Over The Hills and Far Away is a set of free wargames rules for skirmishes in the Napoleonic Era. The rules are designed with a cinematic bent, and intended for up to six players each controlling up to eight figures.
napoleonics
Napoleonic Battlefield Commander
Napoleonic Battlefield Commander is a set of free wargames rules for the Napoleonic era. The author writes:
This is a set of rules to allow the major land battles of the Napoleonic Era to be fought on the wargames table in a quick and timely manner. In the game, each Player takes on the role of a commander on one side of a major battle, real or hypothetical. The rules take a “hands-off” approach to the way the Player can influence the outcome of individual Close Combats etc. It is the role of the Player to determine a strategy for the battle and move his Formations and Units in accordance with that. He will have to trust to the abilities of the commanders below him in the chain-of-command (shown by frequent throwing of dice) and trust that his plan of action will enable him to overcome his opponent using planning and tactics rather than the rules. These rules started out as amendments to the Grande Armee ruleset, but have grown considerably to the point that they now are very different from the original.
Command, Control and Communications Napoleonics Rules
Command, Control and Communications is a set of free wargames rules for the Napoleonic period.
Eagles At Quatre Bras
Eagles At Quatre Bras is a set of free wargames rules for brigade level Napoleonic games on a division level. Author Norm Smith writes:
They are solitaire friendly, can be played through in a single session and are set at the lower end of the complexity spectrum. Emphasis is on giving a good game rather than simulation.
Using a 4’ x 3’ table with 4” hexes, gives a grid of around 12 hexes wide by 9 deep, which typically accommodates something like the Battle of Quatre Bras with around 4 divisions per side.Units are representing brigades and divisional artillery, with a hex limited to holding no more than 1 unit and any accompanying leader.
Scale and basing of the figures do not really matter as it is simply the formation in the hex that is considered, with the player showing line, column and square formations for infantry and line for cavalry and artillery. A suggestion is 2 or 4 bases for infantry and cavalry and 2 bases for artillery.Giving a ground scale has been deliberately avoided as this allows for some disfunction, such as light infantry being able to fire two hexes and also leaves the player with some flexibility when designing battlefields, to get bigger battles into this small area or to go to a lower level such as units representing regiments. Basically if it looks and feels right, then go with it.
The system uses standard six sided and ten sided dice (the 0 on a D10 is read as ten), plus a pack of standard playing cards.
Quick Napoleonics
Back when MWAN was still being published, it was my favorite wargaming magazine — in no small part because of the variety of interesting characters who wrote for the magazine. One of those was Friar Aelred Glidden, who is perhaps the world’s only wargaming monk. Glidden’s game rules were always simple, but interesting, and I very much miss reading his works.
Quick Napoleonics is a set of free wargames rules inspired by Friar Glidden.