Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

I have updated the initial post and have added some suggestions for house rules that I think still need more feedback to assure that they are justified and work the way they should.

I would like to hear ideas that would lead to these battles being more "fire combat" oriented. I an in my fourth battle against an opponent who completely shuns fire combat except for artillery. He never goes in line formation and has basically just battered me with constant melee attacks. I have often deployed in line but my fire power just will not stop these attacks. I have always envisioned these games to have forces trading musket fire until one side is worn down enough to then initiate melees. I'm looking for thoughts on these comments.

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Marechal Jonathan Thayer
Prince de Friedland et Duc de Saalfeld
2ère Brigade
1ère Division de Grosse Cavalerie
Réserve de Cavalerie
La Grande Armée

That's no job for a house rule.
The optional rule "Manual Defensive Fire" is the key, without it fire is random and only done at 50%.

Jon; I'm new to NB multiplay but, constantly assaulting with columns should be more wasting to the attacker than the defender. I like a good orderly division sized musket battle line myself but, the game requires advancement of the attacker and so, many players will rush the guns. A competent defender (I assume) should be able to massacre them in the chaos though.

How about instead of embedded melee at the end of a turn; a rule enforcing charges and melee only at the beginning of a turn. Therefore cavalry would have to prepare their charges. Infantry would need to start their turn adjacent to the enemy. Regular movement and firing orders could be processed afterwards. One 'problem' being the potential melee defender would have a turn to withdraw and could delay an advance much more effectively. Would definitely enforce linear combat to a greater extent than I've seen in any of my PBEMs. My games begin with the best of intentions towards historical conflict but, end with a bunch of scattered units zig zagging in columns.

I agree it's a bit "gamey" to have commanders riding about wherever they like.

The battlefield was never "empty", even if the game presents quite tidy army dispositions that are possible to ride through. You would have stragglers, foragers, messengers, deserters, wounded and all sorts of movement behind the lines, that would deter or prevent a commander from going too deep, even if they had an entire Brigade with them.

I'd suggest a commander should always be placed within command range of the majority of his command. If they want to send a cavalry regiment out to carry out reconnaissance, then that's up to them... but any "out of command" troops that get Disordered would have to return immediately back to their command radius by the shortest safe route, even if they re-order along the way.

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Général de Brigade Amos
1ère Brigade
Cavalerie, 3ème Division de Dragons,
Réserve de Cavalerie, La Grande Armée

“Ask Before Activating Al”

Fire combat has now improved, auto defensive fire triggered by melee is now done at 100% and not 50%. That is hardcoded and not optional rule like it's in the CW series.
Besides that you should always punish any stacking/massing attempts by the attacker, so the optional rules "Column Pass Through Fire" and "Target Density Modifier" are mandatory. At the same time pimping the defender is also mandatory with the optional rule "Melee Terrain Modifiers" so that the defender gets the benefit of the terrain that he has chosen to defend.
Ultimately I strongly suggest to play in phases to have full control over the defense.

If I find the time I want to finally test out how often the auto DF is triggered now. But first I have to build a scenario for it with at least 1k units per side and then register each result and maybe even run it multiple times to have a statistically significant size to be sure. There was talk at the Blitz that the frequency of it was raised, but nothing was in the changelogs. But it would be interesting if turn gameplay is now an option to consider.

PS: The new OR "Movement Threat Disorder" seems interesting but for now it seems to trigger not only too often, but has also some strange fallouts like threat being exerted by limbered artillery or threat nullified by hexsides.