28mm napoleonics

[wstevens]

Julie and I are slowly building up a Prussian and French late Nap armies. However nothing painted as yet. If anybody does collect Prussians they really should have a look at the Calpe miniatures they are just wonderous! www.calpeminiatures.co.uk/

If anybody has any French or Prussians for sale then we are all ears - 28 mm of course (although our ears are considerably larger)!

Now to ask about rules sets. Which one to go for, there is the Vitrix March of Eagles which Dave says actually comes in the box - but you can download that at the vitrix site along with the updated artillery rules set. Still no cavalry. I can see their point at the mo as they don't manufacture any cav - so why give a helping hand to competitors. www.victrixlimited.com/download.php

We are not quite too sure which to play - from a choice of
1) Black Powder, which I am not too fond of because of the low amount of shots / attacks per unit. If I paint every model I expect most of them to do something. (yeah I know its not warhammer).
2) Lasalle - seems to becoming very popular but has a convoluted army listing system at first glance. The way I see it is that you have to have a set amount of troops per base (depending on unit) large or small. Then the listing for the "theatres" has what you can can take for each battle. I find this limiting and it surely doesn't match up to some of the actual regiments taken at Waterloo. Although they do state this in certain terms.
3) Napoleon rules from Foundry - which I don't know much about
4) Shako - which are really old rules in comparison - again don't know much about it.
5) The Grand Manner ... haven't a clue.

So wise heads which one would suit my purpose for a 2-3 hour game - which I can extend to an all dayer at a big event?

Julie and myself are looking to do a big bi-centennial anniversary game for Waterloo - perhaps just focusing on the attack at Plancenoit. Any tips for army organisation would be nice!

[sapper]

Depends how big a table you plan to use, how in-depth you want the rules to be, or whether you're happy with some basic rules which allow you to get on with pushing the toys around the table.

There is a core of Black powder players at the club (we have used dthose rules for 7YW) and I use it for 15mm Naps. Nice system and quick to learn.

I also use Age of Eagles which is basically Fire and Fury for Napoleonics, though I think it works better than the original ACW version.

La Grande Armee from Sam Mustafa (the La Salle man) is quite innovative and worth a look.

The real trouble with Napoleonics is there are just too many rulesets to hope to try them all or get consensus. If you're just going to play amongst yourselves, choose one and go with it. Otherwise, something like Black Powder would be a good start as you are more likely to find others who already play it, or have the rules, or are willing to give it a go ! And, crucially, Black Powder is not prescriptive as to basing system. This has a lot to recommend it as you want to avoid committing yourself to one ruleset if it has an unusual basing scheme. I use Black Powder with figures based for Age of Eagles - no problem.
Martyn

[Matt]

Warlord are also planning on releasing a Napoleonic supplement to go with the core rules. Although you can play Nap's with the core rules as is. Martyn and I have played 15mm Naps with these rules and I think they worked really well and conveyed the correct feel of the period.

[wstevens]

Ok so Black Powder is the recommended poison. As Sapper says I don't really want to commit in basing for a certain rule set and then discovering that its not really all that playable or to put it bluntly it sucks. As a number play Black Powder at the Phoenix then maybe its the way to go. I still have to a game with Black powder. I had a little intro to it last year when Dave came to Rushden to play an ECW game. I was an observer but found that opponents were waiting for some time to have their turn and its seemed rather slow. That's no disrespect to any players there just the rules. I suppose I really should get a few Black powder games under my belt before passing comment. One thing I did notice was the fighting and shooting rules - but only one dice per unit base to fire or attack in combat seemed a bit off. As I said before if I'm painting 40 odd Imperial guards I'd want them all to contribute - not just share a dice. If that's the case then I will paint one Imperial guard and stick him on a massive base. I may have this wrong so please tell me I am.

@ Matt where did you get the ears for the Napoleon Supplement?

[carl1]

when we did the game at Phoenix we were still all fairly new to it then so we were having to check the rules sometimes. as for numbers re shooting etc, there are small, medium and large units which have a sliding scale of stats to reflect their size.

in combat most units get at least 6 dice for combat even if you are only four models wide and shooting is mostly three per unit. but then you simply base up units in the minimum size required to get three shots and then have more units on the field, meaning more lots of three shot units.