In my last post I said I had written a new scenario for the first day of the Battle of Kulm, 29 August 1813, using Sam Mustafa’s Blücher rules. It is on the Blucher Scenario Page. We have now played the scenario three times, with two wins for the Russians and one for the French. All three games were close and the players seemed to enjoy them.

We played the first game at my local club with two players a side and me as umpire. One player had played the rules before but the others were all new to them. They picked them up quickly, all being experienced with the period and with various other Napoleonic rules. The second game was between me and my son Nick, who has played Blücher several times. I umpired the third game for Harry and Dan, both new to Blücher and still quite new to Napoleonics. Over the three games and between these eight people, I believe the rules passed the tests for accessibility, plausibility and fun. Hats off to Sam Mustafa and his play testers for such a polished product. He does make exceedingly good rules!

The figures we used are 6mm on 80mm x 40mm movement trays. Most are MDF Commission Figurines, with a few metal Heroics figures.

The scenario held up well but I tweaked it between the first and second games, mainly to simplify the map. I had got out of the habit of making maps for Blücher’s scale and on the first version I included secondary tracks and altogether too many building bases. The table was cleaner for games two and three. The orders of battle and reinforcement schedules remained the same for all three games. For game three I added traits to the two commanders, because it seems to encourage player engagement if their model general plays a distinct role in the battle. I made Vandamme inspiring (+1 die in combat) and Ostermann-Sacken heroic (has the Rally ability).

From time to time when we play Blücher, somebody proposes a House rule, normally regarding the (in)ability of infantry to fire into or out of a built up area. Another recurring suggestion is to allow prepared infantry to fire a proportion of their elan out to their flanks. I’ve been happy to make house rules for various sets, especially Napoleon’s Battles, which acquired a mass of add-on rules over the decade or more that we played it. However, I still resist adding house rules to Blücher because it flows so well and the justification for most rules decisions is provided by the author. For example, his argument against firing into/out of BUAs is that this rule doesn’t mean musketry didn’t take place, just that at the concentration it occurred, neither garrison nor troops in the open would have suffered an appreciable drop in combat effectiveness. Infantry cannot shoot a garrison out of a town: it has to kick them out. And of course, combat in Blücher represents everything involved in an assault, including close range musketry. So anyway, as yet we have no house rules and I doubt we will ever add them.

I’m never sure how interested people are by blow-by-blow battle reports. But the differences between how the three games played were interesting. The first, which was a French victory, saw the French concentrating on the right wing and pouring a lot of effective skirmish fire into the Russians, who were all deployed forward along the stream between the two villages. The Russians had almost no units in reserve, which meant the French, with superior skirmishing ability, were able to grind them down before closing. When the French attacked across the stream, the already depleted Russians were easier to defeat.

In game two, a Russian win, the Russians deployed some way back from the stream line (except for garrisoning the two villages) and kept a big reserve that they sent forward sparingly. In this game the French ran out of time to take their objectives and found that the fresh units they needed to assault the villages were too far away to affect the final phase.

The third game saw the French take both Straden and Priesten, but they were kicked out of both by Russian counter-attacks. Straden changed hands four times, ending up n Russian possession. I really like Blücher’s mechanics for fighting for BUAs. The initial fight to eject a garrison is tough but if/when it succeeds, a seesaw fight can follow as each side sends in fresh units to try to retake the BUA before the enemy occupying it can form into garrison. This chimes with accounts of village fighting being far more fluid than some rules make it, and where final possession often went to the side with the last formed reserves to send in.

All three games were close. My notes to self after playing them include: don’t put all your units up front; reinforce when you have to but don’t expose units unnecessarily; cavalry can affect more enemy units when it is a threat than once it has charged a target; and remember that even winners take a loss in combat, so you can grind a strong enemy down by sending in a succession of assaults.

Overall, this has been a fun scenario and I’d like to reuse it in a year or so.

