FoG Napoleonic

[sultanbev]

24 or 36 figure regiments and 12 or 18 figure cavalry units. 1 gun per base.

So is that 24 figures to a multi-battalion regiment of say 3000 men, or per battalion. 12-18 figures for a 500-1000 man cavalry regiment sounds pitifully low, as has been the trend of late. A Napoleonic battle should look like a Napoleonic battle, with lots of figures. Not a skirmish.

We use 1/20 ratio in 15mm, so you can field units from 200 man to 1000 man strong quite adequately, thus allowing all historical combinations of TOE/OOB.

Any more details of the how the rules work? I saw on the Osprey site the mention of battlegroups  which is a bit like Werhmacht Napoleonics, sounds very ominous.

Mark

[Nosher]

Not sure what you're driving at MarK?

I was simply stating that the numbers of figures needed to represent a regiment under the rules matched that which I have within my own collections - hence I wouldn't need to be rushing out and buying lots of new stuff nor indeed having to rebase.

I cant comment on the osprey mention of battlegroups as I dont visit their site.

I am trying my best to get a second game in with a narrative of how the rules work, but am finding real life getting in the way a bit too much

[Ferb]

Posted up my first impressions of FoG:N on my blog.

Ferb

[Nosher]

Thanks for the write up Ferb - as you say there's a lot more to the rules than Lasalle, but thats no bad thing. I actually prefer FoG N to Lasalle and think I will have more joy getting friends to play it than I did Lasalle.

[sultanbev]

@ Nosher, just trying to find out what figure ratio the rules use. No one seems to want to say.

Having based lots of other peoples' figures for various sets over the years, there appears to have been a frightening tendency to use say 9 figures to a regiment, 24 figures to a brigade, 6 figures to a cavalry regiment, and so on, regardless of whether said regiment is a single 300 man battalion or 4000 man brigade. Was wondering if FOG-N had fallen into the same trap?

Rules that don't use proper figure/man ratios are junk in my opinion, because you could get the absurd situation where, say, a Russian regiment of 2 battalions each of 350 men, is equal in combat power to a full strength British Brigade of 3 Regiments each of 800 men, plus attached riflemen. Okay, they might have different combat factors representing their "national characteristics", but the numbers should count for something. Plus it looks crap on the wargames table - once played a 15mm refight of a Peninsula battle at Blackpool club using Age of Empires I think, the one based on F&F at brigade level, and it was a lot of empty space with a few figures here and there, looked like a skirmish between a couple of companies, or a wargame of a re-enactment group.Not impressed.

Not that's there anything wrong with the F&F system, we use it for Napoleonics but worked downwards to battalion level, we play corps level battles with individual battalions, activating brigades at a time. And it looks like a Napoleonic battle.

This is part of the content list on the Osprey site:

# Introduction
# The Basics
# Battle Groups
# Command & Control
# Playing
# Movement Rules
# Impact Phase
# Manoeuvre Phase
# Shooting Phase
# Melee phase
# The Combat Mechanism
# Joint Action Phase
# Battle Group Deterioration
# Victory & Defeat
# Special Features
And I quote "realistic deployments and battlefield tactics of the early modern era. "

Early modern era is 1950s-60s modern wargaming 

Using WW2 terminology in a Napoleonic set is just an abuse of language to me, I don't get it. What's wrong with the terminology of the period - brigades, legions, advance guards? Notice also their are 5 phases, presumably a turn. They've done everything to put me off looking at the rules so far, before I've even picked one up. 

Mark

[Nosher]

@ Nosher, just trying to find out what figure ratio the rules use. No one seems to want to say.

Within the design philosophy there isn't a definition of x amount of figures equals whatever formation.

However in the section on recreating historical orbats, the designers suggest that up to 2000 men in a unit is classified as a small unit whereas 3000+ is classified as a large unit. A 'Unit' in FoG N represent various nations interpretations of Brigade/Regiment etc, so for example a Large French unit is a regiment of 2-6 battalions. A Small British Unit might represent a brigade of two Battalions.

I think you might struggle with the rules Mark because by your own definition they do exactly what it is that frustrates you about Napoleonic systems. The units do look a bit smallish given what they represent, and initially I was quite surprised just how small thinsg appeared. Rather pleasingly though this proved wrong in game play because of the subtleties of the command and control system. The battles that I have played have looked the part - but if you're used to having 2000+ figures on the tabel this isn't going to be the rule set for you.

