Side Project

     As many of you may or may not know, my passion resides with world war 2, specifically Europe and even more specifically the eastern front and trust me, i game this the most.  But there is something about a good old fashioned Napoleonic era game that just grabs hold and refuses to let go.  Within this particular blog, i'll be waxing on the latter in total.
     What is it about a game that causes me to admire its mechanical beauty and then compel me to dismantle it, then put it back together in my own way?  In the past I've pointed at the dormant designer within me, that sleeping giant that occasionally yawns loudly enough to demand attention.  Well, he's been yawning quite a lot these days.
     The latest side project is turning into an ongoing lingering table surfer of the breed that refuses to move on, content to lay about and showing no signs of leaving any time soon.  Luckily that's just fine with me.
     The situation:
What we have here is a hybrid, mutated version of a game that vaguely resembles its former self, grafted onto another game which has suffered a similar fate.  Battles of Napoleon has provided me with many hours of entertaining play, but perhaps just as entertaining was my endeavor to reverse engineer it.  Point of fact, this fate has befallen many a game, but unlike previous forays and attempts, this time is different.  There seems to be some sort of coagulation going on.  That is to say, that which tends to be in motion, to an often chaotic extent has begun to slow to a near, accessible, analyzable pause.
     Let me back up.  The game Battles of Napoleon (hereafter denoted as B.O.N) is basically a set of Napoleonic miniatures rules, tidied up and tightened up for mass consumption.  That sounds bad right?  Not at all.  Of all the Nappy mini rules out there, and there are more than a lot, to find the correct/proper balance within a single rules set can be quite daunting.  Not that i've played them all, but it reminds me of Goldie lox and the three bears.  This game has too many dice throws, this game too much chrome, this game not enough and on and on.  B.O.N. is the porridge that is just right.  Included within the game is a chart for morale checks, a chart for melee combat, a chart for fire combat, plastic figures, cards (used for resolving combat and adding tactical flavor), and a fair amount of command and control.  One of the more interesting game mechanics includes unit groups which are color coded and correspond to a particular unit group leader.  When orders are assigned, each order has a numerical value which determines the sequence of unit activation, a process that may include either side.  This effectively and simply negates the you go I go system.  
     Then you have a game called Napoleon's Triumph.  A game the design of which should have a corresponding holiday.  From its slim rectangular blocks to its map which consists of spacious areas as opposed to hexes (B.O.N.)   This game is the grail of Napoleonic board games.  The position of the blocks within a particular area is crucial to game function and works brilliantly.  So after a few plays, I "strip" this too.
      So the first thing I do is to rid myself of the cards.  Not that it didn't work.  It worked rather well providing an inability to predict any particular combat result.  But my overall approach here was that of streamlining to such an extent that austerity itself might nearly become a function of the game.  In its place, I systematize the Combat results into a table and incorporate 2d6 as opposed to the 1d10 that drove B.O.N. thus allowing for special cases when rolling doubles.

Next I replace the figures with blocks from Commands and Colors Napoleonics, and though it has the right look, it doesn't have the right feel.  The next immediate candidate was the blocks from Napoleon's Triumph (N.T.)  Actually, what I had was a homemade version of these blocks.  With the blocks from N.T., each block has one particular strength, which aids in two player play.  But again, I lean towards what I know and solitaire play is it.  So rather than incorporating multiple blocks to represent the varying strengths of a single block, I simply depict the strengths on each side of the block (more minimalism).

I keep the game board from B.O.N. (which any board I create would be very similar too) not only for its aesthetic, but the hex sizes.  It is the hex sizes within which the pieces reveal their orders and completely does away with an orders chart.  Here I borrow a somewhat similar theme from N.T.  Pieces pushed toward the front of the hex=attack, pieces towards the rear of the hex=defend, and those in the middle=maneuver.  Reserve has more or less been axed (I never found myself willingly wanting to place a unit group in reserve) though a solution for this could be easily remedied.  Each piece has two sides of strength depiction: The top is what is in play.  So if a two strength unit loses one strength point, simply flip the block to depict the new strength.  Facing is not a problem as one has a couple of ways to deal with this including the use of a blank side to represent the front.   Units typically consist of two blocks but this is not always the case.  This merely serves as a kind of carry over from B.O.N. which aids in depicting line formation.  (As a result of casualties, if only one block is left, it is considered to be in column.)

     Within B.O.N. cards are also used to represent varying units as well as leaders and tactic bonuses.  The cards allow for varying stats when it comes to melee, fire, morale, etc.  Again, like the CRT, I have systematized these to a base number for infantry, cavalry, and artillery, as well as French and British.  As for the leaders, each side will have roughly five leaders which are represented by tiny blocks with roman numerals from one to five. The numbers of each represent the overall average of a number of numerical strengths with one being the worst and five representing the Commander in Chief.  But there is another reason for this,  chit pull!  Five corresponding chits for each side are placed in a cup and drawn during a turn.  Each leader may activate any one group (which is different from B.O.N which places restrictions on a leader's ability to activate any other group than his own) which he is adjacent to, limited to only one group activation per turn. 

The command "chain" now only extends one additional hex.  So if a leader is adjacent to a unit then any unit adjacent to that unit is also in command but that is where it ends.  There are no wildly, long snake like chains of command in this game.
       Of minor note is all the counters that come with B.O.N to represent various states.  This too was boiled down so that units which are: disordered, routed, in square etc. are easily recognized with a simple colored block.

     So in all, the design bug continues to bite.  I've been teething on others finished projects but I think its a necessary function of the design process.  After all, there is no such thing as originality.  Its all been done before, in every aspect of life, not just games. However, one thing we can still do is tailor something so that it reflects our own tastes, our own likes and in the end stands out as a reflection of ourselves.

Note: the custom CRT can be found on BGG under files in Battles of Napoleon: The Eagle and The Lion.

Remaining possibilities:  Upping the 1d10 to 2d6 for Morale checks.  This would allow special events to occur upon rolling box cars (something akin to berserk or blood lust)  or snake eyes (some as yet to be determined, adverse affect.)  As a result of using 2d6, the magic number for passing a morale check would be upped to 13 (after factoring in bonuses etc.) or greater.  Yet, for some reason, keeping the 1d10 for morale checks adds diversity to the dice (trivial I know, but appealing for some reason.)

Additionally, the tactical bonuses that occur through card accumulation, could be boiled down to a random events chard which is activated and rolled on when a particular chit is pulled.