I have uploaded a new scenario for Blücher on the Napoleonic Scenarios Page, based on the first day of the battle of Kulm. It is a chance to deploy the Russian Guard who, while used in combat more frequently than the French Old Guard, are not often seen slogging it out in the front line. We are playing this scenario on 12 December with 6mm figures and a scale of 1BW to 2”. I will report on how it plays.

We are playing a game of Epic 40K (3rd edition) on Saturday, with armies of 5,600 points apiece. The notes below are for those players who want to put themselves into the story beforehand (I’m looking at you, Dan!). The scenario is adapted from the Rescue scenario in the Epic Battles Book.

Agri-world 966, known to its inhabitants as Arcadia, was already inhabited by primitive Orks when the Imperium first colonised it. The Ork population was small, unusually peaceable and concentrated in the remote western fringes of the main continent, which are unsuitable for human agriculture. After a half-hearted, expensive and unsuccessful campaign to eliminate the indigenous Orks, the planetary Governor decided to live and let live. The two races slowly learned to rub along together, with only the occasional spat in the Western Fringes, quickly suppressed by Imperial forces.

This near harmonious coexistence ended centuries later when an Ork hulk crashed into the Western Fringes, bringing the mightily ambitious Bad Moon Warlord, Tamrine. Disgusted by the unwarlike traits of the native Orks, he decided to whip them into shape and then to wipe the Imperium off the face of the planet. Waagh! Tamrine was born.

Lulled by generations of coexistence with the indigenous Orks, the Arcadian Planetary Governor was slow to recognise the danger posed by Waugh! Tamrine. She reckoned the latest Ork incursion could be dealt with by the Planetary Defece Forces, without seeking help from off-world. This proved a major miscalculation, as Waagh! Tamrine smashed through the Imperial defences and laid waste to thousands of square miles of Arcadian farmland. Realising her error, the Governor begged for assistance from the Sector Council, warning that her forces could not hold out for long unaided.

Fortunately for Arcadia, the Sector Council was able to respond to the governor’s pleas, sending, first, a detachment of Imperial Fists and subsequently, a smaller detachment of Space Wolves to assist the PDF. These reinforcements arrived on Arcadia not a moment too soon.

At the point our game begins, Waugh! Tamrine has driven deep into Imperial territory. In the chaos of the Arcadian retreat, Imperator Titan Tiberius, undergoing a refit at the settlement of Bastion, has been cut off by the Ork advance and is behind the front line. Tiberius is one of only two Imperator Titans on Arcadia and its loss is unthinkable. It is protected by a small detachment of Imperial Guard. Tamrine is as determined to take the Titan as the Imperium is desperate to recover it.

Tiberius is placed in the settlement of Bastion. Deploy up to 1,400 points of Imperial Guard detachments to protect it, within a 60cm square.

The Orks then all deploy in an area 60cm deep, starting 60cm from the nearest defender of Bastion. Exception: up to 3 Ork detachments may begin off table. Place their HQs on any of the three table edges, level with the perimeter of the Imperial garrison. They will enter on turn 1.

Finally, the Imperial players place HQs for the rest of the Imperial army on the short table edge furthest from the Titan. Every HQ must be placed within 15cm of the first HQ placed. Exception: up to 4 HQs may be placed anywhere along the table edge.

The Imperial objective is to keep control of Titan Tiberius. The Ork objective is to capture or destroy it.

Tiberius has enough power to operate its void shields but can neither move nor fire.

Victory conditions. The side that controls the Titan at the end of turn 6 wins the game. Before then, if either side’s morale drops to zero, it loses immediately. The Orks may target the Titan but if they destroy it, they can only win by reducing Imperial morale to zero.

On 10 September, my friend Keith came up from Devon to attend Colours at Newbury and then play a game of Soldiers of Napoleon. We played the Ligny scenario mentioned in my last blog post, on the Napoleonic scenarios page here. On 26 September, Dan, Spencer and I played the scenario again. They were both cracking games.

