Forum Replies Created
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New Traders are added at the end of the list.
🙂
Well… I feel silly… but informed.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Supposedly?? I am no expert on Napoleon but having done some theology I can assure you that Napoleon books have a long way to go in terms of numbers.
I don’t know that you having done some theology is a basis for comparison. I was repeating the conclusion of multiple newspaper and magazine articles I’ve read. Certainly any such conclusion is going to be based on estimation since no one has a catalog of all books written to-date, and therefore by its very nature any such conclusion is “supposedly”. Of all the points in this thread that really deserve additional discussion, I don’t follow why you are concerned about this specific one, but if I run across one of the magazine articles that reported such today, I’ll post the citation for you…
Cheers,
The Bandit
Hyperbole; this is trolling!! However, I take your point that the Amazon has been much reduced by the volume of writings about him.
No… it isn’t either hyperbole or trolling, and I don’t really know why you are calling it either. Supposedly there are more volumes written about Napoleon than about Christ, and it is a little odd to me. How you consider that trolling, I’m at a loss.
Cheers,
The Bandit
We did the issue of Britain financing other countries in the Napoleonic period on TMP recently. The figures suggest that there were few cases where this could, or did, make a decisive difference between a country choosing to oppose Napoleon or not.
I tend to stay away from the ongoing playground fight between the two Napoleonic parties at TMP. They aren’t the reason I left there, but they are a contributing factor to why I stay away. No matter the subject, the fact that the two parties like to argue with each other more than anything else drives the discussion into a hole.
Anyways, I’d respectfully disagree that British support wasn’t a contributing factor in the direction of the period; though I would grant that British funding should not be the only aspect considered. In any case though, I don’t want to risk bird walking too far from this thread’s intended subject – which I think this would cause us to.
Cheers,
The Bandit
I’d agree with nearly all of what Jonathan outlines.
The only thing that I am uncertain of is if the option of halting in 1807 was really an option. Don’t get me wrong, Nappy did plenty to hurt his own cause post-1807, what I ponder is:
Had Napoleon not pressed the continental system, and therefore not felt the necessity of deposing the government of Spain and thus starting the Peninsular War – would the rest of Europe have let him sit?
I don’t think it is impossible, but I am suspect. I don’t know what motivates the British away from continuing to fund various interests to rise against him – or what prevents Prussia from continuing to prepare for a bitter resurgence. Certainly the timeline and order of events changes, but does the trend?
Cheers,
The Bandit
Following this thread, once work settles down a little, would be interested in being involved.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Well, Slade’s breakdown seems pretty reasonably accurate of the two “camps” when it comes to Napoleonics as a polarizing topic. I am pro-Napoleon, but the man wasn’t perfect and we should all be able to admit he made some pretty (at least in retrospect) obvious errors.
There are more books written about Napoleon than about Christ, which is sorta weird frankly, but it does give one a sense of how polarizing of a topic he is.
I think the most objective argument for comparing Wellington and Napoleon is that there is no useful available comparison. A single battle is a single datapoint and therefore a poor comparison. Their previous campaigns fought independent of each other were incredibly different in practically every way.
Wellington fought far from home without a terribly good connection back to England – connections over water are by definition faulted, but he could depend on it not breaking due to the British Navy. He had two allies, one who was probably under appreciated (at least by wargamers) and one who is absolutely maligned but whose performance is more deserving of it. He didn’t have a terribly large force but it was also not ill equipped for its task, and at least compared to his adversary in the Peninsular, Wellington benefitted from being of higher comparable priority in the eyes of his parent nation.
Napoleon fought far more engagements against far more adversaries, that doesn’t necessarily make him better, it provides more data. Something that really taints most English-speaking view points is that we are, as a mass, incredibly dependent on English language sources. The overwhelming English narrative is that Napoleon was practically an undefeatable God – so thank heavens, we, the British Empire, were here to defeat him. Napoleon was running a nation state, and an empire, and an army, thus, his practical concerns were drastically different than Wellington’s. He had a slew of allies, who all had substantially varied motivations and many of which had a lot less personal investment in success than say the Portuguese had. But, because of these things, Napoleon also had some substantial advantages that Wellington didn’t, Wellington couldn’t dictate the terms of his own resupply and reinforcement, Napoleon could… etc…
So really, it is a very popular, but not terribly useful question to my mind.
