Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Age of the Big Battalions => Topic started by: Harry Faversham on October 01, 2022, 06:33:44 PM
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Free rules in this month's WI Magazine. Any of the Brethren had a peruse yet?
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Harry. Already a few reviews/comments on other threads posted about 2 weeks ago.
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I'm going to deploy the 50 year old Airfix Veterans and have a pop with 'em!
🤪
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I downloaded the free pdfs, but I'm still waiting for my Wi and my paper copy of these to arrive. I'll read 'em then...
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Poor Dan. I think there are two sets of errata or amendments already.
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I took them for a spin, as per here. LINK
http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2022/09/napoleonic-rules-from-perry-miniatures.html
The WI has a nice looking scenario and replay. As said, errata already means that you will likely want to play from the PDF’s, but the Perry site also has an errata sheet that you could use with the nice rules that come with WI.
As my blog post shows, they are intended for big multi player, multi brigade games and so when I tested them with just two brigades per side, is showed that the collapse of a brigade was a bit too dramatic and the game swung on that event. The rules author read my post and suggested in a game of 3 brigades or less per side, the brigade should collapse in a more controlled way.
He made a suggestion, which I include in my post, while he considers the matter further, which will likely see something added to one of the Perry downloads as an optional consideration.
I like much of the stream-lining that have gone into the rules.
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Harry, knowing your predilection for a red coat you might find this list for Anglo-Portuguese I knocked up useful.
Not played a game yet, but the profiles are pretty steadily based on the existing lists. Biggest change is in the cavalry, where they have less tenacity but higher melee to show the good mounts and equipment but tendency to go galloping off after the first charge.
Three of the fate cards are selected from the existing lists. One "British Musketry" is a fire variation of the all-encompassing melee boost available to the Austrians.
If you use it let me know if it works!
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Harry, knowing your predilection for a red coat you might find this list for Anglo-Portuguese I knocked up useful.
Not played a game yet, but the profiles are pretty steadily based on the existing lists. Biggest change is in the cavalry, where they have less tenacity but higher melee to show the good mounts and equipment but tendency to go galloping off after the first charge.
Three of the fate cards are selected from the existing lists. One "British Musketry" is a fire variation of the all-encompassing melee boost available to the Austrians.
If you use it let me know if it works!
Thanks, Mark. That'll come in handy for me too. I have a British Division waiting for a go at these. I should get my Wi and paper copy next week...
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Jervis Johnson has said that he expects British and Spanish army lists to be up un the Perry site sometime in October.
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Mark, old chap, absolutely spiffing. His Grace would have approved muchly.
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I took them for a spin, as per here. LINK
http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2022/09/napoleonic-rules-from-perry-miniatures.html
The WI has a nice looking scenario and replay. As said, errata already means that you will likely want to play from the PDF’s, but the Perry site also has an errata sheet that you could use with the nice rules that come with WI.
As my blog post shows, they are intended for big multi player, multi brigade games and so when I tested them with just two brigades per side, is showed that the collapse of a brigade was a bit too dramatic and the game swung on that event. The rules author read my post and suggested in a game of 3 brigades or less per side, the brigade should collapse in a more controlled way.
He made a suggestion, which I include in my post, while he considers the matter further, which will likely see something added to one of the Perry downloads as an optional consideration.
I like much of the stream-lining that have gone into the rules.
A really good read through of your play-play so to speak of each turn. This answered a lot of glaring questions I had about game play. Mostly on the Fire and Melee values in the charts and their meaning. I didn't see those were the initial start die needed to fire and melee with, then adding in any modifiers. Again, greatly appreciate your insights and talk through of the action and the corrections from the author. Thanks again!
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Thanks.The army lists give attack values (the number of dice) on the quick reference sheet, the modifiers work in two ways.
Firstly the section Attack Value Modifiers, modifies the number of dice rolled
Secondly the TESTS table modifies the actual scores needed on the dice to create hits.
I note at the Perry site that version 1.3 of the rules is out. If one looks at the patches file, which indicates updates, there are only 4 clarifications and they relate to pages 3 and 6 for those who print their rules out from the downloadable PDF.
Also the army lists have grown to include British peninsular and British Waterloo forces.