As Soldiers of Napoleon (SoN) is still a new set, it might be worth summarising the way the rules work. The USP is the deck of cards, which regulate various aspects of play. The players start the turn with a hand of cards each, which they play alternately until both run out and the turn finishes. Each card can be played for one of three purposes: to issue orders to a variable number of units in one brigade; to rally all eligible units in a brigade; or to launch a special event. Of course, you can’t use a card for more than one purpose at a time so there are always tough choices to be made.

Movement and shooting are both straightforward processes, in much the same mould as other Napoleonic rules. There are a couple of unusual orders that we really like: light cavalry can ‘harass’ enemy skirmishers, with the possible result that the skirmishers will fall back to rejoin their parent battalions. Heavy cavalry, meanwhile, can intimidate enemy by their very presence. I like it that your cavalry can influence the battle in more subtle ways than charging at the first target.

The rally and stand removal mechanic is highly original and takes some getting used to. An important point to remember is that while every card has a Rally function, you can only rally troops of the quality levels specified on that card. Pretty much every card lets you rally elite and professional troops but very few cards allow you to rally militia. So if, like the Prussians in 1815, you have a lot of Landwehr militia in your army, make every card that can be used to rally militia count. Sadly, this will mean forgoing some neat special events and high digit orders, but your army will dissolve if you don’t rally your militia when you can.

The Rally process involves different steps that it is important to follow in sequence. You can soak off disruption points in different ways including stand removal. While stand removal is seemingly voluntary, it is better to lose a stand or two in a rally action than to lose the whole unit at turn’s end because it had more disruption points than stands remaining.

Anyway, we were both set up and ready to go.

In game 1, Keith took Girard’s 7th Division, holding St Amand La Haye, while I led the Prussians, tasked with expelling Girard from the village. In Turn 1, the Prussians began with two special events, both to boost their artillery: one round of off-table grand battery fire and a card that allowed all on-table artillery to fire. Neither made much difference, to my deep annoyance. The Prussians advanced on both wings, towards St Amand La Haye in the East and through Wagnelée towards Le Hameau in the West. In front of Le Hameau, the French focussed artillery and skirmish fire on one Landwehr battalion, nearly bringing it to break point in one turn but fortunately, I had a rally card that included militia so avoided a rout, at the cost of a lost stand. In the East, the Prussian advance got off to a slow start but by turn 2 I was ready to charge St Amand La Haye. Or not. The 28th Line, ordered into the village, declined to advance so fired an ineffectual volley instead. I hate/love the Charge mechanic! In retrospect, that might have been the time to use a Command Point for a discipline test reroll. So turn 2 ended with no serious combat in the East and some enterprising French skirmishing and artillery bombardment in the West. At this point, we called time for food and drink.

Phase 2 of the game saw a change to solo play as Keith was sent back to Devon. The two sides were now in striking range and each made aggressive moves on their left. In the West, helped by the arrival of their reserves, the French stopped the Prussian right dead and pushed it onto the defensive. In the East, the Prussians tried again to assaut St Amand La Haye and this time, at least they managed to charge home. However, the first combat went against them. The Prussians regrouped and the second assault pushed one French battalion out of the village. The French lacked reserves on the right so transferred two battalions from the left to try and retake the lost sector of St Amand la Haye, which they successfully did. All the while, victory points were accumulating as both sides had to shore up crumbling units. At the end of turn 4, French VPs exceeded the Prussian morale total so Girard won the day. I don’t play solo games that often but enjoyed playing this through to a conclusion.

In the second game, Spencer took the French while Dan and I shared the Prussians (Dan on the left, me on the right). To cut a long story short, the Prussians attacked St Amand La Haye from two sides and after shooting up a seasoned French Line battalion, they got a battalion into St Amand La Haye and managed to hold on there. The French left came out swinging to try and disrupt the Prussians right, but rolled some very unlucky dice and stalled in the Standing crops. On the French right, a lone battalion charged and roughed up some Landwehr and French skirmishers caused a ot of disruption, but when it mattered, French dice rolls were particularly unlucky. Dan meanwhile ground steadily forward, his men watched by Blücher himself. French morale broke at the end of turn 4. At this point French reinforcements were just arriving on the table, too late, alas, to alter the outcome.

