Home Brewed Flags - Spanish Cavalry

Since my newly arrived Spanish light cavalry units have standard bearers - which is extremely unusual for my Napoleonic cavalry - I've had to make an effort to find out a bit more about the subject.

After an amusing afternoon playing around with PaintShop Pro, I've produced a couple of original efforts. I am not overly thrilled by the quality, but I believe that the real things were about 85cm high - you may include or exclude the fringes as you wish - so at approximately 1/72 scale they should print up OK. If they are of interest, please feel free to download and use them, but bear in mind that they are pretty much guesswork. The first one bears the arms of Merida (a town in Estremadura) and the second the royal seal of Ferdinand VII.

If anyone wishes to come up with the genuine regimental standard of the Husares de Estremadura and the Cazadores Voluntarios de Espana then I'll be delighted to use those instead!

Home Brewed Flags - More Spanish Units

Here's another of my occasional posts featuring home-made flags produced with PaintShop Pro - as ever, it's stuff I've been working on for myself. If these are any use to you, please be my guest. Right click on the image - open the link (bigger version) in a separate window and save.

If you print the entire image so that it is 120mm high, the flags will be the correct size for 1/72 or 20mm. These are deliberately far lower resolution than, and therefore inferior quality to, my previous efforts, but I found that at 20mm scale you can hardly tell the difference, so these are from Cheap'n'Nasty Productions Inc - not recommended for 54mm armies.

A few of these are specific units, as identified, some are pleasing generic things I borrowed and tweaked, some may even be from the wrong century - it's OK - Cheap'n'Nasty have a certain standard to maintain...

If you like them, you're welcome to use them. As ever, the tasteful green background is just to make it easier to cut them out!

Home Brewed Flags - Joseph Napoleon's Spanish Troops

There is very little information about these flags. Here are examples of the flags I developed for my own wargame armies; from top to bottom they are the 2nd Line Regt (Toledo), 1st Light Infantry (Castilla) and Royal-Etranger (which I think, was technically a French army unit). The white flags would be carried on a blackened pole with a gilt spearhead finial and red cravat.

If they are of any use or interest, please feel free to copy them. The Toledo flag is based on the regulations, and on a reconstruction of the standard for the 6th Regt.

The green borders are not part of the design - they are just to make it easier to cut out a white flag!

Home Brewed Flags - French 1er Leger

1804 pattern flag - for 1/72 scale, print the image 12mm high - if you prefer them overscale, 15 or 16 makes them clearer. Click on the image to get the big version, right click and save.

Commands & Colors: Napoleonics - Crib Sheet

Since I found there was a lot to remember in CCN, and since the quick reference material is spread over a number of sheets (which is a real pain if you are trying to play solo), I made myself a crude 'crib sheet', which is probably British slang for a Playing Aid or Cheat Sheet.

It is not offered as an alternative to reading the rules, but it is more compact than some of the other customer-generated efforts I've seen so, if it is useful to anyone, here it is, in jpg form.

The Grand Tactical Game - Rules Revision

As suggested in the last post and subsequent comments, a minor revision to the MEP rules has been made, to simplify the artillery fire phase. I have left the skirmishing procedures unchanged for the time being.

The revised rules can be downloaded from here.

The Grand Tactical Game - Complete Rules

I'm supposed to be working today, but it's snowing heavily, so I've taken the opportunity to get the various pieces of the MEP rules stitched together. Result is the first proper version of the game, downloadable from here.

I've taken a little time to check it hangs together, but there will certainly be some typos and inconsistencies remaining. If anyone spots anything daft, please let me know - I am reconciled to an open-ended period of tweaking and fixing!

I'll do some serious playtesting over the next few weeks, and then transfer the rules onto the computer - the game, however, should work perfectly well with dice and lots of red wine...

I'll have to get on with organising the Salamanca session. Watch this space.

The Grand Tactical Game - Generals & Command

I've amended the downloadable draft of the MEP Rules, which you can get to from here. This revised version now includes the Rules for the use of Blinds, and I have amended the Game Sequence accordingly.

