Step by Step!

It seems somewhat inappropriate to celebrate Christmas with plans for sabring and canistering one's fellow man to eternity, but these are only toys so I think I can be forgiven the indulgence.

With the slew of new Napoleonic rules on the market recently, I have thinking for a long time now about what I want from my Napoleonic gaming experience, versus how practical it is to achieve it given my current output (which while slow, has really been gaining momentum of late, in part thanks to...black undercoat!).

I have decided that I wanna game Nappys, and that I wanna game soon.  For now, that means skirmishing and small actions.  As I've mentioned previously, there is some interest in this in our local group, so it would seem to be a good idea to take advantage of any kind of interest at all in Naps that may be out there, and see if it can't grow in time.  

So who knows; maybe in the future we will be having games like this one.  For the time being I need to set my sites on a smaller, yet equally entertaining, level.  I need to be thinking small actions like this.  

 

A semi-skirmish scenario, rather like the old Sword and the Flame games I played and enjoyed years ago which we used for the French and Indian wars.  I should see if anyone has done a version for Napoleonics- or I could just go with Sharpe Practice for a while.

The issue of rules brings me back to the other thorny issue of basing.  Years ago back in Vancouver we started out doing the French and Indian War using small numbers for skirmish games- a dozen Rangers here, twenty French militia there and a battalion or so of regulars- but as time went on the games grew, we morphed over to the European theatre, and before too long we were gaming huge actions- and I mean huge.  All with the legacy of individually-based minis, which was a real headache in so many ways. 

This time I'm just going to stay the course with  the 1:20 ratio GdB style basing for line and regular cavalry, with irregular and skirmish companies based individually.  Formed units will just have to use rosters for casualties.  I don't see it leading to too many problems.  

Taking this route will still allow me to game the bigger battles should the opportunity ever arise.  But as I add units, and hopefully hook others who begin to add their own units to the collection (no excuse not to, with all those new plastics on the market!), the whole thing may snowball. 

So it's back to basics, and I wonder if anyone out there remembers the "Stepped-up Situations" from Don Featherstone's Battles with Model Soldiers from way back when?  This is my version, some forty years later!

Anyway, back to the painting desk.  But first, a heads-up for people to check out Doc Smith's excellent blog, and I respectfully doff my shako to him for his nice comment about my masthead banner.