These were two very entertaining games. The rules flow easily and both battles ‘felt right’. We especially like the skirmishing rules, which, for me, are way better than the bucket of dice palaver used in Lasalle 2. The choices players face are constantly challenging: is this card more valuable for its order value, for its special event or for the troop qualities it can rally? It will take a few more games to be sure but my evolving feeling is that special events should be used sparingly, however much fun they seem. This is particularly true for the attacking side. By all means play a special bombardment event before charging in but every card played for its special event is one card fewer for moving units towards the enemy. Also, make sure you hang on to the rally card that covers the troop qualities in your army. The Prussians in this scenario have 4 Landwehr units who can quickly get into trouble if you don’t have a rally card that covers their militia quality.

In the Facebook Soldiers of… Group, somebody wondered if small units would survive for long on the table against much larger opponents. This scenario has a number of 3-stand French battalions and overall, the Prussian battalions are significantly larger than their French opponents. We certainly found that the smaller French units held their own well. Unit size is of course a factor, but so are troop quality, skirmish ability and formation.

I was impressed in the second battle by how quickly the game played. We had all got our heads around the mechanics by then so we rattled through each turn. In truth, the movement, firing and melee mechanics are very straightforward and logical. The challenges in these rules derive from the card play, not from long lists of dice modifiers. This is as it should be.

I have no niggles with these rules. There are however a couple of unit stats in the rulebook that I am not sure about. For example, in the Army lists Prussian Foot artillery is only allowed to be 12 pounders, whereas in reality the majority of Prussian field foot batteries were 6 pounders. This might even be a typo I guess, and it’s no hardship to ignore the lists and give the Prussian foot batteries 6 pounders. I am also tempted to revisit the stats for Prussian Landwehr, some of whom were, by 1815, veteran units with fearsome reputations. We needn’t go overboard here but it may be fitting to increase the quality of Landwehr from the older Prussian provinces (and hence recruited first) from Militia to Trained. This small shift would make quite a difference to the staying power of a Silesian Landwehr battalion.

Finally, the scenario worked well, though I tweaked the objectives for Prussia between games 1 and 2 to make St Amand la Haye more important (they were given the Take a Strongpoint objective, but only redeemable in that village).

Overall, I am delighted with these rules and I look forward to the first supplement.

I have uploaded a new scenario here for Soldiers of Napoleon (Scenario SoN 3), covering Girard’s 7th Division’s defence of St Amand La Haye during the Battle of Ligny on 16 June 1815. I started with the Lasalle scenario that I had already written for the same action, but was soon moved to revisit the sources because of an interesting difference in approach between the two rule sets.

Lasalle 2 makes all units a standard size (Russian artillery excepted). Lasalle 1 did have an option for large battalions, but even then there were only two sizes. Sam Mustafa is an accomplished designer who tests his rules extensively before releasing them. Lasalle 2 works very well indeed and there is no doubt that standard unit sizes (and hence frontages) makes for smooth play. The argument for standard sizes generally runs that it is hard to know exactly how many men were present at any given point and that on average, most battalions were around 500 men strong after a few months campaigning. If an army’s battalions were seriously understrength, as the Russians often were in 1813, the player is free to represent two actual battalions with one model battalion. Fair enough. I didn’t give much thought to this approach until reading through Soldiers of Napoleon.