A game 'turn' constitutes the following:

1. Command Point Allocation - Corps Commanders issue Command Points to their sub commanders.  (Takes about ten seconds)
2. Assault Phase - units wishing to assault decalre assaults, targets chooses their response and firing is conducted against chargers
3. Firing Phase - all firing other than that in assault phase takes place. Active player fires first followed by inactive player - shotting is not simultaneous! Breath of fresh air!!!
4. Movement takes place - active player only. Reserves and Flank marches arrive
5. Combat Phase - all close combat is resolved
6. Recovery Phase - both sides can attempt to recover disorder - which is where everything tends to start to go wrong. Disorder left unchecked rapidly decreases and can lead to rapd army detrioration

I have found that the turn sequence is far more intuitive than previous FoG sets - yes there are tables of modifiers to take into account, but because the to hit factors are far simpler (almost BKC-esque) I found I could grasp what to hit factors I needed very quickly which speeds up game play tremendously.

For me FoG N covers Corps Sized games accuartely and gives realistic outcomes without some of the cheesiness I have seen in games like Lasalle and NaW. I will probably still play Lasalle for Divisional Games.

Horses for courses

[sultanbev]

Thanks for that Nosher.

Suppose it comes from tank gaming background, where TOE and numbers mean something.

I come from an age where 1:20 or 1:33 or 1:50 was a norm for any pre-20th Century gaming. To me this growing trend to have amorphous units to me is a dumbing down of the period that goes back to DBM days I guess.

I wonder how these rules and others go on with unique one-of battalions, eg 5th Bttn/60th, Neufchatel battalion, US 15th Regiment with 3rd rank pike? The beauty of Napoleonics is the huge variety of uniforms and troop types fielded - when a wargame manouevre unit is 2000-3000 you lose a lot of that, kinda defeats the object.

Luckily our group has a basic set we've used for a decade, and it has evolved, like all rules. As I also come from a generation where writing or re-writing your own rules was also a norm.  And we have a random command system that is just plain wicked!

[J.S.]

I think they used those terms to be consistent within their own range of wargaming rules; by the way: "early modern" really refers to the timeframe stated by Osprey (I'd even say that its almost too late to be early modern), not the Vietnam war or something like that, so don't worry about that one.

I'll definitely give FOG:N a try in the not too far away future; and yes, I'm perfectly fine with units of 24-30 figures (as long as they are 20mm + big) 

[kustenjaeger]

Greetings

There are problems in representation both with 'generic' units and building units using precise ratios.   With precise ratios you have to accommodate the sometimes significant changes in individual unit strengths between actions. 
Further it is unlikely there was really a linear relationship between numbers and effectiveness at a unit level.  With generic you can lose individuality and the size relationships between units/formations.   

Looking at the appendices in Gill's 1809 books demonstrates how quickly many of the Austrian battalions lost signfiicant numbers but remained as fighting units - using the a fixed ratio one might well have a lot of spare figures after the start of that campaign.   For example at 1:50 moving from say 20 figures (1008 men) to 13 figures (653) for the same unit [invented as I don't have Gill to hand].  While this problem is not absent using a more generic representation (moving from a 6-stand to a 4-stand battalion for this Austrian battalion) it is less.  What would be really difficult to my mind is having all battalions of whatever size represented by 4 stands and then differentiating units of very different sizes. 

I found when researching Eugene's operations of 1809 that using something like Grande Armee in order to deploy the whole armies with 'brigade' stands also led to problems of representation because although the ratios could be variable the varying make up of commands from one action to another meant that the mix of uniform/figure types on a stand should really change to be right for a particular action.  So you end up with a lot of additional bases to cater for this.  This issue is at least absent with a FOG-N level representation (though I suppose you could have a mixed unit of something like Legion du Midi and Hanoverienne). 

Thinking about FOG-N and moving to more specifics I thought I'd use the numbers from Oman for the French at Castalla in April 1813.  If my notes are correct battalion strengths are between 593 (44e Ligne) and 856 (1/117e Ligne).  As most of the regiments had two battalions present 'regimental' strength varied (ignoring the single battalions) from 1186 to 1554.  The three divisions' infantry were: 1e: 5104 in 7 bns (plus 2 coys) [av 729], 2e: 4052 in 6 bns [av 675], and 3e: 2772 in 4 bns [av 693].    At 1:50 you could field battalions with 12-17 figures or field average battalions (which some 1:50 rules do, which I imagine equates to using standard battalions for Black Powder. 

