Soldiers of Napoleon is written by Warwick Kinrade, published by Artorus and is available from Gripping Beast, though I bought mine from Caliver Books. Warwick, on a YouTube video has exampled the rules giving a divisional sized game with 28mm figures on a 6’ x 4’ (or bigger) table, with a division having between 2 and 5 brigades and each brigade having between 2 and 5 infantry battalions or cavalry regiments, so games can be set with each side having between something like 4 to 25 units per side … handy for smaller collections and slowly growing forces!
All measurements are set in paces, which can be inches, half inches, centimetres or whatever you want so the rules should easily adjust to table size and figure scale.
The rules do everything that would be expected of a napoleonic set covering 1805 to 1815, but with two things of note. It is recognised right from the outset that you are not fighting a full battle such a Wagram or Ligny, rather yours is a smaller bit of battlefield that sits within the setting of the full battle, so things will be going around you (off table) and events might see those off table influences impact on your game - such as the Corps commander (or Army Commander - see below) arriving or nearby guns on high ground being available to bombard into your table.
Secondly and I say this after taking a deep breath - the system is card driven. I just don’t like card games, mainly because they can create ‘Gotcha’ moments, which are generally undeserved advantages, random occurrences that have not been ‘worked for’ by good play, but can hit the other player hard. Plus, ‘card driven’ is generally an unfriendly mechanism for solo players as any secrecy is lost and the admin of managing two separate hands is often a pain.
However, here to my surprise / pleasure, they work quite well. They are the engine that delivers the Orders system (order points), those off table occurrences, on table events and the rally system. I saw one reviewer compare them to the cards that you get with the boardgame Commands & Colors and I can see an element of that.
With so many different Napoleonic rulesets available, if a buying decision is based on ‘are these different enough for me to want them’. I think here the answer is yes, even just for the two reasons given above, well that is why I bought them anyway.
The rulebook is an easy read, with everything very well explained in ordinary language. It is light on illustrations, so my first impression was a sense of a wall of text running through the rules and on a first inspection, that might put some off (it did me at a wargame show last year), but really, it is a good, straight forward read. A chunk of the book is taken up with army lists, which cover the 1813 / 14 and 15 part of the conflict, though unit profiles are included so that earlier battles can be played by anyone with even a passing knowledge of army organisation.
I also bought the Wars of the First Empire supplement, for access to Austrian / French army lists of 1812 and earlier.
Anyway, I have read through the rules once and am now ready for a trial game to help embed some of the process and I thought a first impression might be worth sharing, just to show what a ‘once reading’ can deliver.
To keep things simple, I am going with minimum terrain and just two infantry brigades per side with some artillery support. I don’t have skirmisher figures yet, so I will be using blank bases for them. For the first game, I will exclude cavalry and reserves, just to keep things easier.
There is a bit of a pre-play procedure that sets parameters to create the scenario and in this regard, the rules remind me a little of the ‘warm up’ and pre-game tweaks that Peter Pig rules use. Anyway, I won’t cover them all, but here is a flavour of some pre-game activity;
Check for Operational Advantage. The French get a dice modifier uplift in 1809, but regardless, the Austrians win the test dice roll and get Operational Initiative.
Tactical Order - both sides are given a general order for ‘Steady Advance’ to give us our meeting engagement.
Terrain Generator - this is fairly comprehensive, but I am ignoring it here, by just going for a simple battlefield with 1 hill and 1 piece of rough ground placed along the centre of the table, equally centred to both sides. The table will be 6’ x 3½’ with 28mm figures that have a unit frontage of 160mm when in line. I will be using 1 pace = 1 inch.
Choose table edge - Austrians as winner of Operational Advantage choose, plus they will go first on Turn 1 (draw the first card).
Deployment - with two brigades per side, the brigades must deploy line abreast. i.e. one on the left and one on the right. With more brigades you can build up a reserve, or deploy in echelon etc and generally have more options.
Forces - Each player has one division with two infantry brigades, each brigade having three battalions, plus a gun battery, which is attached to the first brigade. I have mixed the troops a little so that it is not too generic and so we can see how Landwehr, Veteran French Line Infantry and Grenzers get on against a background of everything else being just standard ‘Line’.
There are the same number of units on both sides, but the French points value is 40 more than the Austrians, 384 Vs 346. All troops start in assault column and the artillery will be limbered. The Break Point of each army is worked out by the number and types of troops used, this gave Army Break Points of Austrian = 8 French = 9.
Edit - At this point I think I should have given the Austrians an extra infantry battalion to close the points difference and increase the Austrian Break Point to match the French.
I have used the army lists from the ‘Wars of the First Empire’ supplement to build forces for an 1809 engagement and here is a thing, on the 1809 list, the French get a 3 point Break Point uplift on their army for the ‘Tradition of Victory’, stating that a typically victorious French in this period were confident and expected to be successful. Fine, but that puts the French Break Point up from 9 to 12, a full 50% more than the Austrian 8 - so I am wondering in a small game like this one, if the +3 seems overly generous and whether the Austrians are doomed before they start!
