Napoleonic rules turn sequence

The previous post covered the basic advance orders ladder, the next instalment will cover the turn sequence to the main rules.

First i thought i would set out the core rules to DIVISION COMMANDER (working title) the core rules are as follows.

1. The Game (basic version)
2. The Commanders
3. The Troops and their Combat Effective Ratings
4. The Game Turn
4.1 The Orders
4.2 The Advance Orders
4.3 The Reserve Orders
4.4 The Holding Orders
4.5 Combat & Results
4.6 Withdrawing and Pursuits
5. ADCs in the game
6. Setting Out A Battle
7. Advanced rules

This post will concentrate on section 4 The Game Turn. lets take a look at the game turn as it appears in the rules.

4. THE GAME TURN
Each game turn is divided into two phases
1. ORDERS  ADVANCE/ RESERVE/ HOLDING
2. COMBAT & RESULTS

At the start of each game turn the players division and the divisions brigades must have clear orders to follow. These orders can be as detailed as you wish, or just a direction and a command, but they must be timed. Each turn is set at 10 minuets. You don't have to give a brigade the same orders each turn as they will follow old orders until they are given new ones. An example would be.  6:00am general M brigade is ordered to advance on the ridge to his north, and engage any enemy found there.
Once the brigades have received their orders from the divisional commander The Player  The advance order ladder will be used to control the brigades, as they advance across the battle field. Brigades with Reserve orders will also us the advance order ladder, but will only do so once all friendly brigades, with advance orders have completed their movement for that turn. Brigades with Holding orders will remain in their position awaiting orders. They can not move without advance orders, but can change formation or facings if threatened by an enemy.  

The advance ladder will simulate the lower ranking officers within the players brigades, as they attempt to carry out their orders, you as the divisional commander will have to watch the battle unfold before you. Making decisions as to were and when to commit your reserves, were to send your ADCs to influence your command and control.

Let's have a look at what this will look like on the table.
For our example game we are going to have a French division, made up of 3 brigades.

                      BRIGADE TYPE                                     BRIGADE/COMMAND QUALITY
Brigade A 3 line battalions 1 light battalion 1 battery.        average command average troops
Brigade B 3 line battalions                                               average command poor troops
Brigade C 2 line battalions 2 light battalion                       average command average troops

Our French force 

ORDERS ARE: 6:00am deployment
Brigade A is ordered to advance onto the village to the East, and clear it of any enemy found there, once cleared they are to hold the village. ( Brigade B are to act as your reserve )

Brigade B is to act as support  to Brigade A once brigade A has cleared the village your brigade is to hold the village with Brigade A. ( you will commence your advance at 6:30 TURN 3 )

Brigade C will act as the Divisions reserve and will remain in position on hold orders.



Our example enemy is a British division made up of 2 brigades
                   
                      BRIGADE TYPE                                      BRIGADE/COMMAND QUALITY
Brigade D 3 line battalions 1 field battery                          average command good troops
Brigade E 2 line battalions 1 light battalion                        good command good troops

The British force

ORDERS ARE: 6:00am deployment.

Brigade D orders are to hold the village till dark (TURN 15 ) and then it is to withdraw.

Brigade E  is to act as support  to Brigade A the light battalion is to hold the wooded ridge on the right flank of the village.

Our example game start with the British holding the village and wooded ridge line. The French are on rout,     (this is the pre- deployment movements covered in the setting up a battle section) which i will cover in a latter post.

The French can be seen in the distance marching towards the British held village The small red flags mark the 4 steps of the advance orders ladder 

We will skip forward in the game, and the French are at the starting point of the battle and have deployed in their set off positions, which is 80cm from any enemy position or unit.

Another closer picture of the French forces they are in their set off positions. The French being the attackers have moved up to 80cm from the British position as marked with the small red flag.

At the start of any game turn both players will know roll any order tests that are required, this is 1 D6 for each Brigade command that wishes to perform an order which can be  ADVANCING ORDER, RESERVE ORDER or HOLDING ORDER.

