think those questions need to be answered before development starts.
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Post by marshalney2000 »

Different players different views. i like big games but hate manouvering by brigade as the unit just does not look right particularly when different units e.g highlanders and riflemen are included in the brigade. I think battalion is right but loads of them in the big game.
Like many I always had the view that napoleonic battles were always huge formations fightinmg but having recently read the new book on the fall of Napoleon and the invasion of France a lot of the actions were groups of mixed companies fighting similar enemy formations.
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Post by Probert »

General de Brigade is my current set of choice. Generally one or two companies per base, 4 to 6 bases per battalion or regiment. I love Nappys at this scale, but I know I am in the minority.
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Post by spike »

Probert wrote:General de Brigade is my current set of choice. Generally one or two companies per base, 4 to 6 bases per battalion or regiment. I love Nappys at this scale, but I know I am in the minority.
Looked at GdB and for me too small with micro-management of company bases, not my cup of tea. Rules however are well written, so I can see why you like them

Spike
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Post by spike »

marshalney2000 wrote:Different players different views. i like big games but hate manouvering by brigade as the unit just does not look right particularly when different units e.g highlanders and riflemen are included in the brigade. I think battalion is right but loads of them in the big game.
Like many I always had the view that napoleonic battles were always huge formations fightinmg but having recently read the new book on the fall of Napoleon and the invasion of France a lot of the actions were groups of mixed companies fighting similar enemy formations.
John
Big games with small scale units are too slow for me, but I accept high level that this is not for everyone, some players prefer skirmish games.

Spike

On the subject of books, the best I have seen so far is "Battle tactics of Napoleon and his enemies- Brent Nosworthy ISBN 0-09-477240-1" as that is pure anaysis, of tactics from the small units to whole armies, but without focus at any level. Id recomend the writers look at this if they have not seen it already.
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Post by eaglesixfive »

Even better is The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon by Gunther. E. Rothenberg http://www.amazon.com/Art-Warfare-Napol ... 0253202604

and

Imperial Byaonets by George Nafziger http://www.napoleon-series.org/greenhil ... ziger.html
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Post by spike »

eaglesixfive wrote:Even better is The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon by Gunther. E. Rothenberg http://www.amazon.com/Art-Warfare-Napol ... 0253202604

and

Imperial Byaonets by George Nafziger http://www.napoleon-series.org/greenhil ... ziger.html
I am reading Rothenberg at the moment and so far I disagree (although I have only got as far as page 104), Nosworthy has far more detail and insight on the this subject.
I have checked for Nafziger its out of print and the cheepest I can find 2nd hand today is £150, so it will be a library job.

Spike
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Post by eaglesixfive »

spike wrote:
eaglesixfive wrote:Even better is The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon by Gunther. E. Rothenberg http://www.amazon.com/Art-Warfare-Napol ... 0253202604

and

Imperial Byaonets by George Nafziger http://www.napoleon-series.org/greenhil ... ziger.html
I am reading Rothenberg at the moment and so far I disagree (although I have only got as far as page 104), Nosworthy has far more detail and insight on the this subject.
I have checked for Nafziger its out of print and the cheepest I can find 2nd hand today is £150, so it will be a library job.

Spike

G,day mate

You are just getting to the interesting bits then! :D What I like about Rothenberg is his concise description and plain language. Now don't get me wrong, I too own a copy of Nosworthy. The bloke has much to offer, however, his hypothisis regarding the "Impulse system" of Napoleonic warfare and artillery effects lead one to rightly question the work. This can only be done if one has read other works out there. I say this from experience as Nosworthy was my first 'serious work' and subsequent reading lead me to question it more deeply. But hey, its what you have at present and i'm certain the others will turn up for the right price eventually. 150 quid for Nafziger, the seller must be living in lala land!! :roll:

Another good book I forgot, this time on the French Army is Swords around a Throne; Napoleons Grand Armee by John. R. Elting http://www.amazon.com/Swords-Around-Thr ... 0306807572


cheers
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The challenge of designing a commercial Napoleonic wargame

Post by russellking »

Well done Slitherine guys for taking this project on.

I think the tone of the strands on the game so far reflects something I saw on TMP a while ago - the enormous spread of different rules being used for this period by period enthusiasts, even as far as a smattering of house-built rules. In own club I've seen GdB, Horse Foot and Gun, WRG from 1970s, and Polemos, from no more than about 20 games. All good rule sets in their own ways, and reflecting different scales, say in the same way that Flames of War is a completely different scale to Command Decision or Blitzkrieg Commander for WWII. There are lots of juicy rule sets which I've never seen played, although I know they have big followings: amongst which Napoleon's Battles, Volley and Bayonet, Shako, Principles of War, and probably some I've never heard of and never will. At the same time, and to be deliberately heretical, I've also witnessed, as a relative newcomer to the period, a horrendous series of impenetrable monster Napoleonics display games at various shows: y'know, more figure base area than table space.

For me what I enjoy about the period is the challenge of matching up cavalry, artillery and infantry in the right formations and the right combinations, in a handlable command for me. That for me is what sets Napoleonics apart from ACW and other 18th/19th century eras, and as you can guess, it puts me firmly in the tactical camp for Napoleonics. I'd personally relish the idea of having a competition setting to do that, probably above any other period I know.

I don't know if the only criteria for success of this project is a one table set up of Waterloo. If we were all of that mind we'd do it properly and probably stick with SPI's Napoleon's Last Battles or GMT's Austerlitz, or be amongst the few who own 1,000s of figures already and use one of the more operational sets. The latter camp aren't enough in numbers to make this project a commercial success, I'd hazard a guess.

It would be interesting for the design team to share what's going on in their mind as far as criteria for success of the project are concerned. I'd perhaps hazard some more guesses on that issue, in the order that they are coming out of my mind:
- sell more Osprey
- popular enough to support tournament play, so 2-3 hours tops of the basic tournament version, but
- flexible to support larger historical refights
- historical credibility and sufficiently different from other eras to be authentic
- cope with variations in basing caused by the panoply of other different rule sets - you've seen how anxious potential beta testers are about this question already
- cope with different scales - there is an excellent range of 6mm, 12mm, 15mm, flexiplastic 20/25s, cheap hard plastic and less cheap metal 28/30s. Even the 2s I've seen look OK given the colour of the period
- tactical, given the existing direction of FoG, rather than operational
- similar number of stands to current FoG.

Am I at all close?

One last thing. I'm glad it's Slitherine doing this and not Flames of War. I couldn't cope with an army book for the extreme left wing of Borodino on the 2nd afternoon between 3 and 3.15p.m.

All the best!

Russell King
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Post by recharge »

Well, I'm definitely interested in this one; but there is no chance of rebasing all the troops. So that will be make or break for me. :(


All mine are based for Age of Eagles.

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Post by Andy1972 »

hehe.. I havn't played Naps in 20 years.. But we played with Guard du Corps and Empire II.. Those where fun.. We would have 2-4 corps a side at battlion lvl. I have been wanting to get back into this period or 7 years war.. I am looking forward to this! Once i get my 25mm Later Republican Romans and my 15mm Gauls done.. I'm gonna start on Naps.. I'm leaning towards Russians, but i can do Brits also. I can't see this with 9-15 BGS per side.. This is a total different kettle of fish, IMO. Nor can i see how you would do a tourney style game for this... But i maybe pleasantly surprised however. 8) I'll wait and see what delvelops.. Hopefully my friends signup for Beta.. They have troops.. I don't! :lol:
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