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As luck would have it my birthday and a bonus at work with both be coming shortly and I was considering starting that 15mm Napoleonics army that I've had my eye on for so long, but can't decide on a rule set! For now this is just a project to keep me occupied seeing as I don't have much of a wargaming group locally, but I'd like to eventually build two small-ish forces to play with every once in a while. From what I've read LaSalle seems pretty decent, but if you gents could provide a little bit of input I'd be much obliged!

Many thanks!

I'm rather out of touch with 15mm Naps, if I"m honest, but Field of Glory do a ruleset now and you can download intro rules here. FoG of course are well known for their Ancients so there is heritage.

http://www.fieldofglory.com/files/FOGN%20v2%20Fastplay.pdf


Lasalle sounds interesting and should work well with your idea of small forces. I have Sam Mustafa's Grande Armee rules, which are well written, so that seems like a recommendation. There are downloads on his site...

http://www.sammustafa.com/honour/downloads/


Baccus (Polemos is the name of their rules wing) do a set aimed at their 6mm models but can easily be used with 15mm just by putting fewer figures on each base.

https://www.baccus6mm.com/index.php?content=polemos

Only £15 and includes the large scale and the small scale battle rules. Quite simple and fast playing.

I think the thing to do is to work out the most widely used or most flexible base size and then you will be able to use your figures for various rulesets. To be honest, it usually doesn't matter if two armies are different sizes as long as the difference is not too large.

Thanks for the info KilKrazy.

Do you have a specific system that you prefer?

I've had a lot of fun with:

Field of Battle (based on Piquet)
http://www.piquetwargames.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=28

and

Napoleon at War
http://www.manatwar.es/

Napoleon at War feels more like a GW-ish product, while Field of Battle is more historical (card activation, limited command and control).

Napoleon at War also sells its own minis, but I prefer Battle Honors and Blue Moon for my Nappies.

I really enjoy both games. I would recommend checking out The Miniatures Page for further reviews/recommendations.

Field of Glory Napoleonics has one major problem, the rulebook is horribly horribly laid out. it could do with an entire rewrite to clean some of that up. other than that it seems fun but i've really only read it and played two trial games.

I've heard good things about lasalle(and read the rulebook) and nap at war(not read) as well but played neither. (would like to though) both of these are based on controlling separate battalions whereas fog:nap is based on controlling brigades/regiments.

There is no "standard" Napoleonics rules and they tend to go in and out of print (though in the modern world PDFs help with that). The choice partly depends on the size of battle you want to fight.

Before choosing, I would go on The Miniatures Page and see what the popular base sizes are for commonly used 15mm rules.

You generally find there are several sets of rules that use the same or very similar bases, then you can build the army and swap rules easily if you want to.

TBH you can usually adapt or make allowance for bases that are quite out of true for any given set, by changes the whole ground scale, but not every player is happy to do that so it makes sense to adopt something that is widely acceptable.

The other option is to build two opposing armies to your own taste, but that can get expensive!

Usually the common advice I've seen is to find out how the people near you base if you intend to play with them.

For 15/18mm a common base size is 40x30mm with either 8 infantry in two ranks, 3 cav in one rank, or one gun (with the gun bases being deeper as necessary to fit)
These bases work for FoG:Nap and Lasalle and will work for Nap at War as well (footprint with 4 bases to a battalion instead of 6 is pretty darn close to the same and using a marker to keep track of damage) I've also read battle reports with bases like these being used in GdB and Black Powder.
When I finally get a little more permanently settled somewhere that's my plan for napoleonics just as it seems to allow a large variety.

 wana10 wrote:
Usually the common advice I've seen is to find out how the people near you base if you intend to play with them.

For 15/18mm a common base size is 40x30mm with either 8 infantry in two ranks, 3 cav in one rank, or one gun (with the gun bases being deeper as necessary to fit)
These bases work for FoG:Nap and Lasalle and will work for Nap at War as well (footprint with 4 bases to a battalion instead of 6 is pretty darn close to the same and using a marker to keep track of damage) I've also read battle reports with bases like these being used in GdB and Black Powder.
When I finally get a little more permanently settled somewhere that's my plan for napoleonics just as it seems to allow a large variety.

Unfortunately this isn't something I'm doing with a group seeing as my FLGS is a purely 40k community, so what other people want to play isn't really the issue here. This is just a hobby project for me, and I like to build towards a goal instead of building what looks nice, so that's why I was looking for a good rule system. I was really looking for was to get the most bang for my buck, and I think the 40mm x 30mm basing is going to be the way to go. You certainly can't beat that working perfectly for both Field of Glory and for LaSalle.

Here are the base sizes used in the rules on my shelf...

Empire 3rd edition (ratio 1 figure = 60 men)
Infantry: 3/8th inch frontage per infantry casting, by 1/2 inch deep.
Cavalry: 3/4 inch frontage per casting, by any convenient depth.

