Solo Command and Colours Napoleonics - Without the Cards

I have fought an action this weekend using using a rule set that primarily consisted of Command and Colours: Napoleonics with a few extras - the main one of which I shall describe here. I am not a huge fan of command cards for solo purposes although will happily use them in face to face play. I am very fond of the 'friction' that   the use of the cards causes and so I wanted to replicate this in some fashion. I decided against using a purely dice driven command point system (similar to DBA) because I wanted to have an element of uncertainty about the location of where a command could actually be used.

The system I have devised uses a version of that which is used in Worthington Games: Napoleon's Wars in that each side has a set number of command points that can be varied on a turn by turn basis by a dice roll. This is fine for face to face play but I wanted add the 'zonal' effect which would serve to add uncertainty as to where troops could be commended.

For the purposes of the game I fought I gave each side a base of three command points. The random d6 roll that followed looked like this:

• 1 = -2 command points
• 2 = -1 command point
• 3 and 4 = no change
• 5 = +1 command point
• 6 = +2 command points

Then followed the second part of the process. For each command point the side then has they roll a further d6 with the results as follows:

• 1 and 2 = left zone
• 3 and 4 = centre zone
• 5 and 6 = right zone

Overall it worked out pretty well and injected just the right amount of 'zonal uncertainty' with also the possibility that a side may not be able to order troops at all if the dice rolls go the wrong way. The game played out OK - 24 game turns in all - although the random rolls were very unkind which prolonged the action, perhaps too much. It did occur to me that perhaps a mechanism whereby a degree of manipulation to the command points available based on the location of the commander - perhaps a dice modifier. The reason for this is so that a player can exert a degree of control depending on where the commander is.

I will still need to work on this but the first run out of this idea proved the feasibility of the concept. 

The report on the game will follow - once I have sorted out the photos and trimmed it down by several thousand words!