I’d agree with Slade that largely, the Russians beat Napoleon, I would broaden this to say that because I feel Napoleon was not ultimately defeated on the battlefield, but rather in the broad European theater of war, that the combination of Russian arms, Prussian will, and English money ultimately defeated Napoleon. This probably shorts the Austrians and Spanish more than it should frankly. But in the end, no one army at no one battle was able to defeat Napoleon. That’s probably the best reason that he is held in such high esteem, it took all of Europe contributing various strengths in various ways to stop him.
Cheers,
The Bandit
How many of you put on games at shows/cons.
Is it just you, you and a pal, or as part of a club, is it for fun, or is it to promote/sell something?
Demo games just for looking at or participation games for people to join in with?
Is it fun, easy, how well does it go?Last year, I believe I ran…
Just shy of 20 games at conventions – all of these were participation games to introduce players to and promote ESR Napoleonics. These are a lot of work, mostly becomes it comes as part of a lot of travel, 14 hour days working (including the time running games), and hauling stuff around. The rooms are often hot and loud though, so you’re always very, very appreciative to the random person who offers you a cold beer mid-game. There tends to be a lot of teaching because these are intended to be introductory games. Questions coming at you from all angles will make you feel tired by the end of the day. They are mostly a lot of fun and I enjoy doing it. That we produce things that are attracting complete strangers to even stand on line and see if there is an opening because of a no-show is an incredible compliment, and it is always frustrating not to be able to include everyone who wants to play.
In 2016 we ran big games to get a lot of eyeballs directed our way, 6-10 players, 6×16′ tables, handful of two-three thousand figures on the tabletop. Last year I switched to doing introductory games, 4 players, focused on teaching and answering questions.
In addition I believe I ran maybe 3-5 public games for local clubs in 2017. These are more relaxed but still generally require some local travel and therefore hauling of stuff. Far less exhausting but still work to some degree. They tend to be larger, 8-10 people playing, ample figures for everyone. Some people know the rules, some do not.
And finally I would guess another ~6 private games for the regular group I game with. These are the most relaxed, normally run at my own venue so that there is no hauling of game materials anywhere else. The players are generally fairly familiar with the rules or remember them pretty fast so there is less teaching going on. Anywhere from 6-14 players.
It is a lot of work to run games, especially public games, especially at conventions, but it is rewarding work that is fun in its own right. And frankly, it is probably the best available promotion for game systems.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Still, the growth rate is crazy awesome, even if one assumes that 10% are bot accounts that you have not yet had opportunity to remove, the numbers are still impressive.
Cheers,
The Bandit
I often play the high risk – high reward strategy in games, which, commonly look like absolutely horrible plans (and sometimes turn out to be).
Cheers,
The Bandit
A couple things of note I did leave out of my post above:
• We also maintain a Yahoo Group for rules specific discussion. I am personally not a big fan of Yahoo Groups, however, they are again a space where customers are and therefore, a place we should be. There is also a benefit to an e-mail discussion group over a forum: that there is e-mail traffic when there is e-mail traffic, it naturally ebbs and flows but periods of less activity do not turn off participation. With a dedicated forum, if there is not traffic, potential participants may assume there is no one visiting the forum and will not bother to post. This is very unfortunate as a forum is often more accessible to new users.
• We also maintain a mass mailing list where we send out announcements about products, sales, website updates, etc…
• Putting Facebook in context: One of the primary reasons we share via groups in Facebook is expressly because of the points that Mike made: 1) Paid advertising may hit the demographic but that doesn’t get specific enough to vet interests. 2) Facebook’s algorithms don’t hide content posted on one’s official page, but it does de-prioritize it below things that have been viewed more times, liked, commented on, etc… and from the standpoint of the person trying to get their message out, this is effectively the same as hiding. 3) We simply accept that posting to many groups could come across poorly to some who are members of multiple groups, but this is the cost of trying to get the message out, one can only use the tools they have unfortunately, by posting to several groups and causing thousands to see our posts, we increase the likelihood of reaching the customer who wants to hear from us. We also limit how often we post to such groups and make a very conscious choice to vary between content that relates to our products but is not explicitly an advertisement (i.e. AARs and game photos) and explicit advertisements (i.e. did you buy our awesome new product yet????).
• Conversion rates: i.e. “I saw your advertisement and then I visited your website/joined your mailing list/bought something”.