In this post I've also included previews of some more of the optional rules I propose to add, firstly the procedure for General's Personalities, which is a prerequisite for the Command rules, and which sets an Ability Rating (compliance/initiative, really) and a Leadership Style, which ranges from Cautious to Aggressive.


And then there are the Command Rules themselves - as previously mentioned, these are supposed to be as minimalist as I can get away with - please forgive any lack of elegance here! In my original notes, these are described as "Command Hassles", which kind of sums up the approach.



As ever, I would be delighted to receive comments on these - this is, after all, supposed to be a working draft.

The Grand Tactical Game - Downloadable Draft

This is an attempt to get organised. You can see or download the latest draft of the MEP rules from Google Docs by clicking here.

In future, so that I only need to maintain a single link, all references to the downloadable draft of the rules will link to this post, and the version you get to from here will be the latest extant version.

*** Very Late Edit ***

Some six years later, I removed the link, since the game is no longer in a maintained, playable state. Apologies if you came here looking for it.

*******************

The Grand Tactical Game - Rule Tweaks

Righto - updated version of MEP rules is now downloadable from here. Thanks again for comments and general help with this.

Divisional artillery may now share a hex with a brigade from their own division, and I've changed some of the Combat rules to suit. I did consider making such a battery just part of one of the brigades, but that becomes complicated if you wish to separate them, or have them acting independently.

I've also made a small change in the scaling of Elements in a Unit (brigade) - if the action is based on a historical OOB, the Elements will now be rounded to the nearer 750 men (500 for cavalry) rather than the higher. Nearer is probably more intuitively sensible anyway - it was higher only to prevent small units vanishing from the OOB. I've thought better of it - let 'em vanish!

Thoroughly enjoying my return to Rory Muir's book. There were a number of incidents which occurred at the Battle of Salamanca which affected the outcome, but which are at much too fine a level of detail to be covered by Grand Tactical rules. Examples are:

(1) Wellington himself detached a couple of guns from the 7th Divn's artillery, and put them on the Lesser Arapile (these were young Capt Dyneley's RHA boys - a tale straight from GA Henty if ever there was one)...

(2) ...and (according to Dyneley), a shell from one of these guns wounded Marshal Marmont, the French commander...

(3) ...and a major panic ensued, while the French HQ went to find General Clauzel, to tell him he was now in command...

(4)...alas, Clauzel had been wounded also and had been taken to the rear, so they now had to find Bonet, who was next in seniority...

(5)...but Bonet was also a casualty. Luckily, Clauzel, with his wound dressed, was able to take command shortly afterwards. Throughout this confusion and this series of bad breaks, Thomieres' Division was still heading for the horizon, which did not help the French situation at all.

None of this fiddly stuff, I promise you, is going to be covered by the intended scope of MEP!

I hope the changes in the draft make some sense - I'll attempt some low-level Combat experimentation with dice and toy soldiers to see what other horrors I haven't thought of...

The Grand Tactical Game - Salamanca OOBs

This feels like jumping the gun a bit - it is my intention to stage some kind of re-run of the Battle of Salamanca at some point during the playtesting of the MEP Grand Tactical Rules. As I mentioned before, I have very mixed feelings about any kind of re-enactment of a real battle, but I've never been able to do it before, so this will be proving a point. In the interests of humanity, it will probably be a solo effort!

One of the things I need to do is check that I am actually going to have enough troops to do it (and that they'll fit on the table!), so I've translated the historic OOB's into MEP terms - you'll find the tables below, somewhere. The numbers in brackets after the unit names show how many elements that unit contributes - this will not necessarily be the number of actual battalions which took the field in 1812, the numbers are tweaked to match the overall headcount. And, especially on the Allied side, some of the very small regimental units have been omitted - the numbers still add up.

Thanks once again to my loyal friend Marco, who emailed me some very useful feedback on the MEP draft. He pointed out that a very large brigade is potentially unstoppable, and that a very small one with bad morale could have a starting points value (PV) of zero, which means, of course, that they are eliminated before they set out! Accordingly, two new amendments have been incorporated in the draft (which can be downloaded here):

* a maximum of 4 elements count towards a unit's (brigade's) PV, thus (for example) a unit with 5 Elements and a Quality Bonus of +1 has it's PV restricted to 4 + 1 = 5.

