This shaves off another set of dice rolls in combat which will saves time as well. The Hail Whoever house rules from Camp Cromwell simplify the troop stats by (mostly) getting rid of morale saves and adding more stamina points across the board. Both armies consist of 3 line infantry, 1 light infantry, 1 medium cavalry (Dragoons), 1 foot artillery and one General SR 8.Ĭoncerning the troops I decided to combine different approaches. The Austrians are the red army, the French take the blue side.
This makes possible balance problems less severe. This will give me the same army sizes and I also decided to field the exact same composition without any national special rules. I decided on the One-Hour Wargame scenario Pitched Battle (2) like the Simple Wargame #4 report. To see if I can mirror a simple wargaming battle report we have to look at the scenario and rules before the battle commences. It has actually become difficult for me to play any Napoleonic set without some friction modeled nowadays. A big part of the latter is the simple but elegant command and control mechanism which is lacking in some many (simple) rules. My theory here is that with careful preparation and tweaking you can mold Black Powder Napoleonic into a rule set that is simple to play (after getting used to it), quick and feels believable. Sadly the 2nd Edition was an utter disappointment in that direction as next to nothing was changed. Out of the box the rules have some serious problems which is the sole reason some people hat them. That said I put quite a bit of work into Black Powder house rules which make it play that way. Other rule sets took longer because of more realistic rules but the results weren’t more realistic or more satisfying. Napoleonic Black Powder always did it for me. I played the same scenario with different rules several times and Black Powder was competing against Bataille Empire and General d’Armee among others. Now, what is a simple rule set? We will probably all agree that One-Hour Wargames are simple rules but when it comes to Black Powder some would not agree. I’m leaning to simpler rules more and more albeit for different reasons so I thought I chime in with one or two battle reports myself. An approach which I and others have done several times as well and which I find fascinating to read about. The author goes on and plays some of the simple rule sets and gives his feedback. I really liked the reflections on why and how simple wargames appeal to people.
This scenario can be played with any other Napoleonic rule-set which has the infantry battalion as a basic maneuver unit.
We are still refining the idea (and I hope to get The Housemartin to authorize a "final version" of the modifications for publication soon) but I'm satisfied enough with the basic mechanics to provide an after action report on one of our games. and we were even happier with what we had in hand. We set up a test game and were quite pleased with the results. A decent set of Napoleonic rules being one of the "Holy Grails" of wargaming (lucky dice being one of the others) I was instantly intrigued. The Housemartin showed up a little while ago with a set of rules called One Hour Wargames and some modifications that he had put together to give it a more Napoleonic feel.