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REVIEW
FROM REPUBLIC TO EMPIRE
Wargaming the Wars of Napoleon Bonaparte
by Barry Hilton
Published by The League of Augsburg
Price £27.50
Available in the UK from The League of Augsburg
Review by Bill Gilchrist of the South-East Scotland Wargames Club
Following on from my review of Napoleon, Angus asked me to review the very newly released Republic to Empire rules;
The Basics: Republic to Empire (RTE) is a 144 page
approximately A4 sized soft back full colour set of rules for as the cover says
‘Wargaming the Wars of Napoleon Bonaparte‘. RTE is aimed squarely at
large scale Napoleonic wargaming. While Napoleon from Foundry tries to be
a general guide to Napoleonic warfare which includes a set of rules RTE by
comparison is purely a set of rules. There is a small 5 page section giving some
sample orders of battle. The numerous superb photos of 28mm figures and games of
RTE in full swing are one of the features of the book.
Mechanics:
The
command and control mechanism is the key to this set of rules. Barry Hilton has
obviously taken a lot of time developing this system which is quite unlike the
one used in his earlier Beneath the Lilly Banners (BLB) rules. In
all it takes 22 pages to set out the rules for commands and orders.
Manoeuvre points are generated relatively randomly each turn based on the number
of brigades and the quality of the higher level commanders. These manoeuvre
points are then expended by giving standard orders to brigades and also to
single units. The standard brigade orders are Advance, Attack, Defend,
Move, Ready, Reform and Rest. The rules define for each order type
the permitted formations allowed, what the brigade MUST do, what it MAY do and
what it CANNOT do.
If a player has enough manoeuvre points left once each brigade has been
allocated its orders they can use the excess points to get brigades to act
multiple times in a turn. For example a Brigade can be ordered to Advance, then
Attack and then Reform in a single turn. This will require some lucky dicing to
generate enough manoeuvre points. These multiple moves are called Exploitation .
In most rules Exploitation is usually some type of extra move after a victory -
I think a better name for what happens in RTEs would have been
Inspiration.
There are artillery fire limitations - with batteries having to refit after 3 or
4 turns of firing which encourages the use of reserve batteries. Also there is
an area of dead ground behind batteries representing limbers etc that cannot be
voluntary entered by other troops.
Cavalry generally don't normally move much faster than infantry until they
finally charge. When they do charge they can move far with light cavalry having
a 42" charge distance. You may need a bigger wargames table!
Basic combat shooting and hand to hand is resolved by rolling a dice for each
combat group with the firing and melee factors being used to increase of
decrease the number of dice thrown rather than changing the score required to
hit. The rules for dealing with skirmishers have been well thought thru and seem
innovative. Light Infantry units can throw out skirmishers but it is not
guaranteed that they will all return to the colours when asked to reform!
Compared with BLB where infantry close combat could last for multiple
turns in RTE combat is resolved in the attackers phase by continuing to
play multiple rounds of combat until a result is achieved. The only exception to
this is fighting for built up areas which can last several turns.
Morale or as it termed in RTE Resolve and Control seems to have been well
thought out with clearly set our reasons for tests and results. There is an 8
page section setting out thorough rules for fighting in built up areas which has
always been a problem in most sets of rules for the horse and musket period.
One great feature of the rules is a 8 page detailed description of a divisional
sized game of RTE played between Barry and Dave O’Brien of the South-East
Scotland Wargames Club. It took me back to the classic description of the Battle
of Blasthof Bridge in Charge or How to Play Wargames from 1967.
There are appendices with notes on adapting the rules for the Revolutionary Wars
and the Anglo-American War of 1812.
I know that the rules were the subject of test playing especially at our
club the SESWC.
A few issues with the publication;
Throughout the book Barry has included extensive notes on the design concepts
for the rules. These might have been better put into a distinct annex as I have
seen in board game rules or put on the League of Augsburg website as a FAQ.
What the book lacks by comparison with its many beautiful photographs is useful
diagrams. A problem with the photos is that only a very few have any captions
and there are numbers of pages which are just photos. There is a 3 page guide to
the photos.
I have not seen many sets of rules with a 12 page Quick Reference Chart!
My conclusion is that this is a well thought out and very serious attempt to
provide realistic rules for Napoleonic war gaming. I will be trying
them out soon.
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