* any single-element unit whose QB is -1 should have a minimum PV of 1 - do not attach the white (negative bonus) counter. Unless such a unit has a significant role in the battle, it is suggested that single-element units be dropped from the OOB, or rolled into another unit.



So here is my first attempt at the OOBs for Marshal Marmont's Armee de Portugal and the Earl of Wellington's Allied army on 22nd July 1812. Remember that the "Units" are the entities in the "Brigade" column. PV figures in red in the table are ones which have been adjusted for Marco's new rules. I have consciously been niggardly in awarding QB points, and I have also marked Bonet's Division down a bit since his troops appear to have had little battle experience. The "Sk" notes in the details of the Allied army show where, for mainly cosmetic reasons, skirmish figures should be from a particular unit.

Conclusions? I'm a bit short of Brunswick skirmishers, but I can do it, fairly comfortably, if I use stand-ins. I think I'll omit the Portuguese cavalry and Don Sanchez's Spanish lancers, just because they were tiny units.

I am thinking of commencing the action at the point at which the French left becomes over-extended. Since it is a (sort of) re-enactment, I will not need to use Blinds or Command rules, so the current MEP draft will probably suffice. I could do this playtest quite soon, in fact.

I'd better get myself organised. More soon.

Home Brewed Flags - Nassau

And yet another - this is derived from the illustration in Vol.3 of Flags of the Napoleonic Wars by Terry Wise. Once again, I did my own only to get better resolution than the Warflag download.

The flag was a small one - only about a metre square. I find you have to watch flag sizes - I don't like to see beautifully painted French Napoleonics staggering around with a 6 foot flag - you see it a lot, but it's wrong. On the other hand, if you make your flags too small, the thickness of the pole and the bloody-mindedness of the paper can result in something that looks like a fancy hatchet. I printed this at 16mm high, which in 1/72 is slightly overscale, but looks OK.

The Nassau regular infantry regiments all had flags like this throughout the Napoleonic Wars - whichever side they happened to be on!

Home Brewed Flags - Kleve-Berg

I needed a flag for one of my new Peninsular War units - this is for the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Infantry Regiment of Kleve-Berg, who in the Autumn of 1812 were part of Lamarque's Division of Decaen's Army of Catalonia, on counter-insurgency duty in Northern Spain. This doesn't sound like much of a great gig until you realise that all the rest of the Kleve-Berg units had been sent to Russia, so it could easily have been worse.

I thought it would be friendly to offer it here in case it is useful for anyone else. Usual drill - if you want a copy, please just click on the image to display the big version, then right-click on that and save it to wherever you want.

I wasn't keen on the available downloadable versions of Berg flags from the usual sites, so I constructed my own, for better resolution. This is the post 1809 version of the flag - I have printed mine at 18mm high for 1/72 scale, which looks OK, but I confess that I have no idea what size they were really. It was just gold on white - a lot less attractive than Murat's pre-1809 design, but you'd expect that. All units had the same flag, just overprint the numerals in the corners.

The Grand Tactical Game - More Skirmishing

Thanks very much for invaluable input - comments from Ross on previous post, and emails from Marco, Andy and Paul M. I've revised the draft of the Grand Tactical rules - you can download it here if you wish.

There are some changes for movement in woods and for combat involving buildings and built-up areas, but the big changes are for Skirmishers {Rule 9}.


I am impressed by arguments that casualties as a result of skirmisher fire would be mainly restricted to the other side's skirmishers, and thus would be unlikely to cause an enemy brigade to recoil or break. Thus I've changed the rule so that any skirmish hits will be deducted in the first instance from SK (the skirmish factor), if it is non-zero, until it runs out, and thereafter they will be deducted from the Unit's actual PV (which will require morale tests). This does mean that unopposed Skirmisher fire on an infantry Unit is potentially nasty if it scores any hits.

