Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Mssrs.,

Allow me to give you a sneak peek at some of the key changes introduced with the Jena Campaign game:

* Reduced Stacking and 10 minute Turns
Stacking is reduced to a max of 1500 inf and/or 500 cav and the time scale is reduced to 10 minute turns. The net effect is that, on the one hand, players will have a harder time creating killer stacks that can punch through any line. On the other, even cavalry can no longer race around a flank to encircle and ZOC kill an entire line.

* Re-ordering in covered terrain
Infantry in column and skirmishers can now recover from disorder while in covered terrain; e.g., woods. It will not be as quick as when they are in clear terrain and they had better be within the command radius of their Bg CO, but it is now possible to sustain an advance through woods and urban areas.

* Increased Cav Multiplier
Given the reduced stacking, the charge multiplier for cavalry was increased to 5x so that cavalry can remain a potent force on the battlefield. Coupled with the fact that the basic cav unit is now the squadron, rather than the regiment, this also brings the game closer to the cavalry tactics of the period which emphasized the use of squadrons rather than entire rgts.

* Optional "No ZOC Kill"
I am not familiar with this change because it was introduced after the beta testing was completed, but it is my understanding that players will now have the option to activate a "No ZOC kill" rule. As I understand it, when this option is activated a unit whose retreat paths are blocked will simply lose additional casualties but will NOT be eliminated.

* Across the Board reduction in Unit Quality/Morale
One of the consistent problems with the historical accuracy of the series has been that units which have been bled white with 50-75% casualties, continue to rally and return to fight to the bitter end. As a step towards addressing this issue, unit quality ratings have been slashed across the board. With these overall lower ratings, once units become fatigued they will be <b>extremely</b> fragile. Players can continue to re-commit them, but they will do so at the peril of having them rout away at the drop of a hat. Instead, players should withdraw highly fatigued units to a quiet sector where they can rest and recover from fatigue. Given the slower pace of playing at 10 min/turn, the rotation of units to rest is a viable tactic in any of the large 30+ scenarios.

Regards,

Paco

<i>Maréchal</i> M. Francisco Palomo
<i>Prince d'Essling, Grande Duc d'Abrantes et
Comte de Marseille
Commandant - Division de Cavalerie de la Vieille Garde </i>

Excellent!!
I don’t play HPS, but these changes made me to reconsider this.
I might need to rearrange my budget now.

Any changes to artillery firepower?? One of the things I don’t like about HPS is powerless artillery – it is a suicide to place batteries within 2-3 hexes of the enemy and they do not do much on bigger range. Horse and light artillery become actually obsolete in this environment


Captain Alexey Tartyshev
Moscow Grenadiers Regiment
2nd Grenadier Division
8th Infantry Corps
2nd Army of the West (NWC)

Let me make one correction to what Paco said ... stacking is 1600 men. Cav ratio is 1/3 rather than 1/2. The charge modifier gives them more punch per troops but they are still brittle as ever. Left in front of guns they will dissappear ... You can get 533 cavalry in one hex.

Cavalry is in squadrons. Each squadron can breakdown to two platoons (which greatly aids you in getting the most troopers in a hex). This allows you to put out a cavalry skirmisher line (hoping to get cavarly to be able to go into skirmisher mode some day) for those big battles. Lots of piquets on the map as a result.

The Prussian/Saxon cavalry are killer stuff in this game. No longer do the French hold court in this dept. They have just as many if not more cavalry per scenario alot of times. And its good stuff. Usually better morale than the French.

Gun stacking is down a bit. 12 guns max I believe or 10.

The new rule is called No Melee Eliminations and its being discussed over on Rich Hamilton's forum. We really like the new rule and Marco Rietveld and I saw it in action in our Aspern-Essling test game. My stack of Frenchies didnt get wiped out and I rescued them in the next turn. Small units DO get wiped out so there will not be screams about a 50 man bn. holding up a 1000 man stack.

Usual gunfire values. Lots of new gun types.

The Notes.hlp file is CHOCK FULL of good stuff. Also be sure to look over the special scenario I put together that has the entire OB laid out ... press the spacebar and you get to see the names of the formations.

The main campaign file is a defensive oriented retreat for the Prussians to join up with the Russians near the Oder. It is WHAT IF so dont try and look for similarities to historical Russian march rates. We all know that they couldnt reach the Oder until late November probably at best. In this campaign they get to enter the theater of action near Bautzen.

Besides the huge Jena operational area map you get maps of the area from Halle to the Oder and from south of Berlin to just north of Dresden. I put together a TON of maps ranging from 120 x 80 to over 250 x 200 hexes. You could put your own campaign file together using these maps if you like.

Yes, I purposely left out alot of the 1813 maps because we hope to do that title in the next couple of years. Thus I didnt want to cut in on that effort but my maps are open to be used for that design so as to utilize our full arsenal of topographical maps.

For you Design it yourself guys ... in the Notes.hlp file is a set of tables showing the entire OB by division and corps with the amount of VPs for each with a breakdown by infantry, cavalry and guns based on the VP schedule of points for each. Thus as the gamer you can know right away how many points a formation is worth right away but if you are going to design a scenario you can just refer to the table and know right away how much Davout's 3rd division (Gudin) is worth which is 1084 points.

I really thought that this would be of great help to you that like to doodle with the scenario editor as well as for you that want to know how much an enemy formation is worth. I used the table extensively when putting the scenarios together and this kind of table (and Notes.hlp file) will become a standard feature in all of my games.

Other "tabs" in the Notes.hlp file are:

Design notes (standard in all of our games of course)

Turn track so you can know when Turn #x will be on the clock

Complete list of scenarios to include filename and turn length and name of scenario. Good for club admin folks to use for auto-new game-forms.

Weapons Chart ... tired of looking in the Parameter Data Table view for all of the weapons info? This table simplifies the info so you an see how effective a Russian 12lb gun is at 5 hexes.

And of course the VP tables for the French, Prussian/Saxons and Russians.

Anyway ... hope you guys enjoy.

Bill Peters
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

Excellent work, Bill. At some point and time are the existing games going to be patched to reflect these improvements as well? I realize you designers are busy so no rush. Just curious.

Hauptmann Dale Lastowicka
Lobkowitz Jager Bn
2nd Division
III Armee Korps
Austrian Army

As far as the Notes.hlp file ... this is my own work. As far as the game engine goes Rich Hamilton is working on doing some standardizing of terrain costs and so on in the PDT File.

Basically the GAME ENGINE enhancements WILL be in a set of updates very soon. Rich and I and folk are working out the details. The Bridge Strength rule for instance needs particular attention to detail as otherwise you can end up with scenarios where units cant cross bridges if the scenarios have the strength as less than 50 AND there are no pioneers in the scenario.

Its a project I am working on at present.

Bill Peters
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

Sounds very good.[:D] A great improvement for the HPS games.

<font color="gold">Feldmarshall
Stefan Ritter von Reuter
Großfürst von Wahlstadt
CoA Armee des Niederrhein</font id="gold">