Personally I'd expect the corps commander to be interested in the number of his battalions but if organising at a higher level as FOG-N seems to do, then I would still want to be able to differentiate the divisions with a roughly 5:4:3 strength ignoring quality for the sake of this discussion.  Digging around reviews of FOG-N I found that it seems that: 2000-3000 men = 1 large unit; 3000-4000 men = 2 small units; 4000-5000 men =1 small and 1 large; > 5000 = 2 large units (http://fuentesdeonoro.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/field-of-glory-napoleonic-review-part-1.html ).  On this basis 1e Div has 2 large units, 2e Div has 2 small units and 3e Div has 1 large unit?   The Allies (the numbers available are averages here anyway) had roughly: Advance Guard 2368 (1 line + 2 foreign bns + 2 light coys), Mackenzie 3356 (3 line + 2 Sicilian bns), Clinton 3700 (3 line + 2 foreign bns), Whittingham 3901 (6 Spanish bns).   So in FOG-N these could be 1 large unit for the Advance Guard and 2 small units for each of the others?  At this level I think I'd got for individual battalions especially as Castalla is effectively a Corps per side battle.

However as I'm more likely to do 10mm Napoleonics for 1809 rather than Peninsula (where I have a reasonable number of 15s based for 1:50) I suppose the question is whether one could get FOG-N to reasonably represent a number of the medium size actions i.e. all I am likely to fit on a 6' x 4' table?   Taking Massena's IV Corps at Abensberg battalions varied between about 495 (67e Ligne) and 772 (3e Leger) with regiments between 1417 (93e Ligne) and 2312 (18e Ligne).   Using the formula above all infantry regiments (fudging the Baden contingent to account for the jager battalion) seem to be represented either by a small or large unit in FOG-N (5 small, 10 large - rounding up - a couple are borderline) with brigades of 1-2 and divisions of 3-4 units. 

Regards

Edward 

[Fenton]

Time to bring this back to the fore

What were peoples final thoughts of them now they have been out for a while

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

They read well, and there is enough in them to play a game. Not tried them yet though.

IanS

[tzen67]

So what basing for 10mm are people using?

[Nosher]

30x30

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

A friend is trying to get me into these, any further thoughts (of those who have  expressed an interest and/or played) chaps?
They are releasing the early lists soon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Emperors-Eagles-Field-Glory-Napoleonic/dp/1849089302/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1344379590&sr=8-2
Are they better than Lesalle (£30 I regret spending)?
What level are they for? Division or Corps?
Would they work with multicorps games without drowning in paperwork (like Principles Napoleonic, great rule set, too much paperwork)?
Can you get a result in an evening?
Do they still 'feel' historical, after the game, down the pub, with a beer?
All this is so I can then reactivate the greatest army EVER*, 1806 Prussians (in 15mm, hurry up Pendraken, 7Years war/1806 Prussians needed), before I get tempted to buy 1809 Austrians!


*Please note, this statement is in relative terms, as I have played two dozen POW(N) games with them and a major campaign, they are simply the worst historical army in the period, and have never lost! Just got to know they are never doing anythind spectacular, but get them right and they will stop anyone, even Imperial Guard!

[Nosher]

Are they better than Lesalle (£30 I regret spending)?

What level are they for? Division or Corps?

Would they work with multicorps games without drowning in paperwork (like Principles Napoleonic, great rule set, too much paperwork)?

Can you get a result in an evening?

Do they still 'feel' historical, after the game, down the pub, with a beer?

All this is so I can then reactivate the greatest army EVER*, 1806 Prussians (in 15mm, hurry up Pendraken, 7Years war/1806 Prussians needed), before I get tempted to buy 1809 Austrians!

Better than Lasalle? Two entirely different games, played both. Haven't picked up Lasalle again whereas played quite a fe wgames of foG N now and enjoy the latter more. I think I might enjoy Lasalle if I played it against an opponent

What level? Corps, however playing more than one coprs in a game would require multiple players IMO and naturally adds much more time to the game

Multicorps without drowning in paperwork? See above, some paperwork (army lists and unit labels but thats it)

Result in an evening? at 800 points (a Corps sized game) 3-4 hours at first 2-3 hours once you're familiar with the rules

Historical feel (even through beer goggles)? I think so, but then again most of my games are as wind down on Friday night with a pint or six...

Can I win with 1806 Prussians? Your havin a giraffe!!!!!!!

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

But it is the ultimate challange Nosher, take an army the you KNOW lost (and lost massively) and make it work, then make it win!   
It's a gteat army, the main problem is that it should (in POW terms) be rolling d4-1 for initiative each go! 

[Nosher]

(in POW terms) be rolling d4-1 for initiative each go! 

Sucker for punishment mate, sucker for punishment

Speaking of which I have volunteered for some punishment over on the totty thread

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

I saw! You're a brave man sir!

[Nosher]

I gladly sacrifice myself for my fellow man...

[nikharwood]

I gladly sacrifice myself for my fellow man...

Nosher: taking one for the team since 2002