Conversion rates ‘per capita’ if you will, are highest (in our experience) from: 1) Our mass mailing list, 2) TWW, 3) Other forums, 4) Facebook – in that order. We can’t track conversion rates from the Yahoo Group, so I can not comment where that falls amongst the other four. Conversions are important to consider because they can be achieved different ways. Via Facebook, the way one gets conversions is to get the largest pool of people to see something. Via TWW, the content matters most (in our experience), while far few people see our post on TWW vs Facebook, the number of purchases that originate on TWW is higher. Same with our mailing list and other forums (as noted above).
In the end, as Ochoin correctly concludes, businesses must go where customers are and benefit from using a wide variety of channels.
Conversely, some channels necessarily must be ignored because their return is too low and the resources (time) they require is too great. There are many, many wargaming related forums. Some are *very* low traffic. When we post an advertisement or AAR online, between forums, mailing lists, our website, and Facebook, one can assume it takes 1+ hours in most cases. Maintaining accounts on several more forums and then posting on those as well increases that time. Thus, if a forum has had six posts in 2017, we are not likely to post there ourselves based on the cost/benefit analysis. While people may incorrectly perceive this about TWW, there is quite a bit of traffic here frankly, and other similar forums are objectively on the decline.
Cheers,
The Bandit
The only website we pay for advertising is TWW – that probably speaks for itself. We participate in basically any forum where we see customers or potential customers participating – a business has to go where the customers are – where we see an intersection with our product, but the only forum we participate on in general is TWW. That’s entirely because of the atmosphere here – it is good.
Facebook is a big elephant. We don’t pay to advertise on Facebook currently, but we do post announcements to a wide variety of groups there.
Game companies have a big problem in reaching potential customers. On the usual suspects a news posting might get around 200-300 views. On Facebook it might get 3000-5000 views. While views are not website hits, and website hits are not sales, it is like hockey: there is a relationship between higher views and higher sales.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Jeff is a good friend and local gamer. He does very nice stuff. Your assembly and photography does it great justice.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Estimating ranges when the figures/terrain presented do not match introduces yet another variable in player ability that may or may not be desired.
Yes, that is one of the factors I meant to implicate when making reference playing the rules or players knowing the rules.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Oh PS – Bandit – Players, no matter how new to the game should be advised of the game range of their weaponry – if they choose to deploy at 48″ range when effective range is 24″, then they should be advised of their error the first time, allowed to correct this, and thereafter any mistakes are up to them.
Sure, but consider that ranges vary so much that effective range might be 9″, and they might deploy at 11-12″.That’s a, 25-30% difference which sounds big, but it is also only 3″ out of 9-12″ which is small.
A new player is keeping track of a lot. Without being allowed to check the range, how do I know if it is even material to remind them as to the ranges? I’ll observe those conversations sometimes in a local group. “You know that can’t fire more than 10 inches. Yeah. I don’t think you’re at 10 inches.” And then you have people trying to help the new player by everyone debating how far they think the distance is…
This can obviously be resolved a couple of ways. You can prohibit table talk – but that has some downsides. Or someone can simply measure the distance to determine the question. Obviously these are not the only two options for resolving it, but I mean such as an illustration.
Something I often hear said by gaming groups is: “We encourage players to converse about their intentions so there is no debate later”. This is not a bad disposition, especially in a friendly game. Its intent is to prevent a player from doing something counter to their intention and attempts to head off the question of “are we just inside 4″ or just outside 4″, I can’t quite tell? Well, I intended to be just outside 4″. Oh, OK sure.” Pre-measurement is a bit in the spirit of that.
In the end, it should all be whatever works best for the given group of gamers.
Cheers,
The Bandit
So why the dislike? Not offended – interested.
Part of the reason that I dislike it is the scope of game I generally play. If I were to play a very low level game, I would not object to it. However, the scope of games I generally play involve a lot of “you hired people for that” – as in the officer running the battery of artillery is at least one if not multiple levels of command below the player. Thus, there is an “apparatus” of knowledge surrounding the player.
