Yesterday evening some of us gave the 'Valour & Fortitude' Napoleonics rules from Perry Miniatures a go. These are a set originally designed for fighting big demo games, and are, to some extent, simplified from Black Powder, although they have a character all their own.
They can be downloaded from the Perry Miniatures website HERE
We set up a simple encounter between the Russians and the French, with each side having two infantry brigades, a heavy cavalry brigade and a light cavalry brigade. Objectives were the hills to the right of this picture and the village and wood in the left-centre.
Not pictured was the collapse of our light cavalry on the other flank - they were wrong-footed by the Russian lights after a bad command roll. Yes, there's a small bit of command friction built into the game. Unlike Black Powder where you roll for activations, Valour & Fortitude has a much simpler system; on a turn a side can activate one brigade for free, assuming it's in range of the army commander. Each other brigade must roll a D6 - on a '1' they don't act this turn; inertia, loss of orders or simple confusion stops them. They can shoot, but do nothing else. It's simple, effective and annoying, but does the job.
Anyway, we reached the time limit with the Russians ahead. The rules recommend simply playing until you reach a set time, and then that's the end of the game. Perfect for a club meeting.
As you can tell, I enjoyed these rules. There's a lot of combat factors to take into account but Gary, who ran the game for us, had put them all onto a useful QRS and by about halfway through we were all pretty much running our own shooting and combat, despite three of us never having read the rules prior to play.
In terms of complexity they sit nicely between Neil Thomas's 'Simplicity in Practice' and 'Black Powder'. I found them as entertaining as the latter but with much cleaner mechanisms. The rules are still being refined and updated based on player feedback, and I believe that versions are planned for other periods (although officially only ones for which Perry Miniatures do figures). I liked them.
Thanks to Gary for organising the game and to both him and Caesar for providing the figures. Also to Stuart for putting up with my insane 'Charge the village' plan and to Brian for showing me how to actually use heavy cavalry.
Lovely terrain and the figure painting is impressive. It sounds like V&F is worth investigation. Many thanks.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Geoff
Nice write up and pictures Alan, seems a good set of rule for a quick evening's game. I assume frontages don't matter as long as everyone plays the same?
ReplyDeleteTo be honest I'm not sure how important the frontages are. As you say I think so long as all units are the same it doesn't matter. It does have formations, so you'd probably want four bases to a unit. Most armies at our club are based for Lasalle, so they are four square bases. I know Gary scaled things down for 15mm figures - 3" in the rules was 4cm with our toys.
DeleteGreat report, sums up the rules nicely. I enjoyed the game very much too. Hats off to you for such bold use of cavalry, to be expected when you have the reins!
ReplyDeleteMinor clarification, "Fortitude" is used when referring to the morale test of a brigade. I think you mean "Tenacity" for the stamina of a unit.
I did mean that, and have corrected it. Thanks.
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