Skirmisher fire on artillery will impact directly on the PV, but, since an artillery battery is classed as a Difficult target (consisting, as it does, mostly of space), the required checkrolls will mean that the skirmishers miss quite a lot. Skirmish fire on cavalry can't happen, since skirmishers are not allowed to operate within 1 hex of cavalry.

I also took out the restriction on using Skirmishers in or against buildings - it's probably unnecessary - if you wish to use Skirmishers in such a situation then carry on, and the defenders can fire back, too.

Once again, thanks to all for your views - very pleased with that.

The Grand Tactical Game - First Draft

With a bit of luck, you should find the first draft of MEP here.

If it looks surprisingly polished for a draft, that is illusory, and is entirely because it is a cut-&-stitch lash-up from the rules of my main game. This is very much "warts and all" at this stage - the Command section is missing, as are a few other bits and pieces - what is here is a collection of the main combat and morale mechanisms, plus movement rules.

In a few days I'll set out some examples of how combat and skirmishing work, with pictures, which should help things make a little more sense. Please bear in mind that this early version has not been written for publication - this is really just my own notes.

My PV points system gives a kind of amalgam of troop quality and numerical strength - it is, so to speak, an Effectiveness measure. When a Unit loses a point from its PV, it doesn't necessarily mean that a complete battalion has been wiped out, it just means that the Unit (brigade) is now a bit less effective than it was. If artillery fires on a Unit and does not cause any PV loss, it doesn't mean that they managed a complete miss - it simply means that the overall impact of the losses suffered and the loss of confidence has had very little effect.

If you do have a look at this lot, I hope you find it interesting, but please prepare to be underwhelmed at this stage. I will, of course, be pleased to receive any comments. In particular, if the download doesn't work, or you can't find or read the file, please let me know.

My intention is to update this draft as I incorporate changes and add missing bits, so the downloadable file will evolve with time (i.e. I'm not storing a version history online!).

Home Brewed Flags - Portugal

More of the same - click on the image to get the enlarged version, and right click to save to file. Print the whole image 114mm high for correct 1/72 scale. These are the flags for the 9th and 21st Portuguese infantry regiments, which formed Champalimaud's (or Power's) brigade in the Allied 3rd Division in Spain, at a strength of 2 battalions each regiment. The patterned King's colours were carried by the 1st battalions, the plain Battalion colours by the 2nd. The cacador battalion in the brigade did not carry a flag.

Home Brewed Flags - Hesse Darmstadt

Here's another of my high-resolution flags - this one is for the Hesse Darmstadt Regiment Gross und Erbprinz. The regiment was pretty much destroyed at the Siege of Badajoz (1812) - both battalions in Spain carried a flag, and they both looked like this.

Home Brewed Flags - Spain

One thing I enjoy very much is producing my own flags. There are a number of very useful sites on the Internet which offer excellent free flags, but in many instances these are low-res, or not sufficiently detailed, or incorrect in some way. Whatever, I often choose to go my own way.

These are my own work, developed using PaintShop and a few other tools, designed to be printed on good grade computer printer paper. You should use high-res paper treated on one side only (keeps the bulk down). You can also, of course, print them to whatever size you require to suit different figure scales.

Here's an image giving flags for the 5 battalions in Carlos de Espana's division at Salamanca (July 1812). Nothing here is copyright or borrowed from elsewhere. Of course, in a number of cases no-one (not even local museums) knows exactly what flags were carried, so there is a measure of informed guesswork in here - if you have a more reliable version of any of these, please let me know! [Note that the 2nd Princesa did not carry the same hybrid flag known to have been carried by the 1st Princesa...]


If you click on this image and copy the enlarged version, and print the whole thing 73mm high then the flags will be exactly correct for 1/72 or 20mm figures. The green borders are not part of the flags - they are there so you can see the edges (have you tried cutting out a white flag on a white background? - I have!), and the red line in the border is so you can see which way up they should be - red line at the bottom.

If this stuff is useful please let me know - I have plenty more.