napoleonics

Grognards and Grenadiers Fastplay Card Driven Napoleonic Rules

Rudi Geudens offers a new game in his Command and Colors series of free wargames rules: Grognards and Grenadiers. These Napoleonic rules are designed for fast play using a card mechanism.

Geudens writes:

This is another set of my card driven wargame rules “COMMAND BY COLOUR”, and although still loosely inspired by the Battle Cry & Memoir ’44 games by Richard Borg, this game no longer has a battlefield divided in 3 sections, because I took a different approach. The left-centre-right wing Battle Cry/Memoir ’44 principle has here been replaced by colour-coding the units red, green and blue (activated by cards of the same colour) thus enabling the players to concentrate their units anywhere on the battlefield if they wish so.

Throne of Bayonets Napoleonic Rules

Andrew Fisher has created a set of free Napoleonic wargames rules called Throne of Bayonets. Andrew writes:

I like a set of rules to tell me what it is trying to do in the introduction. This lets me get a quick idea of whether I’m likely to enjoy the game, and therefore helps me to decide whether or not to buy. Most rules allow only 5 minutes action in a 15 minute turn in order to ensure that battles last more than 20 minutes; this set uses a realistic time and ground scale to allow very quick action — sometimes — but it also ensures that a lot of time is spent in waiting for orders or in indecisive firefights and half-hearted cavalry charges. To make this workable you have to be able to play a lot of turns, so I’ve made the rules very simple, with a minimum of tables and dice roll modifications. In playtest, players using up to a division each proved able to fight in close to real time, even in their first game.

Incidentally, the title comes from a Boris Yeltsin quote from 1991: You can make a throne out of bayonets, but you cannot sit on it for long.

Voltigeur Napoleonic Lord of the Rings Conversion

Games Workshop’s Lord of the Rings game is a marvelous skirmish system that is readily convertable to many other periods. Hey — Games Workshop proved it by releasing Legends of the Old West, a set of cowboy skirmish rules.

Voltigeur is a conversion of the system for Napoleonic gaming.

I wish I had some 25mm Napoleonic figures so I could try it.

Wargamers Guide To Napoleonic Austria

Chronofus has written a wargamers’ guide to Napoleonic Austria. He writes:

This document is a wargamer’s guide to Austria in the disastrous campaign against France in 1805, written to suit the Elan rules system. This is not intended to be an in depth detailed study of the campaign, which must be left to Europeans with good access to archival material. Enough information is presented here to give an overview of the campaign itself and enough formation and uniform details for a wargamer to suitably paint and base their miniatures to a reasonable standard. There are enough vagaries in some units for perfectionists to require further details from more in depth historical analysis. The reader is also cautioned that there has been, and continues to be, alot of misinformation about the Austrian army. Many parts of this campaign where Napoleon was not present have also been conveniently buried in history. As far as practical this document has been verified against current research.

Austrian Napoleonic Wars Uniform Guide

I know you won’t believe me, but there’s more to painting Austrian Napoleonic uniforms than endless seas of white. You can find more details in the uniform guide here.