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I've read mine a few times now, and have downloaded all the army lists, etc.....I think my gaming group and I will give them a spin one of these weeks....
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Well my attempt at a British Peninsula list wasn't far away! lol
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Thanks.The army lists give attack values (the number of dice) on the quick reference sheet, the modifiers work in two ways.
Firstly the section Attack Value Modifiers, modifies the number of dice rolled
Secondly the TESTS table modifies the actual scores needed on the dice to create hits.
I note at the Perry site that version 1.3 of the rules is out. If one looks at the patches file, which indicates updates, there are only 4 clarifications and they relate to pages 3 and 6 for those who print their rules out from the downloadable PDF.
Also the army lists have grown to include British peninsular and British Waterloo forces.
Again, reading through your AAR was a lifesaver...I was really close on call off the game for this morning until read your report. It was fun to break out some 15mm Naps, I played my Prussians, and my buddy was the French. We did about a 150 points per side with a nice mix of troops coming out to five brigades..so a small/light division. The one thing I will be doing is adding in some "How-to's" for the QRS...We're still a bit foggy on the valour tests to shaken to a shattered brigade effects...and it's effect on the overall army. So, any insights on that would be great appreciated again.
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Units have a tenacity value and when a unit takes enough hits that equal its tenacity value it becomes shaken, while shaken, all future hits against that unit cause Valour tests INSTEAD of adding another hit marker, which if failed would rout the unit off the table.
Separately and similarly, the brigade as a whole is constantly in a state of flux of how viable it is and this depends upon the health of its constituent units, so every time one of its unit reaches shaken status, the brigade (use the brigade commander stand to mark this) suffers 1 Setback marker.
If a shaken unit fails a Valour test and routs of the table, then the brigade commander will get a second Setback marker due to that unit’s deterioration.
Once a brigade commander accumulates 3 Setback markers due to deteriorating units, it is considered WAVERING and each new setback result for that brigade causes the brigade commander to take take a Fortitude test INSTEAD of adding another Fortitude marker. Failing this test removes the entire brigade from the table.
The nuances are that individual units can attempt to rally to bring the number of hits scores against them down and if they manage to reduce their hit number to BELOW their tenacity number, then they are no longer shaken AND their brigade commander will remove one of their Setback markers, which is how brigades recover from Wavering status.
Of coarse, while a unit is shaken or a brigade is wavering, there are die roll modifiers. Wavering brigades find it harder to activate and shaken units find it harder to inflict hits.
It strikes me that Rally is a highly important function within the game and a player needs to think in terms if keeping a reserve of fresh units plus using the rally to help out tired (shaken) units. Not helping out a wavering brigade will surely see it being removed from the table sooner rather than later.
Note - in the most recent Q&A document, the author feels (I agree) that smaller battles which use 3 or 4 brigades or less per side, can be too dramatically affected by the sudden loss of entire brigades and so they now offer a slightly different way to managing brigade setback / wavering for smaller games.
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Norm,
An excellent explanation for the morale tree...as I call it. Now that makes a lot of sense to me.
Out of curiosity, how many units (battalions) would add into a Brigade? In our first game yesterday, I had three regular infantry units in one, and four Landwehr in another, with three cavalry units, in one and three artillery in one.
Thanks again!
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That seems fine. The rules say between 2 and 8 units per brigade.
Rule 10.0.1 talks about Brigades of just 2 units being under strength and those brigades waver on 2 setbacks rather than the standard 3.
Note, when the brigade takes a fortitude test, there is a favourable modifier if the brigade has 3-4 unrouted units and a better modifier for 5 or more, so bigger brigades should last a bit longer, but if they fail, they take a lot of units out at once.
I played today and the 2 battalion brigades were quite vulnerable LINK -
http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2022/10/an-epic-action-outside-plancenoit-1815.html
Interestingly, for Prussians, their brigade was the size of a French Division and it was their regiment that best equates to a French Brigade. From a V&F perspective, that is just a terminology thing and basically we are dealing with a collection of battalions, whether in fact they are regiments or brigades.
I put infantry / cavalry into their own brigades, though each can have foot artillery and horse artillery (respectively) attached.