Reçu sur la mailing-list Grande Armée le 28 mars 2009:
Dear Friends and Players of GRANDE ARMÉE and MIGHT & REASON:
The wargame rumor mill being what it is, I've been getting some
questions about my new project. Since many of you will see the
announcement in the 2009 Historicon promotions, I thought I'd make a
few "official" comments beforehand.
For more than a year now, I've been working on a new wargames system
that will cover the horse and musket era (roughly 1700-1900), at
multiple scales and in multiple periods. Each Scale/Period will
receive a separate treatment as a MODULE. For instance, there could
be a petit-tactical module for the American Revolution, or a grand-
tactical module for the Wars of Marlborough, and so on. All modules
adhere to the basics of the system: they all share the same basic
sequence of play, basing, terminology, and concepts. Obviously, each
period and scale necessitates certain changes for things like
shooting, or formations, or specific maneuvers unique to that period,
or seen only when looking at that scale. That's why the system will
come out in modules; so that it's not "generic" or flavorless, but
also so that a player can link them together, and if he likes the
system for one period, he'll probably like it for another.
I'm sure we all know that wargamers are always looking for a way to
adapt their favorite game rules to some other period. No sooner did
Grande Armée appear, then people began asking me to do an ACW variant
for it. As soon as Might & Reason came out, people began stretching
it to cover earlier wars. So I've decided that this time, I'm going
to start with a solid "Core" rules set, that is designed from the
outset to "stretch."
ISSUES OF COPYRIGHT AND TRADEMARK:
I've kept relatively quiet about this new game for a couple of
reasons, mostly having to do with negotiations with a prospective
publisher. I'm going to debut it at Historicon, although it won't be
available for sale until the end of 2009.
But please don't ask me to post samples of rules sub-sections, or to
tell you exactly how the combat mechanisms work, or whether it does
this or that. Please just bear with me here, because many details of
the publication of this game are still unresolved, and that could
bear upon intellectual property rights, use of trademarks and
copyrighted material, and so on.
This much I can tell you with certainty: the basing will NOT be
compatible with Grande Armee. (i.e., no single-based units on large
squares.) Sorry. I just couldn't do it, within the context of this
more scale-flexible system. I know this might irritate, but please
bear in mind: You bought and based those figures to play Grande
Armée, years before you or I had any idea there would be another
game. And you can *still* use those figures to play Grande Armée, as
you intended all along.
The crucial thing was to get a basing system that could work across a
dozen wars, and at any potential game-scale.
OKAY, SO WHAT IS THE BASING, THEN?
The basing is relatively flexible, to accommodate pretty much any of
the existing norms for horse-and-musket games. As long as you and
your opponent have something basically rectangular, that will work.
For instance, if you took two "Napoleon's Battles" or "Fire & Fury"
infantry bases and stuck them side-by-side, you'd then have one
rectangular infantry base, roughly 1.5" X 1". That would be
fine. Or if you took two "Empire" or "Shako" infantry bases and
stuck them back-to-front, then you'd have a similarly-shaped
rectangle. It could even work with a small square base, although
that might make some formations look odd.
However you want to do it, as long as your Infantry, Cavalry, and
Artillery bases all have roughly the same frontage. Given the
existing bases people have for many games, I suspect that a rectangle
with a roughly 3:2 width-to-depth ratio will become standard.
The number of figures, or ranks, on a base, is immaterial. The
ultimate base-size you choose is similarly unimportant, since
everything is measured in base-widths, like Might & Reason.
WHICH MODULE IS COMING FIRST?
The first module for this new game series will be the "petite-
tactical" Napoleonic game, in which players command a division
(perhaps a dozen units on the table), and the game plays in real-
time, thus in about 2-3 hours. The armies will be collectible and
customizable, so for instance, you might have a French infantry
division from the Peninsular, with a brigade of N. Italians, and
perhaps part of a regiment of Dragoons attached, or in your sector of
the field at this moment in the battle. The idea is to collect and
paint your favorite regiments; to have a little customized "army" of
your choice, within the limits of the historical army-lists, and not
just "generic Austrians" or whatever.
For instance, one of my "armies" for this game is an Austrian Avant-
Garde division from the early 1809 campaign.
In this game you play a "mission" of some sort, such as "Storm the
Granary of Essling!" or: "Clear the French out of Plancenoit!"
or: "Your Rear-Guard must hold this town and its bridge until
nightfall!" It's designed to fit on a smallish table and resolve in
a typical weekday "gaming club night." Or... if you have a larger
group and more table space and time, then you can use this game to
fight any of the smaller battles of the Napoleonic Wars, like Quatre
Bras, or Saalfeld, or many of the famous Peninsular battles like
Albuera or Fuentes, or Vimiero, etc.
The second module - most likely - will appear the next year, and that
is the grand-tactical Napoleonic game. This one focuses on historical
battles and campaigns, rather than collecting a favorite little
"army." There are also ACW and AWI modules planned, and if the game
system catches on and builds a following, I'm sure players will
develop their own.
WHAT'S THE OVERALL LEVEL OF DETAIL AND COMPLEXITY?
This is a very different type of game system from GA and M&R. Those
two games sacrificed a lot of tactical detail, in order to indulge in
a lot of command & control detail. GA & M&R are basically games
about managing one's army at the higher level. This new system is
the opposite; there is very little Command, in order to focus on
tactics and the management of individual units. But overall, I'd
say it's less complex than M&R, and significantly less complex than G.A.
Bear in mind also that the approach of the game varies with each
module; that's part of the design intent. So, if you're playing a
grand-tactical module, then you're not resolving shooting for each
individual battalion, obviously, and not worrying about their
formations, and there is more attention to army and corps command.
Anyway, there are still a lot of things left to do before this sees
the light of day. The rules themselves are the easy part, relatively
speaking. The production is always... well, a production! I ask
everybody's patience for the time being, and thank you in advance for
your interest.
best,
Sam
