Thoughts on Rules

The three sets of rules that will be the foundation for my Napoleonic (and ACW) adventures although I have a few ideas of my own that I will throw into the mix.

I have been rolling a few ideas around about rule options to go with the Del Prado collection and whilst I have more or less settled on the Portable Napoleonic Wargame and Command and Colours Napoleonic (minus the command cards though) there is naturally scope for plenty of other things.

A number of year ago - this would be the late 1980s - I purchased a number of packs of RAFM iron on hex transfers with a 3 1/2” grid. These were in support of a set of rules I came across that were hex based (very avant garde for the late 1980s!) for the Napoleonic period. I cannot remember what the rules were called or even if the were produced by RAFM - as near as I can recall I picked them up from a Wargames show - but the one thing that stuck with me was the scale. A single figure equalled 125 men so a 500 man unit was represented by 4 figures.

I can remember being hugely inspired by this concept and in many ways it has stayed with me - that and the article by Charles Wesencraft on Napoleonic battles using a single figures to represent a battalion. These made a long lasting impression on me and have influenced my thinking to this day.

My own spin on the period will incorporate ideas from a number of sources and I am fortunate that even if the end result does not work out as envisaged I will still have the above sets to use. My thoughts in a little more detail will appear in due course but for now it is back to the basing.