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Miniatures Adventure => Age of the Big Battalions => Topic started by: SJWi on August 05, 2022, 01:57:57 PM

Title: Soldiers of Napoleon Pre 1813?
Post by: SJWi on August 05, 2022, 01:57:57 PM
Chaps,  I finally acquired my copy of Soldier of Napoleon yesterday. Despite being billed as being for 1805-15 I see that all the lists are for the period 1813 onwards.  A bit of a bummer for someone with an array of Peninsular War figures. 

Does anyone know if other lists will be published for the other periods/theatres, and if so when?

I'm sure I can lash together something useable, but am by no means an expert in Napoleonics and  so was wondering if anyone had already produced any "unofficlal" lists that they would be prepared to share.

Thanks.     
Title: Re: Soldiers of Napoleon Pre 1813?
Post by: NTM on August 05, 2022, 06:18:52 PM
There are plans Piers Brand has mentioned play testing for the Peninsular but whether books are published will be down to whether Gripping Beast see the game as profitable or not.
Title: Re: Soldiers of Napoleon Pre 1813?
Post by: SJWi on August 06, 2022, 05:21:00 AM
Thanks. A bit disappointing and almost misleading on the part of the author/publisher.  The Rules and blurb on both the Gripping Beast and Northstar website specifically mention the generic period 1805-15 ( ie including the Peninsular) and yet 47% of the page-count is specific to 1813 onwards. I can accept such a practice when rules give a small period specific taster to get you started ( eg Simon Miller's "To the Strongest" dedicates 4 out of 74 pages to "Celts vs Romans") , however nowhere in the advertising is such a bias towards the later period mentioned.

I'm sure I will work how to use my earlier armies and as you say no doubt if successful other glossy, theatre specific books will appear.

Time to dig out my Black Powder "Albion Triumphant" and see what I can find in there.

In any event I'm looking forward to trying them out as I see them as a "bit different" to the mainstream rules genre.       
Title: Re: Soldiers of Napoleon Pre 1813?
Post by: olicana on August 07, 2022, 07:06:37 PM
I'm playing Peninsular with them. Army lists are pretty easy to work out except that I think the term Brigade is something of a misnomer.

From the lists and games I've seen they are not 'Brigades' as such. They look to me to be more akin to bath tubbed divisions.

I was already playing my games like that anyway, so it was great to find this set of rules was doing, or felt like it was doing, a similar thing.

I've generally played (and built my armies around) one unit is a thousand men. A division is the basic building block of an army (I don't do brigades as such).

Example: A typical British Division has 5000 (rounded down) men for five units. Two thousand are Portuguese and 3000 are Brits, so two Portuguse units and three British units. Any Cacadores are fielded as skirmish line bolsterers (SoN detachments). That works very well with SoN.

Example: 1st Division is 7000 men (rounded down) and has (in my warped world) 2 guards, 2 Scots, 1 Scots light infantry and 2 KGL. Although the rules say six units max to a brigade, it does have seven unit brigades in the lists for 1813.

7000 men (rounded down) is about the most you find fielded in any British or French divisions, with most having 4000 - 6000 (rounded down), so that fits in very well with what you typically field as a 'brigade' in a SoN game.

I play the key commander as a 'Corps' / 'Column' commander rather than Divisional commander and when a 'Corps Commander Arrives' Event card is played, I simply mark the command stand and call it "Corps command clarity." When the Corps commander is killed (Event) or goes off elsewhere (End Phase) your force commander loses "clarity". This has worked seamlessly.

Title: Re: Soldiers of Napoleon Pre 1813?
Post by: frank xerox on August 08, 2022, 05:34:08 PM
Especially annoying when there’s about 18 pages of history included