Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

It's been a while since my last game so before I start any new one I'd like to hear what are the usual optional rules (if any) for HPS titles?

I am a stong supporter of optional rules for old Battleground titles but HPS games have a better engine so to my expirience they don't require a lot of rules to work fine (at least Panzer campaing titles).

GdD Dejan Zupancic, Comte de St. Pol
Saxon Division de Cavalerie
Armee du Rhin

Two most frequently used HouseRules are:
- embedded melee (to get rid of blitz attacks)
- skirmies in 3 hexes of parental/brigade/division/army regular unit (to get rid of modern-like scouts)

GL. Pavel Stafa
Russian Army Chief-of-staff
Leib-gvardii Preobrazhenskiy polk
Kommanduyuschiy Korpusom Rezerva
2-oy Zapadnoy armii EIV

Thanks.
Can we simplify the embedded melee rule to “a unit can not be (successfully) attacked more thank once in one turn except if it retreats to a hex with friendly non-skirmish unitâ€

Are we talking about optional rules or house rules?

<center>Général de Division D.S. "Green Horse" Walter
Baron d'Empire, Duc des Pyramides
Commandant de la [url="http://home.arcor.de/dierk_Walter/NWC/3_VI_AdR_Home.htm"]3ème Division[/url], VIème Corps Bavarois, L'Armée du Rhin
Commandant [url="http://mikedavies122863.tripod.com/index.htm"]L'Ecole de Mars[/url], L'Armée du Rhin
Commandant de la Brigade de Tirailleurs de la Jeune Garde
</center>

House rules.

GdD Dejan Zupancic, Comte de St. Pol
Saxon Division de Cavalerie
Armee du Rhin

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Dejan Zupancic</i>
<br />Thanks.
Can we simplify the embedded melee rule to “a unit can not be (successfully) attacked more thank once in one turn except if it retreats to a hex with friendly non-skirmish unitâ€

Dejan

Have a look at my topic from about 10 days ago entitled "House rule obsession." In that discussion I give a full explanation of the embedded melee rule.

Général de Brigade Malcolm Fletcher Cumberlidge
"Vigueur et Honneur"
Chef d'Etat-Major
1er Corps de Réserve de Cavalerie
Armée du Nord

Embedded Melee Rule is easy:

1. Move or fire any or all units you want. No melee at this time.
Then after you are done doing any of the above ...
2. Melee with any units you want to melee with. You cannot melee again after you are finished with meleeing.
Then after you are done with melees....
3. Move or fire with any units that didnt do so in #1 or those that still have MPs or can still fire. You cannot melee with any units during this time period.

An exception to the rule above, agreed on by both players, is to allow infantry or cavalry to melee/charge over skirmishers at any time during the player turn so that the defender doesnt try and use his skirmishers in a line to halt the movement of your infantry. Thus your cavalry could charge over the skirmishers, you could move your infantry up and then together with the cavalry melee a stack of infantry if you wanted to do so. Not terribly historical but it allows us to elude the mistakes of the days of NIR where skirmishers formed lined that stopped infantry from moving through them.

Lots of us use "fronts" in carrying out this House Rule. Basically, divide up the map into "fronts" and do steps #1 - #3 for each front and then move on to another "front" and do steps #1 - #3 until you are done with all "fronts" and have no other units to move. Do the rear area movement in whatever order you want.

Also: when you use the term "Optional Rules" this means the options that you check in the game engine prior to starting a game. The correct term to use for how you will conduct the usage of your forces is always known as "House Rules" or "Player Rules" so as to differentiate the one from the other.

An example of a Optional Rule is Line Movement Disorder or Column Pass Through Fire.

An example of a House Rule is "Skirmishers must stay within 3 hexes of a unit of their brigade."

Oberst Wilhelm Peters
2nd Kuirassiers, Reserve Korps, Austrian Army