An online discussion about my Portable Napoleonic Wargame rules

Over the past few days I have been conducting an online discussion with the owner of the WARGAMING EVERYTHING blog.

He wrote a very honest review of the rules ... which he did not particularly like, especially the Close Combat system and some aspects of the musketry and artillery rules. In his conclusions he wrote:

The above depicted melee was what broke it for me. The way modifiers work, the Russian flanking unit is less susceptible to lose men when flanking. So far so good. But is the French unit in dire straights for being flanked and in combat against two enemies? No, it isn’t. In fact the rather slim chances of losing men are further reduced to a 1 in 6 by the general supporting the French. They can literally fight for a dozen turns without effect while on other parts of the battlefield a unit can be shot to pieces quickly. Not to say that the artillery and musketry modifiers are more to my liking.

Adding to that, I can pretty much play many rules systems with a 1-2 page rules overview (QRS) but the rules layout of this book is standing in the way of clarity in my opinion. Said modifiers are formulated in lists of whole sentences which have to re-read quite a few times to find the ones that apply. A QRS is not included. There are good parts though. The decisions to suffer casualties vs push back tied to unit experience is a clever mechanic forcing the players to make though choices. In the end, though, I will rather move on to other rules that work in my opinion.

I like good, honest criticism, especially when – as in this case – the person making the criticism has spent time looking at the way the rules operate and the mathematics behind the mechanisms used. I have answered the points he has raised in my comments on his blog, but I suspect that we are never going to agree. However, looking at the points he raised has made me re-examine the thinking behind the way I designed my rules, and I am still happy with the way that they work.

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To date I have not produced a QRS for my rules because the feedback I have had from players is that they don’t need one as they can pick-up the main points after a couple of turns. I will, however, give the matter some thought if there is sufficient demand to make producing one worthwhile.