Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

I have sent off three of the updates to Rich H. today. EC, WC and CEF all are finished. Included in WC is my mod I worked on with Warren and Philippe. I am sure that many of you will appreciate that the corrected artwork images are now included in the product instead of you having to find them on Steve's SDC website.

Up for tomorrow will be Marengo Campaign and Republican Bayonets on the Rhine, both of which will need some PDT file updates to the weapons values to bring them up to standard for the rest of the games I worked on.

Next week I will endeavor to complete the rest of the 5 games: AC, JC, LC, BC, 1814. I need to do some work on Austerlitz and get it off to the review team. JC is just about done .... the 1813-14 games need just a little bit of work and they are done too.

So you should be seeing a lot of Nap updates rolled out in the next three weeks ...

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

That's great news!

I sent along Leipzig, 1814, Bautzen and Jena to Rich today. I will work on RBR, Marengo and Austerlitz next week to finish up the updates.

In some cases I had to cut back on the things I wanted to include in the updates. The main thing is to get the new Main Program updates out along with corrections to the files that customers had brought to our attention or that which we noted ourselves.

The movement rates still may have some differences and in at least one case I was not able to provide a Terrain Effects Chart. The latter was a "Bonus" item anyway.

So just three more to go and I may end up finishing up a couple of them over the weekend. Here I Boise I stay home on the weekends to avoid the crowds on the Greenbelt. I will probably take tomorrow off from all game design work ...

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Bill,

Thank you for all your work on the updates!

Stay safe and wear a mask when you go out.

Regards,

Paco

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Maréchal M. Francisco Palomo
Prince d'Essling et Duc d'Abrantes
Commandant en Chef du 1er Corps d'Armée

Hey Paco - I like the mask for bike riding .... helps keep the crap from the trees and the bugs out of my mouth! ROFL

Unfortunately I am one of the few that wear a mask while on the Greenbelt. We just had a spike here in Idaho ..... we were holding steady at 88 deaths but now we are over 110. You gotta wonder about this virus..... does it ever die out in the host ....?

Yes, wearing a mask since I got my box of 50 back in late May. I don't go out much ... the park across the street is a nice area to go to for guitar playing and just relaxing. Big sports complex of six ball diamonds, pickle-ball courts and so on.

Unlike most of you, this COVID stay at home thing has not affected me as much. I pretty much stay home a lot anyway ....

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Things I like would like to see in every game that I worked on:

1. All of the Bonus items (PDFs, etc) that was in the Eylau game. So the Bautzen game has the OB Compendium but so far 1814 and Leipzig do not. Rich has said I can do another update for the games so I will add that in for those eventually.

2. Movement Point costs being as close to the same as possible. There are a few exceptions with Marengo being one of them with the orchards acting as vineyards for LOS and I think MP costs. Note: For WC and EC the older About Face and Facing Costs are used for the update. The reason is that the higher MP allowance means that a "2" value for the about face makes more sense.

3. Weapons values/ranges being set based on the spreadsheet I created and which a group of CEF playtesters looked over with me. This is pretty much happening in these updates. When I feel that I won't have time to do it without entering in errors I am going to have to let it go until I can find the time.

Things that won't get into the updates:

RBR - the entire Noord-Holland OB changes with subsequent updates to the scenarios. Just dont have the time. I will get to this in a future update.

1814 - Battle of Ligny using the 1815 Campaign OB that Warren helped me complete. Eventually that will happen.

Jena - The Russian gun sections will have to remain as is. They play a small part in the game anyway. I also would have liked to have corrected the composition of the Prussian Advance Guard under Prince Louis but again, I just dont have time to make all of the changes and then update the scenarios that are impacted.

Leipzig, Bautzen, 1814 - Russian gun sections will have to remain as is. Those big 8 gun sections can be broken down into two 4 gun sections. Sorry about not having the Medium and Light 12lb and 6lb sections. The Licornes are different so at least that much is covered.

Things that WILL get into the next updates I work on:

Austerlitz - the Russian gun sections will be changed throughout the game. One thing I caught was that Russian Advanced Guard on the right flank has FOUR 5 gun sections in one of its formations. I am going to split those up into FIVE 4 gun sections .... Its not a lot of work and its just wrong to have them in 5 gun sections. All I have to do is reduce the strength to 4 guns for the ones in the OB and add in one gun section - then add in that one unit in the scenarios.

