Simple rules for musket-era battles with toy soldiers. Setup - encounter scenario. Each side should have the same number of men and artillery pieces, and one commander. Players place 4 objectives, such as a small hill, walled field, bridge, and village, across an 8 foot long table, near the middle.
I have been wargaming for almost fifty years,and for most of that time have searched for that Holy Grail of Wargaming – theperfect wargame rules.Eleven years agoI found them.Or at least I found myversion of them.
For the first thirty years or so I worked myway through a series of wargame rules, all of them the best, or at least mostpopular, of their time.“Charge, or howto play wargames” was the first, it was also my introduction to wargaming.WRG “Wargames Rules 1685-1845” came next andlasted about ten years.Then came “InThe Grand Manner” which lasted another ten or fifteen years, though there werea lot of “house rules” to tide them over.My last commercial rules were “Le Feu Sacre”.I have dabbled with others, but they werethe main influence.
I have always gone through the same sequencewith rules.First they are hard tomaster, then they are fun to use, finally they disappoint when the flaws becomeobvious through a lot of play.Mysolution had always been to write “house rules”, but they often produced moreunexpected problems than they solved.
So for our new project I would write my ownrules.Jan and I decided that we wouldrestrict our wargaming to just the two of us so the rules did not have to becomprehensive.In fact they need only bea series of prompt sheets.
I was reasonably happy with our current rules,which were “Le Feu Sacre”.However theywere designed for single corps or division sized games with infantry battalionsand cavalry squadrons. They also had 12 figure battalions as the basic formation, which did not fit with the figures I had on my shelves. And they used a lot more artillery units than I had available. And, of course, I wanted tofight multi corps battles with brigades.However I liked a lot of the game systems in “Le Feu Sacre” and wouldkeep them in my new wargames rules which I would write myself.
I wanted a set of rules that would be easy touse and would provide a fast and fun wargame.
I wanted all nationalities to have an equalchance of winning a battle.No point inusing all of my armies if one or more were destined to lose every game.The Spanish might have a poor field army,but they would have a lot of guerrilla bands who would cause attritioncasualties.
I wanted the rules to rely to a large extent onluck.Casualties would be hard toinflict (need a good dice throw) but would have an immediate, long lasting andcritical effect on morale and combat effectiveness.
Most important the rules would have to fit wellwith the new campaign.It was importantthat each game should last 12 moves, so that each move would be one campaignhour.
It was also important that the table movementrates would cover the same distance on the table as the campaign movement rates did on the map.
The campaign included all of the majorparticipants in the Napoleonic Wars, so it was important that the wargame ruleswould allow some sort of national strengths and weakeness.I wanted a French corps to “feel” French,and a Spanish corps to “feel” Spanish.
Finally it was important that wargamecasualties would transfer to the campaign.
In short the wargame rules must supportcampaign rules.They were notdesigned to destroy the other side in one battle.My campaigns were designed to last forthree to five battles, consequently the wargame rules must allow the defeatedside the abiliy to recover to fight again, even if it might take two or three campaign days to do so.
The rules have now stood the test of time.We have used them three or four times a weekover the past ten years.I have amendedthem in the light of game play.This hasproved effective because I fully understand the consequences of each rulechange.Special rules, for exampleguerrillas, have changed drastically.But the basic rules have remained the same.
You could use any commercial rules with this comprehensive wargames system, but I would strongly recommend writing your ownwargame rules.It is the only way thatyou can get exactly the type of game you enjoy playing.There are no compromises to make themacceptable to the majority.Mostimportant because you have written them you can easily change them asnecessary.
If interested you will find my wargame ruleshere
http://napoleonicwargamerules.blogspot.com/
Next time we will have a look at how the rulesare designed to meet the requirements of the campaign and also to provide thetype of wargames we like to play.