In our example the French sides Brigade A has been ordered to advance on the enemy in the village, so they roll 1D6 on the ADVANCE ORDERS LADDER (see previous post on the advance orders ladder).
  

Brigade B are ordered to act as support  to Brigade A so they will also roll a D6 on the ADVANCE ORDERS LADDER. Brigade C are on hold orders and will not need to roll any dice foe know. On the British side of the table both Brigade D and E are on hold orders so no dice rolls for them either.

The dice are rolled 

Brigade A rolls a 4, and will be moving first in turn 1 (6:10am) as they have advance orders, and all friendly Brigades with advance orders move before friendly Brigades with reserve orders.  

Brigade B rolls a 5 on their advance test. They will start their advance as ordered on turn 3 (6:30am), but only after Brigade A has finished their movement for turn 3. 

Its 6:10am Turn 1 Brigade A is moves to Step 5 on the advance orders ladder the Brigade is moved 50cm form the enemy position. 

Its 6:20am Turn 2 Brigade B watches as Brigade A moves off (they will get their chance soon) Brigade A is know on step 4 of the advance orders ladder and are placed 30cm from the enemy.

Its 6:30 Turn 3 Brigade A is know moved onto step 3 (we will say it passed it D6 roll to continue its advance) and is placed 20cm from the enemy. Brigade B can know move onto step 5 of the advance orders ladder, they are moves 50cm from the enemy. 

Its 6:40 Turn 4 and Brigade A once again passes it advance order test and continues to advance onto step 2 of the advance orders ladder and are placed 10cm from the enemy. Brigade B has also passed to move onto step 4 of the advance ladder  and are placed 30cm from the enemy (as they rolled a 5 on the first roll and would subsequently have to retest for  each step on the advance orders ladder to continue.)

A close up shot of Brigade A leading the assault

This is were we will leave our example game. The French Brigade A is poised to smash into the British held village, on turn 5 they will switch to  the combat ladder to fight it out. Brigade B is on its way in support. Brigade C is holding their position awaiting orders. The British Brigades are braising themselves. Next time i will take a closer look at advancing into enemy fire, and counter advances and the second part of the game turn the combat and results
As ever this is a living set of rule that are under development any questions or comments tips will always be welcome.

till next time, and thanks for reading S

Napoleonic rules first steps

I think the best place to start would be to give a brief back ground to the rules, and where the ideas for the rules came started.

The rules have gone through a lot of changes to get this far, which for those who have had a go at rule writing will be all to familiar with. They started life as a set of solo based rules, were i wanted to have a Napoleonic game, mainly based around command and control. I wanted to simulate the command and control of troops on the battle field. From the deployment stage, to the early engagements through to victory of defeat. The first few ideas were played with but were soon discarded. I then hit upon an idea about ladders or more precisely the steps on a ladder.

This ladder idea slowly took shape, and became the back bone of the rules. It enabled the game mechanism to control the movement, combat as well as the withdraw movement, and would represent the lower ranked officers commanding their battalions and regiments, as they advanced and fought on the battle field. The player would represent the divisional commander who would be in control of the main battle formations trying to carry out the orders from his corps commander. More on this later.

The advance orders ladder
A quick look at the basics of the ladder idea. This is the advancing ladder which is used in the command phase of the main rules. Our example is going to be a brigade of French infantry under the command of General Margaron, we have given him an average command rating, and his brigade is made up of 4 battalions of average line infantry. He has been ordered by the divisional commander the Player to advance on the British infantry that are in a small village north of his position.

General Margaron's brigade ready for orders

For our example Margaron's brigade receives his orders at 6:00am. All units that are ordered to advance will automatically advance from step 5 on the advance orders ladder, see the exsamples of the advance orders ladder below. The dice roll is used to see what step on the advance ladder it can move to  before it has to test to continue to advance. 

The advance ladder has 4 steps numbering from 5 being the lowest step to 2 being the highest step. 

All advancing units will start on step 5 and will continue to step 2, dicing to test for each step per turn.

