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    Absolute Emperor: Napoleonic Wargame Battles
    Absolute Emperor: Napoleonic Wargame Battles
    Absolute Emperor: Napoleonic Wargame Battles
    Ebook157 pages1 hour

    Absolute Emperor: Napoleonic Wargame Battles

    By Boyd Bruce and Mark Stacey

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    About this ebook

    From the late Revolutionary Wars and Egyptian campaign, to the battles of Austerlitz, Borodino, Leipzig, and Waterloo, Absolute Emperor is a mass battle wargame that provides all the rules needed to play during this period of grand armies and sweeping campaigns. Players' armies are composed of multiple corps, with command and control being of the utmost importance, all influenced by the elan of your general. Do you follow in the footsteps of Napoleon and be crowned the Absolute Emperor or stand against tyranny as Wellington and Blücher?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateMay 27, 2021
    ISBN9781472843661
    Absolute Emperor: Napoleonic Wargame Battles
    Author

    Boyd Bruce

    Boyd has been a librarian, a soldier, a father, and a wargamer. Relying upon his history degree, his love of books, his years of service, and a passion for wargaming, he has made the transition from participant to instigator with Absolute Emperor. Playing all types of tabletop wargaming, Boyd's main gaming interest will always be historical, and Napoleonic gaming holding a favorite place in his heart.

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      Book preview

      Absolute Emperor - Boyd Bruce

      Title Page

      Contents

      Introduction

      Theoretical Conventions

      A Note on Units and Scale

      Basing Units

      Core Concepts

      Sequence of Play

      Types of Unit

      Command and Control

      Corps Commander

      Phase 1: Command

      Orders

      Phase 2: Movement

      Interaction Zone

      Movement in Built Up Areas

      Retrograde Movements

      Terrain

      Phase 3: Shooting

      Infantry

      Artillery

      How to Read Dice Modifiers

      Phase 4: Charges

      Charge Basics

      Phase 5: Combat

      Multiple-Unit Combat

      Change Facing in Combat

      Combat Against an Infantry in a BUA

      Combat Modifiers

      Shooting and Combat Resolution

      Unit Exhaustion

      Extraordinary Resolutions

      Definitions

      Post-Resolution Combat Results

      Unit Status

      Victory

      Advanced Rules

      Archaic Command Structures

      Detachments

      Guard Units

      Grand Batteries

      Historical Corps Commanders Élan

      Horse Artillery

      Lancers

      Limited Ammunition

      Nationality Special Rules

      Massive Numbers of Models

      Partial Divisions

      Scaling Down

      Secret Deployment

      Smoke and Fire

      Very Large Divisions

      Tournament and Casual Play

      Army Building Engine

      Scenarios

      The Orders of Battle

      Battle of Bumville

      Eylau

      Wagram

      Waterloo

      Scenario One Example

      Appendix

      Notes for a Tournament Game Master

      A Final Note From the Author

      Introduction

      I love Napoleonic wargaming. In fact, it is my favorite period. The pageantry, the uniforms, the personalities, the battlefields, the use of combined arms—all of these aspects endear this period to me like no other in wargaming. Since I started miniature wargaming in the late eighties, I have read, learned, and enjoyed dozens of excellent sets of Napoleonic rules. I loved playing them, yet I couldn’t help noticing that I always moved on from one set to another without actually understanding fully why. If I enjoyed a set of rules, why didn’t I just stick with them and play the game? For me it was the result of one simple flaw. This flaw also keeps the majority of wargamers at arm’s length from Napoleonic wargaming: overkill.

      So, what is overkill? I want spectacle, I want grand sweep with many miniatures on a big table. What I don’t want is to spend three months painting esoteric troops for a single battle. For example, must I paint 10,000 polcheniye to fight the battle of Borodino? Traditionally, Napoleonic wargames are built around mechanics with battalion-level units. This is, on the surface, the correct scale, because all the primary sources speak in numbers of battalions. However, it also means the average player would have to paint endlessly, one battalion at a time, for every battalion of a battle. If one ever wanted to play a large historical battle like Waterloo, they would have to buy and paint literally thousands of models…for both sides! Also, don’t expect your buddy to paint all the Prussians for you. Even games using brigade-sized units require a full dedication to Napoleonic gaming as your primary wargaming interest. And because space is limited for most people, only a portion of a battle can ever be played using these scales. It is a rare gamer who can find space and time to put together and play even a moderately-sized battle like Jena. The best part of an old-fashioned Napoleonic game is the masses of units on a massive table. The downside is spending three hours to set up, eighteen hours of playing without conclusion, and three hours to clear everything away. It makes the game more work than play, and that is the overkill.

      I know. That last paragraph just takes the wind right out of your sails. But do not despair. Absolute Emperor is designed for the busy, multiple-time-period enthusiast who wants a good Austerlitz in the morning, a cup of tea in the afternoon, then perhaps some football on the TV that evening. A perfect Saturday.

      Ranks and flanks are what musket era gaming is all about. A player needs troops painted and ready for battle; based upon the recent popularity of inexpensive plastic figures, one can imagine building and painting around fifty to one hundred figures total for an army. With modern painting techniques, that is a reasonable number of figures—and not so many that aging will interfere with completing the task. I believe that the game scale and mechanics in Absolute Emperor allows players to have a reasonable number of models for a reasonable representation, with the flavor of the period, and enough maneuver units to give the feel of proper difficulties with command and control at the highest levels. High-level command feel is the core reason I wrote Absolute Emperor. As the army commander, you should be able to see where and what a division is doing, but you shouldn’t be involved with the disposition of battalions and guns.

      In this rules set I have taken my years of experience with historical and tournament wargaming, cobbled some ideas together, spoken to random people, was told about an article on the Internet, and developed a way for gamers to paint up a reasonable number of troops and still be able to play a sizable battle in two to three hours. I have included a method for gamers to create battles of their own design, what if scenarios, or simply battle with what they have painted already. I have, of course, also included traditional historical scenarios of large important battles: Waterloo, Eylau, and Wagram—all of which can be easily completed in an evening.

      To play this game you will need six-sided dice (d6), a ruler or measuring tape marked in inches ("), some eight-sided dice (d8) or other casualty counting system, some miniatures based to a wargame standard, and a playing surface four by six foot or larger.

      This rules set is designed to encourage Napoleonic Wargaming with minimum rules anxiety and maximum period feel. The design impetus is to allow people to finish a sizable game in few hours. I like history, I like to write rules, and I like to roll dice. Please enjoy the rules in that spirit.

      General de Rationale

      Throughout this book, you will find dialogue paragraphs wherein I explain why a certain rule or convention is the way it is. Narration is by my alter ego, General de Rationale. He will help new gamers understand how the period feel of Napoleonic wargaming is expressed in game terms, and he will help old guard gamers know why it may seem different than what they are used to on the surface.

      Theoretical Conventions

      In every nation, and even within each nation, our modern ideas of uniformity would be foreign during the Napoleonic era. Regiments, battalions, demi-brigades, brigades, divisions, columns, corps, and armies all had varied meanings with regard to number of troops, organization of troops, and logistics train. In other words, one cannot generalize the militaries of the European nations during the first half of the nineteenth century. Therefore, I have done just that. I will refer to units and divisions interchangeably. It is the general relationships between forces, rather than the number of battalions and squadrons, that I strive to represent. I believe it is the feel of the period command, rather than the lower level details, that dictates an enjoyable game. What

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