The approach to unit creation in Soldiers of Napoleon is more fluid than in Lasalle 1 or 2. A battalion can be any starting size from 2 to 6 ‘stands’ and the rules for firing, melee and morale management are geared for this. Looking at the orders of battle n the 1815 campaign, I was struck by the wide variation of battalion strengths between the French and Prussian armies. On the whole, Prussian battalions are significantly larger than the French. Now, at the scale of a divisional fight, the difference in battalion sizes could have a significant impact on play. So in adapting the Girard scenario to SoN, I have tried to reflect actual unit sizes in the order of battle (using the ratio of 132 infantry or 100 cavalry to a stand). Consequently, the largest unit is a Prussian Line battalion of 6 stands and the smallest is a 3-stand French battalion. I look forward to testing the effect this has on scenario balance when we play it on 11 September. I have a feeling that Girard is going to have a tough time hanging on to his real estate!

Last week I ran two games of Longstreet over two days, for two groups of players. The scenario was Blocher’s Knoll, which is on the scenario page here. I had written the original scenario 7 or 8 years ago but updated it for the latest outing, having read a bit more about Gettysburg in recent years.

The scenario concerns Ewell’s assault on the Federal right wing just north of Gettysburg on 1 July 1863. Howard’s XI Corps is spread thin, facing north, from where Ewell’s Corps is approaching. Ewell, meanwhile, is marching down two converging roads, one of which points directly behind the Federal right flank. It is an opportunity to dislodge and roll up XI Corps.

Game 1: “I was winning the battle at 4, but lost it by 5!”


The first game pitted Dan and Harry’s Confederates against Spencer’s Federals. Spencer had three brigades of mainly cautious veterans (Pennsylvania Dutch, still smarting from their rough handling at Chancellorville), with Barlow’s division in front and Krzyżanowski in the second line. Dan led Early’s division on the left, heading for Spencer’s hanging right flank, while Harry kept Spencers attention from the front with Dole’s brigade. Spencer, who has a history of aggressive play, set out to spoil Dan’s attack with one of his own and to put pressure on Harry. Rather as one might expect, the cautious Pennsylvania regiments were just not suited for aggressive charges and bounced off the secessionists wherever they met them. However, a cautious veteran is still a veteran and they fought much better in defence.

Losses mounted on both sides but the Confederate left hook developed well and when Blocher’s Knoll fell to Early, Spencer seemed perilously close to defeat. Spencer then got a break that totally changed the picture. In his enthusiasm to outflank the Federal position, Dan sent a regiment in march column over the bridge across Rock Creek, right under Federal noses. Spencer hit the march column with a big, seasoned regiment and almost wiped it out. In the victory step of his turn, he rolled high and the game was over.

Longstreet’s victory conditions are a feature of the rules that I really like. They permit scenarios between unbalanced forces where the final issue may not be in doubt, but the weaker force can still win the game. Spencer had fewer numbers and poorer quality troops but he deservedly snatched victory from defeat when he punished Dan’s rashness. We agreed that had we continued playing, the Federals would soon have been rolled up by superior Secessionist numbers. It was a shame for Dan and Harry, who barely put a foot wrong until the march column/bridge incident. But somebody had to lose and they did so with good grace.

Game 2: “More Troops? Where would you have me find more troops?”

Game two was a two player clash between Chris’s Federals and Ian’s Confederates. Ian attacked Chris’s left with Dole’s brigade, while he marched Early’s division down the other flank, deploying his artillery to cover Blocher’s Knoll from the east while Gordon’s brigade attacked from the north east. I did think this would be a game-winning attack and the rebel guns did some serious damage to the defenders on the knoll. However, three factors conspired against a Secessionist win: Chris sent a regiment over Rock Creek to fire into the flank of the rebel artillery, which didn’t so much damage as distract it from it’s main purpose; Gordon’s Brigade took too many losses to carry Blocher’s Knoll on its own; and Dole’s brigade got itself annihilated in an unequal struggle against the stronger Federal Left. While losses were high on both sides, Ian’s crossed the line first and Chris took the win.

So the Federals won again. As with the first refight, it was inevitable that the next assault would have succeeded, but in game terms, the initial attack had been too costly for the rebels. Ian observed that at game’s end he had Avery’s and Hays’ brigades still fresh, drawn up behind the artillery, while poor old Gordon had marched up Blocher’s Knoll on his own. Ian also reflected that he need not have pressed the assault by Dole against the Federal Left: he could have pinned Chris in place by standing off, ready to advance if the Federals depleted their left to support the right.

