We used French (Stephen) versus Prussian (yours truly) circa 1813/14.
We used points system to generate 250pt forces and I rolled up terrain from North Europe listing and we diced for set edge.
I had 2 large Infantry Brigades and a Light Cavalry Brigade.
French fielded 3 Infantry and 1 Cavalry Brigades.
Another excellent game and we discovered that Closed Column is a superb formation for Infantry facing Mounted as automatically adopts Square when Cavalry charges.
It also moves twice as fast as Square and can shoot when forming Square.
Only real downside is that it can suffer like Square from shooting.
Cavalry really cannot deal with fresh supported Infantry as they take a -5 whilst Infantry gain +6 making it a done deal that Mounted will suffer greatly (pretty much like in Shako).
We also discovered that Brick Villages are also massively tough to assault.
Really need to soften up such targets with Artillery to have any real chance.
Now that we have the basics sorted the game plays really fast with only a few of the Optional rule interactions requiring us to look up rule set.
Rules are most likely our go to set for Divisional (3-5 Brigades) size games as they have nice mix of playability and period flavour.
Out of interest, are you still using these rules? We are fortunate in that we have a number of very good, modern rule sets for Napoleonic now, vs the situation 15 years ago where it was almost all pseudo-simulation types, knee deep in tables and 2 hours for turn! I still like Black Powder (with all the supplements which are essential IMO); General d'Armee (though some of the ADC uses seem a bit of an afterthought and I dislike the flat (and rather bland / simplistic) 3+ needed for every brigade every turn to activate); Bataille Empire (though the layout and translation issues make it too much like hard work) and I've just picked up Soldiers of Napoleon too. Still pondering whether to bother with these?
ReplyDeleteShort answer is no, but not because we dislike the rules as such but find them just too slow to generally bring a game to completion. My thoughts sort of mirror yours re other sets and I do like BP with Clash of Eagles supplement (written by same author as OTH) as more playable 'buckets of dice' version. GDA is probably 'best' set but fully agree the ADC system is rather arbitrary and again find game bit slower to resolve. Batt Empire (love the lists) we really tried to absorb but was indeed hard work and we never felt confident we were playing correctly (Cav seems very powerful). Currently those I would turn to are BP, GDA, Field of Battle, Shako II, Lasalle II, Blucher or Field of Glory Naps which all scratch different itches at varying levels of representation. Not played SON enough to judge it. They all have their strengths and weaknesses :-)
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