RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Empires in Arms the Napoleonic Wars of 1805 - 1815 >> RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures

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RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/12/2008 5:45:53 AM

tolstoy1812

Posts: 23
Joined: 10/8/2004
Status: offline

Hi,
I haven't finished reading all the posts, but wanted to share an idea I had, which is to use a 3x5 note card for each division, and have some standardized divisions. In 1805, a 5-factor division to represent St. Hilaire's division of 4 line and one legere regiment. Of course, by the time of the battle they were at about half strength...

You can make a standard 4-factor division, and so on. Twenty-six of these division cards could have a legere regiment or factor at the start.

You group the cards into their respective corps. A corps with 3 x 4-factor divisions, and you'd have to limit yourself to a max of 12 factors in the corps, maybe. Or maybe not. Overfilling a corps could just mean more than the usual 2 or 3 battalions per regiment.

Artillery assigned to the divisions can be hand-written on the cards, too.

At any rate, I'm a very old tech guy, and have lots of 3x5 cards laying around...so I though of using them. Your comment that wargamers who push pewter, or as I'd put it, who run on leaded fuel, will know how to set up a competitive game is well taken.

I also want to note that at the beginning of the 1805 game, the Austrians seem to be still mobilizing, as 75 infantry factors is about 2/3 or 3/4 their possible maximum for 62 regiments, some light battalions, and the grenz.

Ah, the anticipation. Get out the paints, where are my brushes? Wish I could make it to cold wars.

(in reply to hmgs1)

Post #: 31

RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/12/2008 6:16:07 AM

moopere

Posts: 46
Joined: 1/26/2008
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: gazfun
I have given you a basic formula mate, which has been recorded.

Oh? My apologies. I remember having this conversation over at thegeneralshq but I don't remember receiving anything...which is my fault not yours. Can you please remind me was that sent by personal email or on the forums itself? I've just whipped over for a scan of the old posts and I can't see it (could be me again).

quote:

ORIGINAL: gazfun
We have had our share on playing mods, all of us are over it

?? Who is 'we'? I'm new to these matrix forums so perhaps I'm now unearthing a well ploughed subject? Certainly within the NTW2 community there is interest in contextual battles as a relief from the monotonous never-ending stream of pointless one off engagements.

There is wider application here for miniatures players as well. The holy grail for all the miniatures groups I've ever been involved with over the decades has been to find a device that allows otherwise separate tabletop battles to be linked in some way - EiANW might be that device.

Regards,
Moopere

(in reply to gazfun)

Post #: 32

RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/12/2008 6:32:17 AM

gazfun

Posts: 1046
Joined: 7/1/2004
From: Australia
Status: offline

http://www.thegeneralshq.org/phpBBForum/viewtopic.php?t=232

This is where I gave you a basic formula, and there are percentage differance for national artillery, skirmishers etc, but what I gave you should be enough to get you on the track.
The best thing this way is that it can be reversable after taking the casualties out of it, to get you back to the EiANW figures
We meaning TGHQ. mulling around with software that doesnt quiet give eveything.� I mean after all this is one period in history where only a few have got it close to bing right.
And you know who is getting it right
Ive had the advantage along with a few people for a long time knew that EiANW is going to be at the heart of this. The rest will follow with LG. I cant be specific unfortunatley, its out of my hands for now.

< Message edited by gazfun -- 2/12/2008 6:34:03 AM >

_____________________________

(in reply to moopere)

Post #: 33

RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/12/2008 5:48:38 PM

hmgs1

Posts: 10
Joined: 2/6/2008
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: moopere

quote:

ORIGINAL: hmgs1

Not exactly. Tell you what, it might be better to explain it with an example. Why don't you come up with an army, any country, any year, and let me know what type and how many strength points comprise it and I'll show you how I would convert that to pewter using AOE.

Righto. Thanks for the offer. How about Russia, 1812, 30 infantry factors, 5 militia factors, 5 regular cavalry factors? No implicit guard factors...but I'll leave it you to see if AoE would spit any out anyway given the numbers/types of troops present.

Best regards,
Moopere.

Too easy. For the Aussie, the Battlefield System will be Age of Eagles (Napoleonic Fire & Fury), where all maneuver units are brigades, all artillery are batteries. Scale is 30 minutes per turn, 120 yards per inch, each infantry stand of four figures = 360 troops, each cavalry stand of two figures = 180 troopers, each Russian artillery stand = a battery of 12 guns.