As ever, both games were great fun (for me, at least!). I am glad to have dipped back into Longstreet and hope to have made some converts to these subtle and engaging rules.

Soldiers of Napoleon provides a fast-moving and entertaining game. The cards pose tricky choices and have bags of period flavour. Our historical scenario gave moments of high excitement and a plausible outcome. Highly Recommended.

I recently bought Soldiers of Napoleon, the new card-moderated tactical rules by Warwick Kinrade, author of Battlegroup (and more besides). Five of us played our first game last week, using a scenario based on the fight for Markkleeberg during the Battle of Leipzig. This clash between Poles, French, Prussians and Russians seemed a good testing ground for the rules.

The mechanics for movement, fire and melee are intuitive, straightforward and easy to learn. They hang together well, give good period flavour and on their own could have been the basis for a respectable IGO-YOUGO game. The card deck, however, takes things to another level. Every turn, each side receives a hand of cards linked to the number of Brigade or higher commanders on the table and players alternate card play until both run out. A card has three possible uses: to issue orders to a given number of units within a brigade; to rally units; or to play the special event that is described on the card. I’ve seen a couple of reviews that describe the rules at length so rather than repeat it all again, I’ll try to show how they affected our battle.

I have put the Markkleeberg scenario here. I created it by following the game preparation procedure in the rules. The main Tactical Orders for both sides were chosen for them (Coalition attacking, Franco-Poles defending). The Order of Battle was fun to write because SoN doesn’t have standard unit sizes. A battalion or cavalry regiment can have between 2 and 6 stands, or roughly between 250 and 800 men. This suits the OoB for Markkleeberg well, as Helfreich’s 14th Corps was seriously understrength (so 3 stands per battalion), the Polish Cuirassiers only consisted of 2 squadrons/bases and the Prussian Landwehr battalions were numerous (but inexperienced).

We played the scenario with two players per side. The Poles deployed their three brigades first, then the Allies set up in left echelon. Both sides had reserves off the table. The Russian 14th Corps advanced on the right; Coalition artillery in the centre bombarded the Polish hilltop position and the Prussian Foot screened Markkleeberg on the left. The Poles played a special event early on that allowed the Krakus lancers to advance far down the table and catch and destroy a Russian battalion in column (an incident that was only made possible by the special event: without it, the Russians would have had time to form square and fire at the threatening cavalry). This dislocated the Russian assault and bought time for the defenders, while the rest of Helfreich’s Corps formed square until the Krakusi retired. The Poles used another special event to bring in fire from the Grand Battery to their left rear. Phase 1 therefore gave the advantage to the defenders.

In phase 2 the Russian assault got going again. A counter battery exchange in the centre went badly for the Poles and the Coalition artillery then whittled down the Vistula Regiment in the Polish centre as 14th Corps closed, supported by the Loubny Hussars. The French Reserve brigade arrived on the right and this, together with the Polish garrison of Markkleeberg, went forward to relieve pressure on the centre. Two Polish battalions chewed up a Prussian Landwehr battalion near the village and the Coalition left was now looking shaky. In response the Coalition played a special event to change the arrival location of their reserves to the Markkleeberg sector, which helped stabilise their left. In the final phase, the Coalition managed to shoot the Polish Division commander by playing a special event. The Russians then closed with the Polish centre and duffed it up enough to win the victory.

I love these rules! They do remind me of Longstreet, my (so far?) favourite rules for any period, which are also card-moderated and have a similar mixture of simple mechanisms and really challenging choices. Like Longstreet, SoN makes events possible that just don’t happen in many wargames, such as surprise attacks, missing ADCs, incoming damage from off-table batteries and stray bullets taking down senior officers. The sense of narrative and of history is really strong, which shouldn’t be a surprise from the author of Battlegroup.


