Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Put this under the Strategic Games section by accident, reposting here

OK, I at this point own Campaign Waterloo, Leipzig, Wagram, and the two Peninsular War titles. I can't pass up a sale, so my question to you all is which title should I buy now between

Campaign 1814
Bautzen
Eylau-Friedland
Republican Bayonets
Eckmuhl

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Major Kirk Allton, 1st Baron of Suffolk
73rd Regiment of Foot
5th Brigade, 3rd Division
II (Anglo-German) Corps

No theater or era that you favor?
If that is so it's really hard to say.
1814 - The end of Napoleon but with him delivering a performance that is similar great has his campaigns in Italy.
Bautzen - Prelude to Leipzig with some interesting battles even if the campaign of early 1813 is short.
Eylau-Friedland - Also the end of an era, the golden times of the Grand Armee come to an end by 3 years of war and the devastations to it by the battle of Eylau, in the summer of 1897 not much is left of the Grand Armee that camped on the channel.
Republican Bayonets - Well the Revolutionary era with the focus on Germany & Benelux. Smaller armies & battles but without a doubt interesting.
Eckmuhl - Prelude to Wagram, here I could say that it's maybe the last you should consider as it still has the 15min turns.

As you already have Leipzig I would likely go for Bautzen.

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Hey Kirk,

Republican Bayonets is a fun departure from the others. Has different style armies than the others. Bautzen is a good pick too, as Christian said.

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Generalfeldmarschall Scott Kronprinz "Vorwärts" Ludwig von Preußen
Kommandeur des Königlich-Preußischen Armee-Korps
Chief of Staff (CoS) of the Allied Coalition
Allied Coalition Webmaster & Club Website Support

I own Bautzen and RBR and find them both fun. RBR was my first purchase and I rather like its smaller accessible battles. Its also the only game where Napoleon isnt in command, so, interesting as well.

Worth mentioning though, Marengo gets high praise in certain circles here.

Good luck in your choice, guess you really cant go wrong.

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Mayor Joshua Jansen
Chief of Staff
Imperial Russian Corps

So... I was a playtester on 1814, RBR, and Eylau.

All three have a lot of scenarios. RBR has tons of balanced scenarios and all of the major armies of the period (history is not often balanced so this is not a knock on other games). RBR has so, so many battles.

I love Bautzen and it is very challenging as the Allies because we are outnumbered...

1814 is very different and has a lot of small and medium battles that are easy to digest.

Eylau has a lot of battles too. Far more than I realized until I tested this. If you like playing as the Russians this is a good title to have.

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Lots of support for RBR, I'd throw my lot in there as well.

For me I still don't have Marengo. Is it as good as people say? I mean, are there even any redcoats to be seen

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Field Marshal Sir Michael Davies, 1st Duke of Glamorgan K.T.
23rd Regiment of Light Dragoons
3rd British Cavalry Brigade
Cavalry Corps

Dum vivimus vivamus

Indeed, hard to have a proper battle with no gentlemen present!

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Major Kirk Allton, 1st Baron of Suffolk
73rd Regiment of Foot
5th Brigade, 3rd Division
II (Anglo-German) Corps

Well said Ensign, that's the spirit!

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Field Marshal Sir Michael Davies, 1st Duke of Glamorgan K.T.
23rd Regiment of Light Dragoons
3rd British Cavalry Brigade
Cavalry Corps

Dum vivimus vivamus

Thank you gentlemen for all the responses!

I decided on RBR, between this thread and comments from opponents being played, I was surprised how many recommendations were for that game!

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Major Kirk Allton, 1st Baron of Suffolk
73rd Regiment of Foot
5th Brigade, 3rd Division
II (Anglo-German) Corps

Good choice!

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Generalfeldmarschall Scott Kronprinz "Vorwärts" Ludwig von Preußen
Kommandeur des Königlich-Preußischen Armee-Korps
Chief of Staff (CoS) of the Allied Coalition
Allied Coalition Webmaster & Club Website Support

Marengo and RBR were my fav. titles to design. With RBR there are so many different units and armies. You have Hanoverians ... early Dutch (mercenary) .... French provincial units ... Royalist units under Austrian and British service ...

It was one of the hardest to research because of the dearth of good manpower numbers. The setup of the armies was often done by reading many sources .. far more than our typical game.

Glad you bought it and next up I would go for Campaign Marengo to complete the "French Revolutionary Wars." I am currently playing a game of The Battle of Marengo and it remains my fav. battle.

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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)

Kirk,
What RBR scenarios are you playing?

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I apologize for my late response to this, I just now saw it.

I played some small battles solitaire for a bit.

Over the past couple of months, I have been involved in a campaign covering 1796 with Captain Ferry of the French 27th Light Regiment. He is an excellent adversary. We fought Altenkirchen and have now moved onto Ettlingen. I really like this title, the uniforms are really interesting and the makeup of the armies (especially all the Austrian cavalry) are really unique, not to mention all the relatively unknown battles covered in it.

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Major Kirk Allton, 1st Baron of Suffolk
73rd Regiment of Foot
5th Brigade, 3rd Division
II (Anglo-German) Corps

RBR was one of my favorite titles to work on. It was hard to find any really good info on the strengths of the units. I would say that of all of the games I worked on this one is still a "work-in-progress." After getting Geert Uythoven's book on the 1799 Dutch Campaign, I hope to be able to update that OB and scenarios. I just recently played the Battle of Bergen and noted that the French arrive in force at Bergen before the Russians do. I probably would need to adjust the release times.

The artwork was immense. Only Leipzig, Bautzen and 1814 (of the titles I worked on) have more images. Such a wide variety of types too. Big time kudos to Joe Amoral and Mark Adams for that game. By then we had worked on a lot of games together. I hunted down the images, fed them to Mark and he took care of the rest. I like that we have all of the different hussar regiment uniforms in that game. We really pulled out all of the stops for RBR.

Much credit goes to my good friend, Warren Bajan, for the game. When you play the Battle of Wurzburg please remember Warren. He was a commander of a tank platoon (first M551 Sheridans and then M60s) at the nearby US Army base during the early 80s. Warren pushed for Wurzburg to be included in the Marengo game along with Hohenlinden and Zurich and he helped me with the OB. It was my interest in seeing more of those battles see the light of day that caused us to split off the battles from Marengo and have them part of their very own title.

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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)