Now I'm not sure whether you mean all those SPs in a single corps, or just the total in the area/battle, but given that you are using 1812 with militia, I would pull my Russian OB for Borodino to use as an historical model. Here is what I would field, using 1 SP = 1500 men:

- 1 x Army Command Stand

- Infantry corps with two infantry divisions, each of one division command stand, two line brigades (7 stands each), one Jaeger brigade (6 stands), plus one corps artillery brigade of 2 x 6 lb foot artillery batteries, 1 x 12 lb battery, plus 1 corps command stand.

- Infantry corps with two infantry divisions, each of one division command stand, two line brigades (7 stands each), one Jaeger brigade (6 stands), plus one corps artillery brigade of 2 x 6 lb foot artillery batteries, 1 x 12 lb battery, plus 1 corps command stand.

- Infantry corps with two infantry divisions, each of one division command stand, two line brigades (7 stands each), one Jaeger brigade (6 stands), plus one corps artillery brigade of 2 x 6 lb foot artillery batteries, 1 x 12 lb battery, plus 1 corps command stand.

- Attached Olpochenea Division with one division command stand, three militia infantry brigades of 7 stands each.

- Cavalry corps with two divisions each consisting of one division command stand, one light brigade (5 hussar, 5 lancer stands), two heavy brigades each of five stands dragoons for the first division, each of five stands, cuirassiers for the second division, a single 6 lb horse battery for the entire corps.

See if that doesn't add up (think I did the math right :).

Wish I knew what you two chaps were talking about.

Regards, Bill Gray

< Message edited by hmgs1 -- 2/12/2008 8:23:28 PM >

(in reply to moopere)

Post #: 34

RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/13/2008 4:16:46 AM

Windfire

Posts: 135
Joined: 10/24/2003
From: Colorado Springs, CO
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: moopere

quote:

ORIGINAL: hmgs1
I think the NB paradigm is likely the least best option from a practical sense. Not only is it, IMHO, uber complex, but you absolutely have to have the original rules to make sense of it. Finding the blue supplement book will be a bear, as will the original rules while NB II was evidently a quality control disaster.

I've been looking around and there does not appear to be a lot of hope in finding the original rules with the supplement. These original rules must be just about to drop out of copyright by now .... I'm quite surprised that selected parts have not been copied up to a web site anywhere obvious. Pieces of the original EiA rules are everywhere, but of Napoleons Battles there is almost nothing.

The rules for conversion to Napoleons Battles were contained in the second expansion module (blue book). You can sometimes find copies for sale on e-bay. Search for Napoleons Battles and look through the various response to see if one is for sale.

(in reply to moopere)

Post #: 35

RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/13/2008 1:05:08 PM

moopere

Posts: 46
Joined: 1/26/2008
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: tolstoy1812

Hi,
I haven't finished reading all the posts, but wanted to share an idea I had, which is to use a 3x5 note card for each division, and have some standardized divisions. In 1805, a 5-factor division to represent St. Hilaire's division of 4 line and one legere regiment. Of course, by the time of the battle they were at about half strength...

You can make a standard 4-factor division, and so on. Twenty-six of these division cards could have a legere regiment or factor at the start.

You group the cards into their respective corps. A corps with 3 x 4-factor divisions, and you'd have to limit yourself to a max of 12 factors in the corps, maybe. Or maybe not. Overfilling a corps could just mean more than the usual 2 or 3 battalions per regiment.

Artillery assigned to the divisions can be hand-written on the cards, too.

Despite my lament at the lack of detail available and tracked inside EiA itself, over recent years I've come to dislike creating systems that involve much manual accounting (or tracking) by players. It tends to turn them off..whether its just too hard or folks are getting lazier I'm not entirely sure.

Having said that, your idea has made me think of a similar solution, but with some of hmgs1's idea as well (with a bit of Piquet rules thrown in). What about a deck of cards with prebuilt divisions that are plausible but allow for some variation and have a soldier count at the top? You'd keep pulling cards from the deck until you fulfil the number of men present in any particular battle with some of the divisions being straight 'by the book' and some with attachments of speciality or elite troops...more or less artillery...etc, etc, etc.

Cheers, Moopere

(in reply to tolstoy1812)

Post #: 36

RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/13/2008 1:07:21 PM

moopere

Posts: 46
Joined: 1/26/2008
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: hmgs1
- 1 x Army Command Stand

- Infantry corps with two infantry divisions, each of one division command stand, two line brigades (7 stands each), one Jaeger brigade (6 stands), plus one corps artillery brigade of 2 x 6 lb foot artillery batteries, 1 x 12 lb battery, plus 1 corps command stand.

