Napoleonic Wargame Rules - Movement, Firing and Close Combat

Movement

I think the SiP rules for movement work just fine, and therefore we can refer to their design notes. Regarding differences, with no "light" independent units, we have normal infantry can enter woods and difficult terrain too, at half usual rate. Brigades attacking woods would send their skirmishers first, and increase them as needed, but there are no instances of units being "blocked" by woods (at least as far as I know).

I'm still wondering about making the requirements for road movement a bit stricter, meaning units moving have to remain at least 25-30cm away from the enemy, because 20cm (the distance indicated in SiP) is also the cavalry rate, which would still make them within charge distance.

Firing

Here's the part where I think most miniature wargames are wrong or at least not-so-accurate. I won't go into detail here, because it's perfectly explained here and further discussed here (a more general treatise on Napoleonic infantry warfare being found here instead). It's the real key of the Napoleonic warfare.

French Voltiguers - Art by Giuseppe Rava

Therefore, ultimately it makes not sense to have skirmishing fire, volley fire and close combat that is very common to many rules (including Blucher). Why? Because most long range infantry fire was by skirmishers, and volley was mostly performed at close range when one side's skirmishers were driven away, rest of that side's unit still stood its ground despite being sniped at by opposing skirmishers, and the other unit had to close. Often, units didn't even volley fire, as one side or the other just fled due to skirmisher fire and the sight of the other side's firm close order unit. When units fired volleys, it was at close range, and hand-to-hand combat between non-fleeing infantry units was nonexistent: one units would flee before that happened.

Under these premises, any "close combat" already takes into account most (if not all) volley fire. Longer range than that, it would be skirmishing fire and attached artillery.

So in this ruleset any fire is considered to be that of skirmishers and artillery attached to units, with the occasional long range volley fire (did they ever happen?), using SiP rules, with some modifiers, mainly to account for armies which had better and/or more numerous skirmishers, or armies which hadn't (like ancien régime ones).

Each unit rolls 4 dice. Each die will register a hit on the following scores: INF, AT = 4 – 6. 

+1DRM if Skirmisher Advantage

-1DRM if Ancien Régime unit firing or firing against deployed AT

In other words, units with good skirmishers hit on 3+, and Ancien Régime armies would hit at 5+ (their general lack of skirmishers being an additional vulnerability in a fight against Napoleonic French infantry. Everyone else would hit at 4+. Every unit rolls 4 dice as normal.

A battle would be attritional, with victory going to whoever had the last reserves and would use them at the right place in the right moment.

Close Combat

For cavalry, close combat would indeed include hand-to-hand combat, but for infantry, as explained above, it would be mainly about close-range volley fire and seeing which unit would be the one to keep steady and which one would flee first. It's mostly based on SiP rules, but with some modifications. First of all, you do not sum all dice, but roll each dice and see if it hits (at 4+). The one causing more hits wins the combat, with ties going in the defender's favor.

Each side rolls 4 dice, and all "advantages" afford 2 more dices each. Only attacking the flank/rear of a unit gives 4 more dice instead of 2. There are no dragoons, so for cavalry only the HC advantage against LC is counted.

Each side rolls 4 dice.

Each side rolls 2 additional dice for each of the following conditions that apply:

• Defenders with terrain advantage

• Fewer DP than enemy unit

• General attached

• INF defending against INF with same number of DP

• HC fighting LC

Each side rolls 4 additional dice for each of the following conditions that apply:

• Attacker if attacking flank/rear of enemy unit

Each die hits on 4+.

Units can retreat over friendly units, but take 1 more DP (this is taken from Steven Whitesell's rules), as long as they do not end in difficult terrain - otherwise they're destroyed. Considering a losing units already takes 2DP, retreating over friendly units may well prove fatal anyway.

French 4th Hussars at Friedland - by E. Detaille

Regarding squares, first of all even if the term "square" is more common for ease of use, actually not all armies used squares. Austria for example used "masses", so the term "prepared", as used in Blucher, may be more correct. Regardless of the exact term used - as long as all players know what is intended - there's a need for a formation which infantry can adopt to resist cavalry. During movement, instead of moving, a unit can form square/mass/be prepared (just "square" from now on for simplicity of writing). Using a procedure inspired by the one in Blucher, if attacked by cavalry while in square, cavalry units have to reroll their hits. If instead infantry is attacked by cavalry while not in square, it's infantry which has to reroll hits.

I thought a lot about this. OHW just has units in square unassailable by cavalry. This looks a bit too extreme, even if you can imagine such a situation including both confrontation and small ineffective charges - which ultimately compare to a stand-off. Anyway, while an understandable abstraction for a very simple ruleset like OHW, I prefer a simple alternative that still allows combat, including the possibility of cavalry breaking squares even if of course it would be hard. Remarkably, the effect is still similar and realistic enough: if an infantry unit isn't in square, cavalry will see it as a vulnerable target. If instead it is in square, cavalry is likely to avoid charging, given the difficulty.

One final note on moving and squares: squares can't move - as shown in OHW - but actually I'm thinking about giving them a movement allowance of max 2-2.5cm (roughly the 1" movement squares have in Napoleon's Battles) in open ground only. I'll verify through play testing.

Next: Extra Rules