[important note - the system uses bases that represent 100 - 150 men each, so a typical battalion may have 4 - 6 bases. The number of bases determines the number of fire / combat dice used. Casualties may eventually reduce the number of bases. A slight problem is that I just use 2 large bases per unit, so I will need to mark or roster each unit so that I can keep track of how many ‘game bases’ are present and being represented - a bit of an admin thing but not too detrimental].
Since this is just about looking at the rules and system, from here on, rather than doing a straight AAR, I will just record particular moments of the game that help highlight the essence of the rules, so this is not about good story telling or full rule detailing, rather it is a menu of what you might typically expect from the rules.
I will be playing this solo - so that aspect will also come under the spotlight and should be of interest, particularly as cards are used. At the start of play, a D6 is rolled and the score determines how many cards are taken from the deck and discarded for the whole game - this will help put a hand of restraint on those that get to know the deck really well and mix things up a bit. Every time the cards are played right through, this random discarding occurs. I rolled a 5 today!
Action - Somewhere near Oberlaiching at the Battle of Eggmühl, GD Friant commanding the French 2nd Infantry Division has been ordered to probe forward (Steady Advance)….. as indeed has FML Dedovich, his opposite number, commanding his Austrian Infantry Division.
The rough ground is ‘Difficult Terrain’, the Hill is open ground. Artillery on the hill can fire over 1 unit as long as the blocking unit is not within 5 paces of the target.
Below - the figures at start from the Austrian perspective
The cards are dealt. A side gets 1 card per brigade and 1 card per leader stand, so in our ‘mirror’ game, both sides are getting 5 cards. The French have the initiative and play the first card.
The idea is the French play a card and then the Austrians play a card and then back to the French etc. A card can be played to give orders to a brigade or for the Special Event or to allow Rallying.
During the first round of five cards, the French try to be a bit clever and play two of their cards for their Events. (1) to try and wound the enemy divisional general (Dedovich) (2) to sow command confusion by forcing the Austrians to discard a card.
They fail the test die rolls on both. The result is that they have not been doing much moving. The Austrians on the other hand have been playing the cards to activate their brigades to give orders and get moving. They have shaken out into line and advanced. Their guns have moved to the bottom of the rear of the hill and deployed, intending to wait until their infantry secure the hill top.
There is an attack moment (above). The Austrian Landwehr on the left have been able to catch a French line unit off guard and charge. The Landwehr pass their Discipline test for charge, but then roll poorly for hits and we can’t be surprised that the Landwehr are repulsed by the better trained French infantry.
Oh Hello! the French get a victory point for winning a melee - now that seems an easy way to get victory and as the Austrian player it gives me a slap ….. don’t do risky stupid stuff with the lesser trained units!
Once all the 5 cards are played, there is an end of round phase when victory points are totted up. If a side can earn enough victory points to equal or exceed the enemy break point value, then the enemy have lost the game. After that last melee win I suddenly better appreciate the importance of Victory Points and how easily they are earned …. So;
In the next round, when the 5 cards are dealt to each player, I immediately have the French right (under Grandeau) charge Neustädter (see below photo). A card is played for ‘orders’ and the charge order is given. A charge move is a standard move (6” for infantry in column) plus a D6. The two outer battalions had a good chance of making it, but the veteran French infantry in the centre would need to roll a 5 or 6 to reach the guns on the other side of the hill …. But first Discipline Checks to see whether the charge will go in. Two pass but the unit on the right fails. It doesn’t move, it can give fire instead and suffers 1 point of disruption (bad).
The left and centre units charge to contact (see above), with the centre (French vets) managing to roll a 6 for their additional movement. The defenders must now take their own discipline checks. They both fail, so each is given 1 point of disruption.
Then each melee is sorted out. The two sides roll for hits, each recording the number of hits - but these are not directly applied as casualties as many other systems do. Both parties in any case (always) automatically get 1 disruption point in melee and are marked disordered. Now you look for the difference in the hits from the two sides, the higher scorer is the winner and applies the difference as disruption points on the enemy. The enemy then retreats a ½ move plus a D6.
So a successful attacker will only ever pick up that automatic one disruption point. [this is very different to say Black Powder which would see the defenders get a chance to inflict some sort of defensive fire on the charging unit, leaving them potentially damaged].
In our case, the Austrian infantry lose and retreat, the French get 1 VP for winning the melee.
Next the melee against the guns is calculated and the guns are lost, they get captured, which counts as broken, removing them from play and delivering a massive 5 Victory Points to the French (there is a random element to this, it could have been as low as 3 VP’s), but wow, the French currently have 7 VP’s, one more and they will match the Austrian Break Point Value and win!
