Further to the recent blog post about his suggested changes to the PORTABLE NAPOLEONIC WARGAME rules, Professor Gary Sheffield sent me the following suggested change to the musketry rules:
- Musket-armed units can only fire into an adjacent grid area to better reflect actual effect range of Napoleonic muskets.
- When a unit enters a grid area that is adjacent to a grid area that is already occupied by an enemy unit, it has the option either to fire at the enemy unit or to engage it in Close Combat.
- Rifle-armed troops can fire 3 grid areas, but they suffer a penalty to reflect the fact that rifles were slower to reload than smoothbore muskets.
He also wrote the following about his home-made grid squares:
'The terrain squares are homemade. I bought a job lot of wooden squares off the internet, painted them green using cheap acrylic paint, then sprinkled flock onto them. If the paint had dried, I used a coat of PVA glue before using the flock. I then varnished the flocked squares. I used different shades of green flock to get some variation, and sometimes splashed various colours of brown on the flock. I used green felts of various types on a few squares, again with brown splodges. I have some largish green felt squares (from sets of children's roulette that I bought from a department store in the Canaries!), and I put them plain side up under the terrain squares, so no white bits show through from my wargames table.'
Here are some examples of Gary's home-made grid squares:
Please note that the photographs featured above are © Professor Gary Sheffield.
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Bob, thanks very much for posting these details of Gary Sheffield's Napoleonic rules amendments and making of his terrain squares. I shall certainly adopt the former, and the latter will be helpful when I have time (very busy with Swansea Cats & Kittens and tuition right now) to create my own terrain squares from the coasters. Please thank Gary on my behalf.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes, Arthur
Arthur1815 (Arthur),
DeleteIt was my pleasure to share Gary Sheffield’s rule amendments and information about how he made his terrain grid squares. I’ll pass on your thanks to him.
It’s good to read that Swansea Cats & Kittens is flourishing, even if it is taking up time that you could be using to wargame!
All the best,
Bob
Interesting stuff Bob, Gary's rule amendments are certainly worth looking at. I've often thought about how short effective musket range really was in this period, I have wondered if it might be best to just call it 'combat' once units are in adjacent hexes? (btw isn't it said that melee was quite unusual, only a minority of recorded wounds were caused by bayonets?). Thinking about this stuff is all part of the fun..
ReplyDeleteDavid in Suffolk,
DeleteIn actual fact, although muskets have a lethal range of about 200 yards, aimed fire is possible at about 100 yards with volleys being fired at 25 to 50 yards. I know that there is no ground scale in PW, but if we are looking at the Napoleonic period, combat between infantry units was probably so short that Firing could easily be subsumed into Close Combat to just become Combat.
All the best,
Bob
Does that change the dynamic of the game somewhat though? With the previous ranges, the defender would be guaranteed to fire at least once against an approaching attacker...but this way, the attacker is the one to initiate it?
ReplyDeleteJWH,
DeleteI suspect that quite a few users would agree with you … but I hope that the basic design of the PW rules is robust enough for them to be happy to try both alternatives and still have a great wargame.
All the best,
Bob