The other, more general reason, is that; as someone else pointed out; the overwhelming majority of command officers have *some* level of training. The direct analogy to the wargamer is how familiar the player is with the rules. As a community we commonly talk about how we “want to play the history/period/whatever, not the rules” and to my mind one of the ways to help that desire come to execution is to assume the player has a base of command knowledge “built-in” that prevents him or her from making ridiculous mistakes. An easy example is: the player chooses to deploy artillery *way* out of range of the enemy because they don’t realize the effective scale range of the artillery. That doesn’t get to the question of should players be required to correctly judge/guess if something is at 3″ vs 4″ but it is addressed by the same general rules design.
The broad facet of the question is what all the actual actors had available to them for addressing such practical concerns, and is the player provided with those same ones? For artillery, one example of that is that guns generally would fire for range before firing for effect. While some (few) game systems provide that as an overt mechanic, many either effectively include it by allowing pre-measuring, or do not include it by denying pre-measurement and not providing a different mechanic.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Et sans résultat! (ESR) allows pre-measuring. When running games at conventions we get asked about it from time-to-time. My answer is typically that I’m a fairly young guy with quite good eyesight, and it seems poor that someone else would be penalized in game play because they were older and their vision wasn’t as good.
ESR also uses largely familiar measurements that people can guesstimate fairly well. Depending on the ground scale you play at, most people can visualize 6 inches, a foot, two feet, roughly correctly. 3 3/4″ is not a measurement anyone can be expected to correctly guess by looking.
Another factor of this debate that is often ignored, is that natural rulers exist. We commonly play on tables we know the length and width of, we often know the approximate footprint of buildings we’ve set on the tabletop, the frontage of units is almost universally known, for those who play with roads and rivers that are set on top of the tabletop in strips, those lengths are commonly knowable. Which is to say, there are already rulers present and allowed in all games simply by default.
To allow or disallow pre-measurement is obviously the discretion of the game designer, game host, and group of players playing. To my mind, it simply seems impractical to disallow it.
Cheers,
The Bandit
It’s hard to think why you would want the men under fire part of a different organization.
Rationally true, though it was, in the scheme of things, an oddly new idea for the train troops (of any variation, including those running limbers and such) to even be part of the military. Which… yeah boggles my mind.
Cheers,
The Bandit
FYI, http://zaotlichiye.net63.net/allfacings.html works happy as ever (and has the last several days) via Safari v.11.x on macOS.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Not in a practical place to provide useful citation, but I can’t recall any reference to indicate they were not part of the train and in fact, I swear I remember multiple references claiming they were in fact part of the train.
In my collections of plates (~4500 maybe, not exclusively French obviously), there are lots of depictions of “artillerie du train” and they are all in a pale or grayish-blue or “steal blue”. Facings vary within train troops with “artillerie” having a designated facing of dark blue pretty consistently. Engineers and others having each black and brown (can’t recall off the top of my head which for which).
Sorry I can’t be more specific at this time.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Our second ESR Napoleonics game of Fall-In 2017 featured drastically more aggressive action by the French and they were rewarded for it.
All brand new players in this introductory game, and we apologize for the several additional people who were hoping to get into an open slot and contented themselves to observe the game.
We were also delighted by the surprise of receiving the game award for our time slot on Saturday! A marshal’s baton in the satchel of every game master indeed!
You can see how the rest of the action went in our Gallery, please check it out!
Cheers,
The Bandit
To my mind, most of the time, declaring a victor in a battle is a matter of propaganda. Sure, the French win Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, Wagram… but the Russians claim Golymin as a victory, as do the French, the Russians claim Pułtusk as a victory. Napoleon, and the Russians, both claim Eylau as a victory. The list goes on and on. Most battles are indecisive, no one gets most of what they are seeking to accomplish.
Who wants what at the Berezina?
• Napoleon wants to extricate the French Army, as much of it as possible, really all of it.
• Alexander wants to destroy the French Army, as much of it as possible, really all of it.
• The French marshals, who are a mixed lot, mostly just want to get out of Russia.
• The Russian generals, who are a mixed lot, mostly just want the French to leave.
• The French army, exhausted, mostly just wants to get out of Russia.
• The Russian army, nearly as exhausted as the French, want the French out of Russia.Who gets what they want?
• Not Napoleon.
• Not Alexander.The French Army leaves, a lot of it gets out. So who feels they got what they wanted?
• French survivors, but I doubt they feel good about it.
• Russian rank & file, they probably feel relieved.
• French marshals, but they were not united in their happiness…
• Russian generals, well some, others were really hoping to do more damage…Who claims to have gotten what they wanted?