All involved in this game want to play again and we all took away some thoughts on how better to play the cards next time.

I have written a new scenario for Sam Mustafa’s Lasalle, based on the actions of Girard’s 7th Division at the battle of Ligny. Separated from II Corps, Girard was attached to Vandamme’s III Corps for the assault on the Prussian right flank, anchored on a string of villages along the Ligne brook. At the height of the fighting Girard was mortally wounded. The scenario covers the episode where Girard, having taken the village of Saint Amand La Haye, was counterattacked from the front and left flank. I chose this point in the action because the points values of the two sides at this point almost exactly match the standard weighted scenario in the rules, so 300 points of Prussians attacking 240 points of French. We havent played it yet so I can’t vouch for how it plays, but hope to do so in a month or so. The scenario can be found on the Napoleonic scenarios page here.

These are a great introduction to Ancients wargaming, especially if you want a fun game with not too many figures, They also offer a lot to the more experienced Ancients player: the mechanics are solid and you can increase army size for some truly satisfying big battles.

Last week Harry, Dan and I played a game of Wars of the Republic by Eric Farrington, published by Osprey in their ‘blue’ series. Harry had picked them up after reading an encouraging review in Wargames Illustrated, along with his first instalment of 28mm figures for a Republican Roman Legion. While waiting for his 21st century miniatures to be painted, we used my 25mm Minifigs Romans from the 1970s.
The rules are basing agnostic as all the factors, including losses, are dealt with at the unit level. The author describes using ten-figure units on individual bases but the photos throughout the rulebook are of some lovely Aventine Miniatures, mostly based in two ranks of four. My ancients are on 60mm wide bases, so we used two of these bases per unit, giving 8, 12 or 16 infantry and 6 or 8 cavalry figures depending on type. The only requirement is to be able to show when certain units are out of their optimal fighting formation, which we did by putting the bases out of kilter.
The mechanics are mostly tried and tested, with shooting and combat resolved by throwing a number of dice, succeeding on 4s and above. Declining fighting power is represented by loss of Courage points. Morale is handled through discipline tests which, if failed, can cause a unit to waver, which worsens its fighting power and puts it out of formation, - particularly bad news for legionaries and phalangites. The stand-out feature of the rules for me is Commander’s Gaze, a pool of points that can be spent each turn to perform special actions, which include the adoption of optimal formations (e.g. legion and phalanx) and, perhaps controversially, the throwing of pila.

For our first game, Harry gave us the battle of the Bagrades River from the first Punic War. Dan took the Romans while I had the Carthaginians, under the Spartan Xanthippus. Dan had a river at his back but the terrain was otherwise featureless, save a bit of undulating ground. Both armies conformed to the army list in the rulebook, which gave quite small armies: Dan had 8 units and I had 7. I’ll come back to army size later. Dan put his Cavalry on his left and his main infantry in a single line with velites in front. I had Punic cavalry on the right, Numidians on the left, elephants in the centre and the main infantry behind the elephants.
The game moved smoothly and the result was certainly emphatic. After an initial, inconclusive clash between our main cavalry on one flank and some mostly ineffective javelin throwing by my Numidians on the other, attention focussed on the centre, where my elephants clashed with Dan’s velites, drawing both of our infantry lines into the fight thanks to the support rules. As this was a learning exercise, we rewound the action a couple of times, once we realised how the rules impact on play. For example, we learned that it isn’t sensible to support light infantry with heavy, since the heavies only contribute 2 dice to the outcome and are at risk of immediate destruction: when the elephants destroyed the velites facing them, this would have also removed the supporting hastati. We agreed to rerun the combat without the support of the hastati, - and to remember that it is far preferable to support heavies with lights!
Our game ended with a Carthaginian victory, thanks above all to the elephants, who punched their way through the Roman centre with barely a scratch.