The player rolls a D6 dice and will re roll a 6 or 1 score, to obtain a score of ether 5,4,3 or 2 The result is the steps number that his command will reach before he has to retest.

Our example brigade player rolls a 4 so the brigade will continue to advance from step 5 onto step 4 without having to test.

General Margaron's brigade having rolled a 4 will advance to step 5 on the advance ladder in turn ones orders phase.

When a unit passes its advance test it will follow the action described for that step. The movement shown on the right of the advance ladder is the distance between your units and the enemy units/position. Movement in the rules is given as distances between units and positions, a little different i know. as each step is taken the players units will move closer to each other until step 2 is reached and combat is diced for. More on that in a later post.

Generals Margaron's brigade on step 5 they are know 50cm from the British position

What the advance ladder looks like in the rules the action/description gives a run down of the action. The outcome is what the player must do for the next turn/step, and the movement is given as the distance between your units and the enemy.

STEP 5 ON THE ADVANCE LADDER

ACTION DESCRIPTION                                    OUTCOME                             MOVEMENT

unit/units will advance to long                      test to go to step 4 if required                      50cm 

artillery range or same distance
from ordered position

In the next turn our example brigade will move to step 4 on the advance orders ladder as he dose not have to test to go onto step 4 with his original dice roll of 4.

General Margaron's brigade know on step 4, are moved up to 30cm from the British position.

STEP 4 ON THE ADVANCE LADDER

ACTION DESCRIPTION                                    OUTCOME                           MOVEMENT

unit/units will advance to                            test to go to step 3 if required                      30cm

effective artillery range or

same distance from ordered

position

From the next turn our example brigade will have to test to see if his brigade will advance towards the enemy. The test is the same D6 test from the first turn. I will cover this in more detail in a latter post. If this test is passed then our brigade will advance onto step 3. if he fails then it will not move for that turn, and will have to wait for the next turn to try and test again. For our example we will say that the dice were kind, and the test was passed.

General Margaron's brigade is know on step 3 and is moved up to 20cm from the British

STEP 3 ON THE ADVANCE LADDER

ACTION DESCRIPTION                                    OUTCOME                          MOVEMENT

unit/units will advance to                           test to go to step 2 if required                      20cm

long musket range or short

artillery range, or same 

distance from ordered 

position

Again in the next turn our example brigade passes their next test, and move onto step 2 this is the last step on the advance ladder and once reached, the brigade will go onto the combat ladder which i will cover in another post.

General Margaron,s brigade  is know on step 2 of the ladder and is moved up to 10cm from the British position.

STEP 2 ON THE ADVANCE LADDER

ACTION DESCRIPTION                                    OUTCOME                        MOVEMENT

unit/units will advance to                            go to combat ladder next turn                    10cm

effective musket range or

same distance from ordered 

position

Well that's the advance ladder in its basic form, but what if the enemy don't just sit there and wait for you to advance on their position, they may fire on you as you advance, or even advance on you. All this is covered in the rules, and i will be giving examples for each in due course.

I hope this has been of some interest, and will go some way to explaining the main rules. feel free to ask any questions or give some feed back on any points you may think of, as these rules are a work in progress and it is all ways go to get some feed back from fellow wargames. Till next time my friends 

An introduction

This blog is going to be devoted to my Napoleonic wargame rules. The rules have been developed over the past 4 years, and the basic frame work is in place. i will be posting sections of the rules from the introduction, thought to the main rule sections, explaining and giving examples both as posts on this blog as well as play tests on you tube and hangouts. I hope you will enjoy the rules development, and i invite fellow readers and viewers to join in the development of the rules as there is always room for improvement. I will make the basic rules available in due course. The rules themselves are Divisional level and are designed for 6mm to 10mm scale. There is no set basing system for the rules so feel free to use what you have, as you follow and hopefully join in with the development.  For the first part of the blog i will give a proper introduction, and a basic look at the main concept of the game. Till then i will leave you with a few photos of the game during some early test games.