- Infantry corps with two infantry divisions, each of one division command stand, two line brigades (7 stands each), one Jaeger brigade (6 stands), plus one corps artillery brigade of 2 x 6 lb foot artillery batteries, 1 x 12 lb battery, plus 1 corps command stand.

- Infantry corps with two infantry divisions, each of one division command stand, two line brigades (7 stands each), one Jaeger brigade (6 stands), plus one corps artillery brigade of 2 x 6 lb foot artillery batteries, 1 x 12 lb battery, plus 1 corps command stand.

- Attached Olpochenea Division with one division command stand, three militia infantry brigades of 7 stands each.

- Cavalry corps with two divisions each consisting of one division command stand, one light brigade (5 hussar, 5 lancer stands), two heavy brigades each of five stands dragoons for the first division, each of five stands, cuirassiers for the second division, a single 6 lb horse battery for the entire corps.

See if that doesn't add up (think I did the math right :).

Thanks a lot hmgs1. Looks about right to me but is the sort of 'cookie cutter' stuff I was a bit worried about earlier. I don't mean that in a bad way, just a lack of variation way. The Russian Army at this time is a particularly bad example of this 'sameness'. Given the above, when would you be tempted to throw in a Grenadier brigade as some sort of detachment from one of the Grenadier Divisions? EiA calls most infantry simply "infantry" so in there somewhere are the Grenadiers.

quote:

ORIGINAL: hmgs1Wish I knew what you two chaps were talking about.

Sorry, thats a leakage from another conversation on a different forums site.

Best regards,
Moopere

< Message edited by moopere -- 2/13/2008 5:23:38 PM >

(in reply to hmgs1)

Post #: 37

RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/13/2008 4:55:32 PM

hmgs1

Posts: 10
Joined: 2/6/2008
Status: offline

This was a single example I pulled from Borodino. Given the number and types of brigades, you could really mix it up and produce a lot of variations. For example, on one side of Borodino they detached all Jaeger brigades and threw them forward under an independent command. Lots of ways you could do it, this is just one.

As regards the grenadiers, I'd look at how many Guard SPs the game will let you build. If its a bunch, its likely that the permanent grenadier regiments (like Pavlovski, Moscow and so on) are included in that allotment. I know that they have (or did have) Austrian guards, except historically there were none outside the Trabantine Place Guards (think halbreds) and so on. Thus the points must be the converged grenadier divisions the Austrians fielded from 1809 forward.

Bottom line for the Russians, I would not field either guards or grenadiers unless Guard SPs were present.

Regards, Bill Gray

(in reply to moopere)

Post #: 38

RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/13/2008 6:06:04 PM

76mm

Posts: 4688
Joined: 5/2/2004
From: Washington, DC
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: moopere
Despite my lament at the lack of detail available and tracked inside EiA itself, over recent years I've come to dislike creating systems that involve much manual accounting (or tracking) by players. It tends to turn them off..whether its just too hard or folks are getting lazier I'm not entirely sure.

Having said that, your idea has made me think of a similar solution, but with some of hmgs1's idea as well (with a bit of Piquet rules thrown in). What about a deck of cards with prebuilt divisions that are plausible but allow for some variation and have a soldier count at the top? You'd keep pulling cards from the deck until you fulfil the number of men present in any particular battle with some of the divisions being straight 'by the book' and some with attachments of speciality or elite troops...more or less artillery...etc, etc, etc.

This being the 21st century and all, some clever grognard should be able to come up with a computer program to do all of this--ideally you could use LG to resolve the tactical battles and be able to automatically import/export data b/n LG and AiE. Would be cool, but haven't looked to see how complicated it would be.

(in reply to moopere)

Post #: 39

RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/14/2008 2:39:38 AM

moopere

Posts: 46
Joined: 1/26/2008
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: 76mm
This being the 21st century and all, some clever grognard should be able to come up with a computer program to do all of this--ideally you could use LG to resolve the tactical battles and be able to automatically import/export data b/n LG and AiE. Would be cool, but haven't looked to see how complicated it would be.

I don't think we'll be able to create a bolt on (or glue) piece of software to help much with the recording and tracking of factors inside EiA as EiA is a closed system until a battle actually occurs. Factors can be pretty much freely transferred between corps by players at the EiA level and without meticulous record keeping by interested humans I just can't see how you'd break into this in an automated way.

I'm not saying that tracking factors can't be done, but it would be hard and open to a lot of mistakes by a group of humans with more or less motivation to do it properly.

LG or other tactical system won't help in this regard. The tactical battle engine used will still rely upon the data presented it by the EiA strategic system. In EiA's case that data is very high level and the high on-the-ground detail is not tracked (at the battalion or regimental level).

