Tag Archives: Age of Gunpowder
A Look Back at System 7 Napoleonics & Dragon Magazine
A stroll down memory lane to the days when wargaming and RPGs more comfortably co-existed ~
Jim Owczarski, 13 May 2017
I would have thought that after all these years the editors around this joint would have taken a liking to me. I mean, come on, I’ve written reviews, previews, interviews, and even a travel journal or two, and have yet to get them sued for libel. This is no small matter in our litigious day and age.
So why, then, does one of them torment me with this:
The Tuesday Interview – Didier Rouy, Part Deux
Part 2 of 2, as Cyrano starts asking more Napoleonic questions ~
Jim Owczarski, 18 April 2017
When we last visited with Dr. Didier Rouy, he was discussing his Flight of the Eagle operational-level Napoleonic Kriegsspiel. In this second half of the interview, he discusses crazy things wargamers can attempt in the RPG-like Kriegsspiel space; how bear hats and humming can scare grown men; how a tactical, Napoleonic wargame could have been influenced by Magic: The Gathering (shudder); and what might be next on his design table.
continuing the discussion from last week
c. You acknowledge the link between the Kriegsspiel-type games like Flight and role-playing games, something about which I tend to obsess. One of the immense strengths of RPGs is the freedom to create it allows to both the game runner and the player. What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen a Flight player try or argue he should be able to do in a game?
Oh Boy, that can be a long response ☺
The Tuesday Interview – Didier Rouy
Part 1 of 2, as Cyrano starts asking more Napoleonic questions ~
Jim Owczarski, 11 April 2017
There aren’t too terribly many people who can claim to have designed games about warfare while at the same time being able to consult on a wound from a musket ball. Dr. Didier Rouy holds his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Paris – Diderot and his M.D. from the same institution, earning the former in 1992 and the latter in 1991. In 1989, though, he published the first of what would eventually be over a dozen different Napoleonic wargames. His Vive L’Empereur system has since produced eight volumes. Even dearer to my own heart, he is the creator of the three-volume Vol de L’Aigle, an operational Napoleonic Kriegsspiel, as well as Le Combat de L’Aigle, a tactical system that can be used to work out battles in the operational game.
Dr. Rouy took time recently to answer questions about how he got started, how the whole medicine thing figured into his wargaming, and what is his deal with oblong unit counters. His answers were so thoughtful — and so long — that this particular interview comes in two parts!
The Tuesday Interview – Bloody Monday with Ventonuovo
Cyrano pulls up his Napoleonic britches for a chat about Borodino ~
Jim Owczarski, 4 April 2017
Vento Nuovo made no small statement when it blew into wargaming back in 2012 with Blocks in the East. A big, colorful map; hundreds of wooden blocks and other pieces; and an area-movement system that felt just friendly enough while at the same time satisfying wanna-be von Brauchitsch’s everywhere; marked it as a strong new-comer. Now seven games on, the Blocks in… system covers the whole of the ETO, it’s released Gortex game maps big enough to sleep under, and it even found time to release a game about the greatest battle of all time, Waterloo 200. (Author’s Note: Favorably reviewed here)
For his second run into the 19th Century, designer Emanuele Santandrea has chosen to have a go at Borodino, the climactic struggle between Napoleon and the Emperor of Russia that in many ways ended the First Empire. The game, Bloody Monday, Napoleon at the Gates of Moscow, has already hit its funding goal, so it was particularly nice of him to answer a few questions about his design philosophy, why Borodino, and the difference between Goretex and Magnatex.
The KickStarter, by the by, is here: Bloody Monday, Napoleon at the Gates of Moscow
Vento Nuovo has had quite a few recent successes on KickStarter and has become well known, certainly in wargame circles. Who, though, is on the team behind Bloody Monday?
Well, the list is so long I’m sure I will forget somebody. I can name Luca Preda, Jim O’Neill, Flip Labarque, Paul Comben, and Kevin Duke. But that’s just a part.
Commands & Colors: Napoleonics – EPIC!
Jim descends further into his Napoleonic madness with massive-scale gaming ~
Jim Owczarski, 18 March 2017
I have been waiting for this one for a long time.
It’s almost unreal to me that Battle Cry, the first of Richard Borg’s “Commands and Colors” series, was released in 2000. I like the American Civil War well enough, but, from the beginning, I hoped that the simple, elegant system evident in the game could be elaborated into the best of all periods, Napoleonics.
In the years since, I’ve bought and happily played Memoir ’44 (2004), Commands and Colors: Ancients (2006), Battlelore (also 2006), not to mention the remarkable array of expansions, special editions, and the like for all these systems. I gave Zvezda’s Samurai Battles a miss if only because it’s the only era covered that doesn’t appeal to me.
True Napoleonic wargamers are obsessed with scope, spectacle, and sweep.
And then it came out. In 2010, GMT Games gave the waiting world Commands and Colors: Napoleonics. Sure, it was wooden blocks not lovely figures. Yes, it was the British, Spanish, and Portuguese versus the French. And, yes, for reasons known only to the grim gods of game production, the Prussians were excluded from the included Waterloo scenario. But it was Napoleonics and that, at first, was enough.
This was no longer the simplified rule set found in Battle Cry. There was the forming of square; different grades of horse, foot, and guns; and even elegant rules to differentiate leaders and national troop characteristics. In the latter case, French troops, and their famous columns, fight better in melee, while the British lines do real damage with ranged fire, &c.
After much fun was had, though, it was ultimately not enough. True Napoleonic wargamers are obsessed with scope, spectacle, and sweep. It is this that leads us to do really, really dumb things like this: Historicon 2010 Part V Wagram (Shako II) and Outro
For the record this is my shaky-cam — I’ve become better — but this game had run 14 hours before I had to leave with it far from finished.