I have just gone through a big learning curve and shout at the Austrians to pull their finger out and start trying to hurt the French properly … they start doing a lot of shooting. Now, the French have already suffered a good number of ‘disruptions’ (the currency for damage) and this next round of shooting puts some units at risk. If at the end of the turn a unit has collected more disruptions than they have bases, they break and are removed from play, surrendering a bunch of victory points, some of the French units are close to that and so the French now get distracted by spending their cards to try and rally off damage rather than ‘doing things’ to the Austrians.
I keep forgetting that the divisional commanders have some command points (3 Austrian, 1 French) that they can use to do a die re-roll.
I now explore the skirmisher rules as both sides want to keep their distance at the moment, so those units with the ‘skirmisher’ capability, start throwing out skirmishers. The skirmisher rules are very nicely executed and feel right.
As part of rally, a unit can eliminate 1 of their bases to remove 2 disruption points, but while this might temporarily save the unit, the loss of bases has consequences later. At this point I am thinking that if this was part of a campaign, the Austrians will likely lose the battle, though for their trouble, the French will be carrying a lot of casualties forward.
Somehow we get to the end of the round and the Austrians are still in the game … just, while the French are licking their wounds.
Another 5 cards are dealt and amongst the French hand is another card that allows them to attempt to wound an enemy commander, they need to roll a 5+. This 33% chance of success is well worth doing because the victory points gained from wounding an enemy commander would mean that the total French victory points would then exceed the Austrian breakpoint, giving the French the win at the end of the 5 card round … unless the Austrians can also break the French and call a draw!
They roll, they hit, the commander is down and the French get another 2 victory points, but it is not claimed until the end of the round and so we enter a bit of a strange universe. The Austrians now just have a few card plays left in this round to gain enough victory points to equal the French breakpoint i.e. going for the draw. It feels a bit mechanical / gamey that the winning French now do their best to stay out of harms way.
Anyway, the Austrians spend their remaining time punishing the French with fire, especially Grandeau’s Brigade, who are teetering and the French do all they can to rally off the harm. In the Photo above, you can see the Austrian units raking the French columns with musket fire.
Finally the last card of the round is played and we go into the end of turn sequence. The victory point scores are now 10 for the French and 7 for the Austrians, so the French have reached the Austrian break point and win. The Austrians have not reached the French break point.
So a straight French victory, even though that last turn didn’t feel like it, as Neustädter was really piling the pressure on Grandeau and Grill on the Austrian right was easily holding his own against Gilly.
I immediately thought it would have been good to have had a third brigade per side, perhaps cavalry, making more of a mid sized game. Their presence would push up the break values, with the game lasting a bit longer and providing an extra dynamic to play.
Partway through the game, when I hadn’t really yet grasped all of the inter-relationships going on within the system and I thought the game was not going to become a ‘go to’ set for me, I thought that I would leave the table set up and do a comparison with Black Powder, which is more familiar to me, just to see if the scenario itself was interesting enough …… but by the end of the game, I was loving the play of Soldiers of Napoleon.
It is very clever, while at the same time just doing all the normal things that a napoleonic game should do. I imagine if you stripped the cards out and replaced their function with some dice driven charts or some such, the base mechanics would all work well. Tension would no doubt increase against a live opponent with regards to the cards, but in reality the cards didn’t cause me a problem and solo gamers are used to just getting on with these sort of things.
For some of the play I thought that +3 bonus to the French break point on the 1809 Army list was a bit heavy handed for my small game, but then you could draw a card with an Objective Event, such as capture the high ground for 3 +D3 points, which if you did gain the hill, you could claim between 4 and 6 VP’s at the end of the round.
Now while that would seem a pretty hefty impact on victory points in our small game, I like the way that it makes both players focus on tactically important terrain such as high ground and buildings or other tactical consideration like breaking the enemy line (by exiting two units off the enemy table edge), just like a general would be thinking. This is much better to see fights break out amongst significant locations rather than players just using their ‘birds eye view’ of the table and seeing only where enemy units are to respond to.
I may not be expressing that particularly well, but if I look at say my own rules, the play feels a bit like it is always hunting the enemy unit to fight. Soldiers of Napoleon feels to be a bit more about ‘activity’, a little like you might find when reading an account of an action.
One thing that would have helped the game a bit would be to increase the number of battalions in each brigade. This itself would give a bigger game and increase the Break Point level of each force. Having said that, I was able to use the rules to get a starter force to the table, which I think will interest some readers and which shows the versatility of the rules.
Anyway, I really like what the rules are trying to do and I will be pressing them into service for my next few Napoleonic sorties, as I take the time to explore their subtleties and nuances.
Having played once, I will now do a full re-read of the rules to no doubt hoover up things I missed, misinterpreted or glossed over.
It’s been a bit of a long post, so thanks to anyone who stayed with it.
I have some more web pages over on my COMMANDERS site that get update more frequently than here and some further SoN stuff will likely show up there in the meantime.
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