Napoleon’s Battles (ratio 1 fig. = 120 inf, 80 cav.)
Inf: 18mm wide by 25mm deep, with figures two by two
Cav: 48mm square, with two figures on it.

Volley and Bayonet
Standard brigade base of 3 inches square for infantry and cavalry brigade. Any scale figures can be used. In other words, a brigade is the smallest normal unit.

Grande Armee (Sam Mustafa’s rules)
As Volley and Bayonet.

Polemos
A brigade base of 60mm square for Marechal de l’Empire, using 48 6mm infantry or 18 cav.
Or a regimental base of 60mm x 30mm for General de Division. Put two small bases in a square for the big battle brigade base.

If you choose 40mm x 30mm it is roughly equivalent to the Empire or Napoleon's Battles base width using 3 or four figures wide. Depth is not usually as important.

I play Shako 2 and it is a brilliant set of rules, which are easy to pick up and can play surprisingly quickly. I wouldnt recommend the field of glory rules, as their style of rules doesnt work in napoleonics and can be quite inaccurate.

The rules you choose depend on the command level you want to portray.

For example, as a colonel or brigadier, one of your most crucial battlefield decisions is when to form square against cavalry. As a corps commander, it is out of your hands.

If you want to play as a colonel, you need rules that allow your troops to change formation and so on.

The large scale rules, like Polemos Marechal de l'Empire, assume the troops take up whatever formation is appropriate -- a bad combat result indicates they failed to do so. The stand of figures does not change formation.

Lasalle is a fun game written by a history professor who teaches the period. It's solid in game play and history, but the author also has a low opinion of trying to simulate history in a miniature game and instead likes to go for an impression or feel that meets people's expectations rather than a simulation with the goal of reproducing results. It's at a tactical level where each base is a company of 100-200 soldiers and you get to change formation into square and all that fun stuff.

Author's website about the game.
http://www.sammustafa.com/honour/

My preference is for grand tactical. Which each base is a brigade of even upwards of 2500 soldiers. For this I actually like the free options. Fast Play Grande Armee (also by Sam Mustafa) and Huzzah! Glorious Empires.

http://www.deepfriedhappymice.com/html/gw_ga_fastplay.html

If you want the army lists for Huzzah! Glorious Empires, PM me or get them from the yahoogroup here:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Huzzah_GT/





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, remember when rules talk about base sizes, they are very abstract. We're talking about the general area that soldiers might have immediate influence over. So if a set of rules say to use 40mm squares and another say to use 60mm x 30mm, just use whatever. As long as it's close enough it'll work fine.

@IAmTheWalrus - What miniature line did you end up picking?

Wow, thanks to all for the wealth of information!

 frozenwastes wrote:

@IAmTheWalrus - What miniature line did you end up picking?

I went with Old Glory because I've been happy with their stuff in the past. Can't really offer up an opinion quite yet because they're still in the mail.

Have any recommendations?

Old Glory's Blue Moon line? Or 19th Century Miniatures' Old Glory line? Both are fine, but I think Blue Moon is ever so slightly nicer (and slightly taller) but Old Glory is cheaper than Blue Moon.

19th Century Miniatures also has another range called Battle Honours and they are fine as well, between the two others in height.

Probably the best 15mm would be AB Figures made By Eureka Miniatures in Australia. They are SUPER expensive at around $1 per 15mm miniature + across the world shipping costs. People love them, but I certainly don't think they're worth more than twice the money or the long wait times.

our club has really taken to Napoleon at War, fantastic movement system, games played to decisive results, and we have even done scenario large battles that have been fun and finished in a fair amount of time with good results

I love AB Figures, but frozenwastes is right: they are relatively expensive.

Lasalle also seems to be a pretty cool ruleset, but I tend to prefer tactical-level games in general (which Lasalle is).

RazorMind wrote:
our club has really taken to Napoleon at War, fantastic movement system, games played to decisive results, and we have even done scenario large battles that have been fun and finished in a fair amount of time with good results

Baccus did a recreation of the Battle of Leipzig as a demo game for shows.

https://www.baccus6mm.com/index.php?content=projects

I ended up going with Old Glory's Blue Moon line. They look nice enough and the price is right.

frozenwastes wrote:
Probably the best 15mm would be AB Figures made By Eureka Miniatures in Australia. They are SUPER expensive at around $1 per 15mm miniature + across the world shipping costs. People love them, but I certainly don't think they're worth more than twice the money or the long wait times.

They're wicked nice, but I can't do them justice, and I certainly can't afford those prices!

RazorMind wrote:our club has really taken to Napoleon at War, fantastic movement system, games played to decisive results, and we have even done scenario large battles that have been fun and finished in a fair amount of time with good results

I'll have to have a look at it then. Thanks for the heads up!

I've enjoyed several games of 28mm Napoleonics using the Black Powder rules... They aren't exactly historical simulation level but they are fun and relatively easy to learn.