Having said all that though, if we are all happy enough to live with a bit of force composition "creativity" at the time of the battle(s) then a piece of glue software could certainly be written to take the exported data from EiA and massage it into something useful for import by an existing PC based tactical game or a miniatures rules system.

Regards, Moopere.

(in reply to 76mm)

Post #: 40

RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/14/2008 3:44:29 AM

76mm

Posts: 4688
Joined: 5/2/2004
From: Washington, DC
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quote:

ORIGINAL: moopere
I don't think we'll be able to create a bolt on (or glue) piece of software to help much with the recording and tracking of factors inside EiA as EiA is a closed system until a battle actually occurs. Factors can be pretty much freely transferred between corps by players at the EiA level and without meticulous record keeping by interested humans I just can't see how you'd break into this in an automated way.

Yeah, you're right, that could be a problem if you wanted to track particular regiments, etc. Wouldn't the same problem exist with a paper system though? I haven't played EiA yet so don't appreciate how often factors tend to get shuffled around--have to think about this one...
I'm not saying that tracking factors can't be done, but it would be hard and open to a lot of mistakes by a group of humans with more or less motivation to do it properly.

quote:

ORIGINAL: moopere
Having said all that though, if we are all happy enough to live with a bit of force composition "creativity" at the time of the battle(s) then a piece of glue software could certainly be written to take the exported data from EiA and massage it into something useful for import by an existing PC based tactical game or a miniatures rules system.

Yeah, but doesn't this get back to essentially using generic units in the tactical battles? For me that sort of defeats the purpose, but maybe there is no other way.

(in reply to moopere)

Post #: 41

RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/15/2008 4:28:47 PM

hmgs1

Posts: 10
Joined: 2/6/2008
Status: offline

I think you might have misunderstood my listing, as I don't look at it as generic as much as I do historical. In that regard you could have dozens of variations. Have all Jaegers in an independent divisional command of several brigades. Lump all the 12lbers into an army artillery reserve. Rather than a militia division, attach a brigade to each regular infantry corps. All this has historical precedent

What you do NOT want to do is arrange 1806 Prussians in corps because they didn't use them. Likewise, if the French have 20 Guard factors in the battle, do NOT deploy 30,000 troops' worth of Old Guard. Put out the two regiments of OG Grenadiers and Chasseurs a Pied, and make the rest Young Guard, or perhaps Oudinot's Converged Grenadier Division if 1805 - 07.

Make sense?

Regards, Bill Gray

(in reply to 76mm)

Post #: 42

RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/15/2008 5:30:01 PM

76mm

Posts: 4688
Joined: 5/2/2004
From: Washington, DC
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quote:

ORIGINAL: hmgs1
I think you might have misunderstood my listing, as I don't look at it as generic as much as I do historical. In that regard you could have dozens of variations.

My use of the word "generic" might have been misleading--by "generic" what I had in mind was that with this system it seems like it would be hard to track individual units (ie, regiments) over several tactical battles, because it would be difficult to keep track of how they've been allocated/transferred at the strategic level.

For me at least, a large part of the interest in systems which combine strategic and tactical wargames is being able to track individual units' and leaders' performance over the course of various tactical battles generated by the strategic level.

As I understood your system (or rather how AiE works in general), it will be difficult to know which specific named units should be included in particular tactical battles, because at the strategic level you are simply transfering around generic "infantry", "cavalry", "guards", etc. factors. Is that correct? Bear in mind that I don't yet own EiA so may have completely misunderstood something...

(in reply to hmgs1)

Post #: 43

RE: Third Party Combat and Miniatures - 2/15/2008 7:30:23 PM

hmgs1

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Joined: 2/6/2008
Status: offline

Oh, OK, that makes perfect sense now. Well you could do it with EiA, but it would involve a lot of manual record keeping. The other alternative is to find a campaign system developed specifically for miniatures. I know the author of one of these (Kip Trexel of the Empire Campaign System) and the reason they are unfortunately few and far between is that most lead heads use campaign systems as a way to even the odds, make their battles count for something in the long run, but mostly just to generate scenarios. Because of this in the past, a lot of boardgames (like the one's Kevin Zucker produces, Napoleon at Bay for example) filled the bill, but something like EiA should prove to be a vast improvement given the ability for record keeping and the fact that you don't have to leave the game sitting out on the table for weeks on end.

Good luck in your quest, however - makes sense.

Regards, Bill Gray

(in reply to 76mm)

Post #: 44