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My dad and I have recently entered the world of Napoleonic gaming, 28mm Perry and Victrix lines. We've both been painting like madmen and have made some really great progress already (pictures to follow tonight) ...

We're using a modified version of black powder rulers for now but would be interested to hear Dakka's input on things you've liked / disliked either about BP or any other system you might have used. We'll use this board to post battle reports, pictures, ideas, etc. Feedback is always welcome!

I prefer Lasalle or General de Brigade... both have more period feel than BP which is a little to generic for me.

I've heard some good things about BP but Lasalle would be my first choice for Napoleonics. It'd probably be worth checking out .

I've always used Napoleon's Battles. It's a grand tactical scale game, with the brigade as the smallest-sized unit. Capitan Games has the rights, and is expecting to release the 4th Edition of the rules later this year.

Big P wrote:
I prefer Lasalle or General de Brigade... both have more period feel than BP which is a little to generic for me.

Yea, my dad and I have already started some SERIOUS tweeking of the BP rule set, but most of our experience is in ACW, so we are still getting used to the variety of "flavor" that came with the Napoleonic period.

Thanks for the input!

Here is a small preview of what I'll be posting later on

Time for some Frenchies

Nice! It's great to see some more Napoleonics on Dakka. Those are 28mm Perry and Victrix, I take it?

You should post them in the Dakka Gallery!

28mm Napoleanics! I hope you have a big table.

I also like LaSalle, but BP is servicable and great for a "general" ruleset.

I love the grand spectacle of Napoleonics and am extremely envious of those people with the talent and patience to paint that many miniatures with such complex paint schemes.

Looking forward to seeing this.

I prefer 6mm for the grand spectacle but it is just aesthetics. You lose the uniform detail and gain a sense of mass.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I prefer 6mm for the grand spectacle but it is just aesthetics. You lose the uniform detail and gain a sense of mass.

I'm with you, for anything Franco-Prussian or older I prefer 6mm, though like Hordini, I'm just happy to see Napoleonics getting some love here on Dakka. Keep up the painting Bear!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I prefer 6mm for the grand spectacle but it is just aesthetics. You lose the uniform detail and gain a sense of mass.

Which is why I like 15mm. You get the best of both worlds.

Napolionic love?

I love this...
http://www.warlordgames.com/new-la-haye-sainte-battle-set-collectors-edition/

Not sure I love it in 28mm, but it does make me giddy.

Eumerin wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I prefer 6mm for the grand spectacle but it is just aesthetics. You lose the uniform detail and gain a sense of mass.

Which is why I like 15mm. You get the best of both worlds.

I used to have a Saxon army in 15mm. Unfortunately I sold it years ago when most of my club switched to 25mm for Naps.

For the size figures you are using I would be inclined to use the old Charge rules, by P Young and JP Lawford. They would fit with your numbers also. Or possibly DBN which offers a more chess like game play. My son and I use DBN with 15s but a 12 point game would be perfect for 28s.

I love the idea of huge napoleonic or ancient battles. Then I remember im too lazy for all that. Thats why I like Sharpe practice skirmish rules for my napoleonics.
Awesome paintjobs BTW. Jealous that your Dad is your regular opponent how awesome is that

I found the easiest way to represent large battles is to play a grand tactical scale game with no set figure ratio. Like Grande Armee, Volley & Bayonet or other such games that just have a base be a brigade, regardless of the number of figures on it. Some people do up the same size base with little dioramas of 6mm formations, others put 4 54mm infantry or 2 cavalry on them.



The downside to such an approach though, is you can lose the rectangular base shape that is often used in tactical games where each base is a company. And as you can see in the OP's pictures, they have their own unique charm.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

RB wrote:
For the size figures you are using I would be inclined to use the old Charge rules, by P Young and JP Lawford. They would fit with your numbers also. Or possibly DBN which offers a more chess like game play. My son and I use DBN with 15s but a 12 point game would be perfect for 28s.

I'd also recommend checking out the free wargaming handbook PDF from All The King's Men. It's a simpler game where you just have infantry, cavalry and artillery and that's that, but it's loads of fun to actually play. Definitely in keeping of the spirit of Charge! or Charles Grant's The War Game.

http://allthekingsmentoysoldiers.com/documents/ATKMRules2ndEditionOnline.pdf

Yes, it is an interesting point. I plumped for the 60mm square bases of Polemos "Marechal de l'Empire" because they are easily usable with Sam Mustafa's "Grande Armee" too.

At the ground scale conversion, a 60mm base is roughly 300 yards. Except for artillery, units only "fight" when in contact.

The short effective range of muskets means that you can consider the 300 yards square base to contain a brigade with skirmishers in front, file closers behind, and so on, moving into different formations, and with up to 100 yards in front of the foremost rank, into which it is shooting musketry or advancing against a similar enemy formation.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Yes, it is an interesting point. I plumped for the 60mm square bases of Polemos "Marechal de l'Empire" because they are easily usable with Sam Mustafa's "Grande Armee" too.

60mm is a good compromise. I originally did 6mm on 30mm square bases and converted the rules to cm. It was cool having an entire historical battle on a 6x4 tabletop.

At the ground scale conversion, a 60mm base is roughly 300 yards. Except for artillery, units only "fight" when in contact.

It's like each combat is it's own table of a tactical game.

Yes exactly. When two 60mm bases fight each other, it represents both sides with perhaps 1,500 to 3,000 men each getting into formation, moving up, deploying skirmishers, approach march, musketry, charge with bayonet, retreat, pursuit, and so on, all condensed into a single die roll in the Polemos rules.

I've been reading around these topics a lot more recently (ditched my kindle for being too finicky now that I've moved to Germany and went on a splurge of history book purchasing ).

28mm Napoleonics really appeals to me. I think your miniatures look really nice!

I'm currently working on a Dark Ages Ireland project, and after that I want to do the Cromwellian wars in Ireland (yeah yeah, I'm an emigrant, it gets to be that way ) but after that I'd like to have a go at Napoleonics in the Arabian Penninsula and Egypt!

French Army versus Mamelukes would be a spectacular battle. The French also fought the Ottomans supported by British at Acre.

We must ignore the Battle of the Nile in which the French fleet was annihilated by Nelson as it was too one sided.

You also can play imaginary scenarios of French versus Ottoman versus British versus Persian on the way to India. It never happened but it might have!

Yeah, a trip to Istanbul in April really fired my curiosity about the Ottomans, and recently reading "The Arabs, a History" by Eugene Rogan has piqued my interest in the napoleonic era in that part of the world. Of course, my girlfriend is a damn Prussian, so it is also tempting to pick some of those up just to taunt her with

The problem with history is there's really quite a lot of it

I've done a lot of Napoleonics, lately, and my ruleset of choice is Black Powder. The system is very very good. Not too complex, as most other napoleonic rulesets are, and not too shallow, either.

I've countless pics of my WIP french and british armies on my blog:

http://myevergrowingfleets.blogspot.com.br/