• Napoleon.
• Alexander.
• Kutuzov.Did anyone win or lose the Berezina?
I’d say Alexander lost as he got the least of what he wanted. But significant parts of the Russian Army would feel they accomplished what they wanted, separate from Alexander.
Everyone else got some of what they wanted, but it wasn’t much of a victory for anyone.
Did Napoleon get much of what he wanted? Hard to say, most of what he said after the Berezina regarding it can be considered propaganda, if not in its intent, certainly in its practicality.
Cheers,
The Bandit
They really do look sharp. I think there are also a handful of smaller details that really pop and bring them together. The saber knots for instance.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Very nicely done. Some have said the early war Russian dragoon coats were a lighter green but I often ponder that it wouldn’t be too long in the field before they look just as yours do. I like them, well done.
Cheers,
The Bandit
I suspect – as you hint at – that it all had to do with when a regiment was “inducted” and the differing designations between the two army systems.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Per John Gill:
1st Regiment: Nassau (2nd Nassau)
2nd Regiment: Nassau (1st Nassau)
3rd Regiment: Wurzburg
4th Regiment: Saxon Duchies
5th Regiment: Anhalt and Lippe
6th Regiment: Reuss, Waldeck, and Schwarzburg
7th Regiment: Mecklenburg-SchwerinSome of their uniforms are covered in John Elting’s Napoleonic Uniforms v.III (pretty hit or miss). We also include plates for them in our Campaign Guides where they fought. Our 1813-1 Campaign Guide: We shall meet in Vienna, 1813 in Germany, includes plates for the 4th Rhinebund Infantry. As we hit campaigns where the others were involved, we plan to include them as well.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Fair enough, and like I’d said, it was not a criticism. I think the figures look terrific – and frankly I think the turquoise really pops.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Thanks, I’d understood Azov to be from the Brest Inspection – thus, straw facings just as you have made sense – but with red as the regimental color for shoulder straps. Jonathan Gingerich notes that on his site translating Viskovatov. This does contradict Xenophon Group International who also cites Viskovatov, as well as Osprey.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Very nice job. The figures look terrific. Third battalion of the regiment based on their pompons? Very cool. Terrific use of technique to show artificial shadows. Even the basing – with the standard bearers staggered between the ranks as was customary. One facing color question (not meant as a criticism): source for the shoulder strap color?
Cheers,
The Bandit
If the players had fun, that is the main thing – well done.
Chris
Also, I missed saying in my last post – excellent map you linked to. We haven’t taken on doing a French Revolutionary Wars module for ESR yet, but resources like that are what we’ll be looking to use. Thank you.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Er, yeah … because an entire range of hills seems to be missing … ?
I believe the gentlemen who ran the game used this map to guide their layout:
As to the accuracy of that map, or any modifications the game hosts made in order to put on the game, I can’t say, I know the players had a lot of fun.
Cheers,
The Bandit
I’m onboard with the general thinking at that under-scaling buildings for tactical and grand tactical games is a good idea. Building footprints become out-of-wack very fast, and under-scaling helps mitigate this some.
I’ve even gone a step further in the scale mixup. In scenarios that feature both cities, suburbs, and rural areas, I scale my urban city centers larger, and the suburbs and rural areas smaller. This provides a natural visual effect of the city rising above its suburbs.
You can see the impact of this in these two games:
Battle of Smolensk at Little Wars 2016
Battle of Smolensk at Historicon 2016
Cheers,
The Bandit
Ha. You sell clothing merchandise!
Ace.
We sell t-shirts with our name and logo, darn right 😉
Cheers,
The Bandit
I don’t have mine handy, but I’d suggest pulling the trick of measuring between two known points to determine distance and then scaling it to the number of map spaces between them. Paris to Caen is approximately 130 miles with a straight route between them.
Cheers,
The Bandit
I’m going to say ‘Yes’, because it’s not an instinctive calculation, and a game that says “Bring a protractor” isn’t calling my name.
Most of us can work out a 45% arc by eye. If you say, “Take it from the centre of the firing unit” you are probably getting the same general result.
Another vote of agreement here.
With that said, frankly I think the easiest answer to systems that want to use arcs other than 45º, 90º, 180º, or 360º is to stipulate bases that indicate the desired arc. Harder from a marketing/adoption standpoint but easier from a game play standpoint.
As Always,
The Bandit