TBH ... I feel bad that the Russian gun sections were not correct from the start ... but I am not going to lose a lot of sleep over that ... there was a lot bigger fish to fry for the series. Some things I had hoped to accomplish never got done with the Main Program such as new terrain types (dunes, vineyards, etc). But in the end we did a ton of work on these games and you just cannot find a better series on the Napoleonic Wars.

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Finished with the first update for RBR tonight. Sure glad that I have Ultra Edit at my disposal!

Every PDT file had to be updated. The weapons were standardized.

I also went back over the games that did not have standard stacking and extended line values. Included EC, WC, JC, AC and MC.

I have Marengo and Austerlitz left to do. Marengo should be fairly straightforward which uses a smaller set of the same weapons as RBR. I will work on Marengo tomorrow and then Austerlitz on Monday and hopefully be done by Tuesday.

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Marengo's update is done except for one file which I will have off to Rich by Thursday at the latest. I finally broke down and bought a PDF editor. The online ones were NOT free! ROFL .... Those crafty internet elves and their wording

This leaves Austerlitz and I will work on that one tomorrow. With any luck I will have that one finished by Thursday (or sooner) as well. Its more involved in that I still have to go in and update the OB name in some of the .scn files and update the Russian gun sections on the map or in the reinforcement queue. Tons of fun that one!

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Ok .. a summary account for the Napoleonic update work for the last few days follows:

I finished up with the PDT file work for all of the games and started integrating the files into the update. Along the way I found other minor issues that I had never noticed. For instance: today I noticed that the Mincio River on the Mincio map for 1814 started out of Lake Garda flowing to the SOUTH and then it rose in elevation ... then it fell again. I guess we would consider that a tsunami effect caused by a sharp earthquake! So I reduced the level of water on several maps as well to include the big Quadrilateral map in Marengo from which the Mincio map originates. The big Vienna map had issues with elevation on the Danube as well as the Piave map.

So by yesterday I had updates from Rich for Jena, 1814, Wagram, Eckmuhl and Bautzen. All of the updates were reviewed and changes made and Rich sent me corrected updates. So those games are done. I still have to finish up the Austerlitz update and that finishes my part in the work.

Rich said it would be several days before I get the Leipzig, Eylau, RBR and Marengo updates to review. In the meantime, I will finish up with Austerlitz.

So if all goes well.. you could see the first round of updates for FIVE of the games I worked on coming out VERY soon.

On the painted maps: those are being done for Eckmuhl and Leipzig of the titles I helped produce. The large Bavaria map for Eckmuhl is too big of a file for us to have a painted map. Our systems could not load it. The smaller maps like Teugn-Hausen and Abensberg have a painted map image. I am not sure about Leipzig as I have not seen those maps yet. Frank Mullins is still working on them.

Here is a sneak peek of one of the scenarios which use a painted map from Eckmuhl:

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

So here is where we are at:

I just finished up with the Austerlitz update (again). Paco, Christian Hecht and Andrew Moss will look over the files (cursory look) and get back to me by Tuesday or Wednesday morning at the latest with any comments.

I got updates from Rich for Marengo, CEF and RBR. I looked those over and they all look good.

Other than Austerlitz and Leipzig the updates for the games I worked on are ready to be rolled out!

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

A question come up yesterday about the number of skirmishers that can detach from a Light Infantry unit and then we had a round table discussion today among the Campaign Austerlitz Review Team on the topic.

Credit Christian Hecht with noting that Austerlitz PDT files have "9" as the value for number of skirmishers that can detach from a unit. (normally we detach X-1 where X is the value of the skirmish fraction)

The other games in "The Glory Years Trilogy" use 6 as the value so that is what we are going with for Austerlitz. Reasons include:

1. Though the French had 9 companies the rest of the Allies fielded four companies or some lower number than 9. In the past the Russian Jagers have had 9 small skirmisher units detach meaning that they have to stack together to get a similar fire loss ratio vs. the French. I believe the Russian Jager battalions only had FOUR companies. So 9 was a bit much.

2. All of the large skirmish companies are still under the strength required for the Main Program to consider them as Formed Infantry and thus take more casualties.

Bottom line: dont stack them together. Just put one skirmisher in a hex.

This is a similar problem that used to happen in the old Battleground Waterloo where the British Household Guard, all 250 troopers, would breakdown into six squadron sized units. Basically lower than 50 men per squadron. The Squadron level OBs solved this problem. We cannot do that for skirmishers so SIX seems to work best ...

