Black powder for Napoleonic. club rules

[Keith T]

Hi all
 At the Nottingham club I attend we use 16 figure battalions and 6 figure squadrons, this lets us field several brigades on the table [usually 5 or 6].

 We also have a very simple points system, eg. line batt 2pts, +.5 for light +.5 veteran
 2.5pts light CAV SQD, 3pts HVY CAV SQD.
 _.5 small unit and +.5 large unit.

Ok you get the gist, it means we can work out our armies quite quickly and get on with the game.

Does anyone else have house rules or other ideas?

[grant]

I'm just about to embark on a Napoleonice adventure: my gaming buddy wally set the hook with a fantastic gift of AB for Christmas and I topped with cash from the in laws.

Based on the size of the figs I'm doing 30-36 strong battalions; I'll look at your other ideas when I get going

[gorillacrab]

There's no doubt that 36-figure battalions look impressive, but from a gameplay standpoint I'm an advocate for a larger number of smaller units - say around 16-18 figures.
You will still have the same number of figures on the table, which will look just as impressive, but you'll have more room and tactical choices to make.
Something to consider.
- GC

[Nysse]

We've also dropped miniature counts down with 16 minis in 28mm games and 18 minis in 15mm games. Large units do look lovely, but are quite impractical unless you own a barn or something.

For measuring we use 2/3 ranges etc. in 28mm and in 15mm converted everything to centimeters. Also in 15mm we've added to the range of artillery. Short and medium distances stayed the same and long distance has 12-24cm more depending on artillery size. We felt that artillery often didn't have much of an impact after the beginning as they started lagging behind advancing lines so added range enables them to participate earlier and longer. And throwing 1 dice per battery still isn't radically effective so didn't change the game too much.

We don't use the "With me" commands as they seemed a bit daft.

In a broken brigade all "Shaken" and "Disordered" units are removed from the table. This is to speed things up as we usually play with 60+ battalions per side so it's helpful to remove units from the table when they aren't of much use tactically anymore.

Russians have +1 Stamina to represent their stubborn defence. Black Powder recommendation was that they automatically pass the first break test in a battle, but we felt that was too powerful and ground combat down very fast.

Commands are given to a minimum of brigade level formations until they are close with the enemy. Light cavalry, marauders etc. are a different thing naturally, but we've wanted to keep tactical formations like brigades working as a group instead of units wondering around in different places. Once again partly stems from us playing mainly larger battles with 10-12 brigades per side minimum.

We've also been testing operational commands given to divisions etc. at the beginning of the battle where they would be give a command to for example advance along a road towards known enemy positions. +1 to command roll to make them easily passed and usually granting 3 moves. This allows for units to quickly move to combat areas at the beginning of a game.

Artillery gets the same command bonus as the units in their brigade. For example if all the infantry in a french brigade are in an attack column, then their artillery also gets the +2 to command rolls. We usually ran into the situation that when reserves moved into the area their artillery started lagging behind everyone else.

That's all I can remember straight away

[Jabba]

Usually use 2/3 distances and to break a brigade is over half units shaken other than that fairly standard rules so far. Club has only just started using BP for napoleonics, usually uses Shako II so all figures are based for this ruleset. That gives a normal infantry battalion of 18 figs on three 6 figure bases, and up to 4 bases of 3 figures for a cavalry regiment. Unit size allows more individual units to be represented on the table plus added bonus of more units per £.

[Bunny]

At the Plymouth club (PAW) we use battalions of 24 figures in 15mm, 4 bases of 6 figures.  Cavalry is 12 figures for heavy 4 of 3 figures and 8 figures for light cavalry 4 of 2 figures.  The cavalry basing is quite useful as it gives us an instant recognition of which type the cavalry are.

The last game I played i fielded 4 brigades of foot, 3 battalions each and 2 brigades of cavalry, 3 regiments each.  We were fighting on a 6x4ft table

Enough room maneuver and play a decent game