Reply To: Battle of Schongrabern 1805 – A Polemos General de Division AAR

[Whirlwind]

Hi Jack, I hope you had a good Christmas too.

Thanks very much for your comments.  I sometimes miss the lack of battalion formations in these rules…but not very often.  For 3 reasons really:

1 – The game rattles along much faster

2 – If the game has formations in, then in a certain sense you are committed to deciding what formation every unit is in every turn (even if that decision is just “no change”).  It puts a strain on thinking that no actual Napoleonic commander had in this respect.  For a game like this one with maybe 15 units per side it isn’t horrendous, but it gets annoying when the unit count goes much higher.  I think the sweet spot for Napoleonic rulesets dealing with unit formations is in the 4-12 units per side range.

3 – I’m not particularly convinced by most of the combat models used for battalion-level fighting in Napoleonic rules, so cutting the formation ‘sub-routine’ has seemed to make the rules more accurate rather than less because I tend to spend my time thinking about the things which do make a difference in the rules: terrain, support, leadership and troop morale.  I know lots of people disagree with me here though, and consider the rock-scissors-paper element of formations the key factor in Napoleonic infantry combat.