Nice job, Christian, on noting this. This is why a team is necessary to review these updates ....

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Kudos to Paco, Christian and Andrew for helping out. I finished up with the Campaign Austerlitz update today and sent the files to Rich Hamilton for him to package in with the rest of the files for the full update.

Christian saw a lot of issues with the units such as the names, morale, image number. I spent a lot of last night and all of this morning and part of the afternoon working on the game. In all about 11 hours of solid work.

Some of the changes:

1. The French engineers now have the correct morale values and artwork numbering. They were a real mess. Genies/Sappers and Marins have 5 morale. Miners, Ouvriers and Pontoneers have 4 morale. The Gd Marins have 7 morale.

2. The Danube_Campaign OB files, which was never used in the game, had all of the names for many of the Austrian and Bavarian units changed to use the correct names as per the rest of the OBs.

3. The French dragoons now may dismount. I also made sure that the correct dragoon images were used so that when they dismount the correct 3D image shows up. Unfortunately I cannot do the same for the Austrians, Prussians, Russians and British dragoons. CEF remains the only game I have put out that has all of the dragoons at the beginning of the infantry and cavalry 3D image files. Not much I can do about the old games. It would take a lot of work to switch the numbering around plus move the images around on the 3D images. Maybe later on if I get the time I will do that. (a lot of this kind of work anymore is mentally draining for me ....)

4. The French infantry were using a wide variety of images. This has been condensed to the following arrangement:

Ligne infantry 1 & 3 bns use one of the Ligne infantry images. The other Ligne infantry image is used by the 2 & 4 bns. The 57th Ligne uses the Line Voltiguer (2nd bn) and Line Grenadier (1st bn) images. Oudinot's Greandiers all use the Grenadier image with the bearskin hat (image #10). Legere was largely unchanged unless I saw a battalion was using an incorrect image.

5. The supply wagons and ORGs in some of the OBs now have a formation affiliation. Gone is "Supply Wagon" and in its place is something like: Wagon/IIIC or Wagon/2D/VC

There are still OBs that lack this and in the future, if I have time, I will correct those.

6. Big change - I noticed that the morale values in the large Ulm Campaign OB was one level higher. I reduced those to match those in the rest of the OBs.

There are OBs that use the term "NEW" at the end of the file name. For instance: Austerlitz.oob now has a Austerlitz_NEW.oob file. The new file has all of the newer ORG setup for the Russian artillery. The older OB does have the newer Russian format as long as the ORG structure wasnt changed.

For existing games in progress that use the older OBs there were new sections for the Russian Adv. Gd and the Russian Imp. Gd. which will not show up in your current game. If the OB could still be used for the .scn files (meaning I didnt have to radically change the content of the gun sections) then when you play the scenario again the newer gun sections will be present.

Supply wagons were missing in some scenarios. I added those in. I probably missed some but hey, its over 11 years since the game came out ... Doing this work out of devotion to the hobby/series. I could spend two months on this game and still miss something.

Maps - yes, they do need more terrain features. I added in some farmland to a couple of the smaller maps for the early battles. Just dont have to saturate the maps with my newer format that you get in Marengo and RBR. CEF - Poland does not have a lot of farmland .. it was mainly grazing land so that is why its not like Marengo or RBR.

Anyway, lots got added in. The update is over to Rich. I am thinking that it should be out by Monday at the latest. Thanks to all the contributed!

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Review of the final updates for Leipzig and Austerlitz is in progress. Got the links from Rich H. on Saturday morning and we will look over the files until Tuesday.

Sorry for the delay but Rich H. has been super busy.

I got with Rich today on releasing that updates for CEF, Marengo and RBR. They should be out soon as well.

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Sent off a group of files of corrections to the Campaign Austerlitz OBs to Rich today. Kudos to Christian Hecht for finding a lot of errors which then prompted me to go hunting and checking for other issues. I found a lot more but feel pretty confident that we caught the vast majority of them.

One thing I did: make sure that the scenarios opened in the scenario editor. So far no errors opening scenarios.

Rich should get back to me with an amended update link and that will be it. Leipzig is also done.

This should conclude the update process. Thanks to all that helped out with comments to Rich or myself about the game files over the last 4-6 years since the last updates came out. A total group effort for sure.

And yes, I am glad to get his over with. I could use a five year vacation!

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)