And You Thought Napoleon Was Short...

Recently I've been interested in getting in to napoleonics so I figured I would talk a little about where that journey has taken me thus far.  For a long time, the furthest back in history I was interested in gaming was WWII.  I liked the tanks, the airplanes and all of the tactical flexibility the speed and deadliness of modern warfare presents a wargamer with.  However, last semester I took a course in European military history up to 1789.  I wasn't really sure I would enjoy the course very much as the big lines and blocks of infantry and cavalry had always seemed too slow to me to be particularly interesting.  However as we got into the class, my professor presented things in a way that just grabbed me.  As he talked about the development of the Roman manipular system and then the genesis of the pike and the age of linear warfare, I couldn't help but to imagine these battles playing out on the tabletop.  I decided I would give some of this older warfare a go after all.

While we didn't really get to discuss the Napoleonic Wars in the class as we only covered up to the French Revolution, I read on in one of the textbooks (The Art of War in the Western World by Archer Jones for those who are interested) over the winter break and was fascinated by his coverage of the Napoleonic Wars.  I immediately went on to check out another book, this time it was Waterloo: the History of Four Days, Three Armies, and Three Battles, by Bernard Cornwell.

Having decided to start this new period, I was completely lost as to where to go.  Napoleonics is an interesting period to wargame because there is no "flagship" game for the period like Flames of War is for WWII.  Also, people have been gaming nepoleonics for as long as there have been toy soldiers so there are dozens of rule sets, each requiring a different level of abstraction and base size and miniature scale; its a confusing thing to approach.  I was muddling through all this and getting a bit discouraged when I came across this article by Curt on the Analogue Hobbies blog.  His little stands of 3mm infantry looked amazing and really gave the kind of massed infantry look I was excited about.  From this point onward I pretty have to give all the creative credit to Curt as I loved his idea so much I essentially copied it.

The rules Curt was using were Sam Mustufa's Blucher system.  I looked around on his excellent website and decided they were worth checking out so I picked up the book and the Hundred Days Campaign set (technically my mom got them for me for Christmas).  I'm still working my way through the book but so far it looks like a really enjoyable and challenging game.  At first I was afraid that the grand tactical scale would be too much as I am used to company scale games.  However as I read through the book, I can really see the appeal of being a Napoleon or a Wellington.

As far as the figures go, I really just copied what Curt did.  I made my bases a little bigger so they would more closely approximate the size of the unit cards Blucher uses.  Also, the larger base size allowed me to do four battalions as well as skirmishers, officers, and a cannon and crew on each infantry base.

Anyways, I've blabbered on far more than I should have about this so I'll leave you with a teaser picture of one of my finished French infantry regiments