There is a lot to like about Wars of the Republic. I especially enjoy the Commander’s Gaze system, which gives the players interesting choices and keeps both involved throughout the turn. The factors used to describe each troop type work together well and allow the game to reflect a broad range of troop types. The combat mechanism feels right for an ancient battle. A front line heavy infantry body is more likely to crumble under pressure than to break suddenly, so frontal clashes are liable to drag on unless/until one side’s flanks or rear are threatened. Then, once things start to go wrong, collapse can spread quite rapidly. All good stuff and great fun.

The rules could be better laid out but that comes as standard with Osprey rules. For the price tag, I'll accept that. But I do have two main issues.
First, the army lists. I have seen a few criticisms of these rules in hobby chatrooms and media for using too few figures. The author wants players to be able to fight ancient battles without having to collect masses of figures. I absolutely get the appeal of recreating biggish battles with small armies, both to those with less space and to attract people over from skirmish games like ‘Infamy! Infamy!’ or ‘SPQR’. It is certainly possible to have a fun game with 7 or 8 units in an army. However, it strikes me that a consequence of keeping army size small is that some support troop types take on disproportionate significance. For example, my one unit of slingers had a far bigger effect on the game than they would have had in history. Look at the armies in the the scenarios offered in the rulebook: they are far too small to give a convincing impression of history!
My second reservation with the rules as written is with some of the unit statistics. Some units are over-, and some under-powered. Had we not made an in-game adjustment of the armour of Roman Equites, they would have been wiped out by the first hail of slingshots from my Balearic islanders. Also, I love my elephants but even I felt guilty that they were basically unstoppable, with no downsides to their use.

Both the cramped army lists and occasional wonky unit stats can easily be fixed to satisfy self-important Ancients players like me. If unit minima and maxima in the army lists were adapted and recommended army sizes were increased, support troops could become a smaller proportion of the total and the emphasis would focus more properly on the troop types that really influenced the outcome of a battle. And unit stats can be fine-tuned by changing a factor here and there, without in any way breaking the game’s basic mechanics.
Why bother when so many other Ancient rules sets are available? Because these rules work very well as a game and are fun to play. In conclusion, I think they could become an ideal entry point into Ancients gaming.

The other evening I laid on a game of Absolute Emperor at the Staines Wargames Club. I put together a scenario based on the Allied attack on the morning of the first day of the battle of Leipzig, 16 October 1813. It was deliberately a smallish game, as two players were new and the rest of us are still learning the rules. Ian and Paul led the Allies against Nick and Chris commanding the French. We used the house rules/clarifications that Chris and I had pulled together after our first two games. These don’t so much replace any published rules as clarify situations that the rules don’t directly address.

I have uploaded the scenario here. The standard victory conditions were slightly modified by giving the Allies a bonus elan point for every town they take from the French during the game.

To cut a long story short, the Allies won, with the French line still intact at the end but withdrawn to near their baseline.

These are my thoughts after our club night christening:

• Absolute Emperor is a good fit for a club game as it is easy to learn and plays quickly. It is quite an achievement to finish a game before chucking-out time.
  
• The AE mechanics are solid and outcomes plausible: I don’t recall anybody being unhappy with the logic of a game event. This is quite something as in my experience of some rules, players will challenge a game event as ‘unrealistic’, based on their reading of the history.
  
• The rules set some interesting challenges, even with relatively few units per command. At the start of the game, one player was dismayed to have so few units under his control yet they turned out to be enough to secure his side the win.
  
• It is important to explain to new players that units are divisions and not battalions: for those used to tactical level rules, it can be a challenge to ‘zoom out’ to the higher level formations. I wonder if using 6mm figures might help perceptions here.
  
• Finally and most importantly: Absolute Emperor is great fun. The players seemed to enjoy themselves and they all said they’d like to play these rules again.
  

What next? Well, we could find another bit of Leipzig to refight but even I am feeling the need for a change from the Battle of Nations. I am thinking of an 1809 game, perhaps the Wagram scenario in the AE rulebook. I do have a soft spot for Austrians. I am also wondering about doubling the size of infantry and cavalry units, to reinforce the message that these are big formations.