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A
Near Run Thing
The
introduction that never was
by
Peter Hunt
A
Near Run Thing is very much a house set of rules, not intended for sale,
and open to any changes you see fit to make. They are based on the
assumption that the player knows a bit about the Napoleonic wars and a bit
about wargaming, so I don’t include the obvious bits about organising
figures etc. If they were being made for public consumption they would
be set out a bit differently, with a simple set up front and then advanced
rules at the back, and I would also put a lot more designer’s notes in,
explaining rationales for the way things are. As it is I’m assuming
that you can take in all the detail at one go and apart from a few
exceptions I have left out the history (or the interpretation of history)
behind the rule mechanisms. For the same reasons this introduction was
not included in the rules. I include it here on the Society website in
case any poor benighted soul wandering in cyberspace comes across them and
wonders what the demented thinking behind the rules is.
First
the history of the rules: The “First Edition” of A Near Run
Thing had a print run of 30 copies in the mid 1980s. It was my
first attempt to produce a set of realistic, but quick, rules to fight
medium sized Napoleonic battles. My aim was to be able to fight corps
sized actions in an evening. For their time I thought they were pretty
good, and pretty avant-garde. I
even had the nerve to charge for them! If you were well acquainted
with the rules you could get the results in the time allotted. But
there was the rub. A lot of the systems were not really approachable
and took time getting used to. They were not the sort of rules that
you could walk straight up to and play well. Andrzej sent a set to
some friends in England for the joy of blind play testing. Their
response was that the rules were “obtuse”. At the time I was a
little nonplussed that my genius was not self-evident. Looking back on
the rules now I am just happy that Andrzej has reasonably polite
chums. However the scales, movement and morale seemed right so no-one
got their money back!.
 So
the search for playability whilst retaining accuracy continued. Oliver
Silsby has the lifelong ambition of playing Borodino on a one to one figure
scale in an evening. His approach was to take the WRG Napoleonic rules
and strip them down to the bare essentials. The result was very
bloody, very quick and very “dice dependant”. Providing the battle
was big enough they were good fun because things mostly went according to
some kind of historical precedent. Whilst there were many occasions
that a daft result ensued from some melee or firefight, the bad dice would
eventually even out. Thus both sides tended to be affected in equal
measure so a game would not turn on one a-historical result. However
as soon as you tried to write out the historical problems the playability
went out of the window.
With
the advent of DBX Bruce Meyer immediately applied the pip system to
Napoleonics. It worked well for command and control but we could never
get the DBX combat system to handle Napoleonic firepower and melees
properly.
Oliver
came back into the fray having read Donald Featherstone’s Campaigning
in the Peninsula which brought in a combat system that seemed to
work. Ollie stripped those rules down again as was his wont. I
started to rebuild them using the pieces that worked from the other
sets. The result was A Near Run Thing “Second Edition,”
which had their debut at the Society in 1999. We played Castiglione in
an afternoon with eight guys who had never seen the rules before.
Napoleon got beat, Marmont was man of the match and went on to become
Emperor of the French but, apart from this, we had got an historically
acceptable result in four hours, the players had been up to speed with the
rules by the end of move two, everyone had had a good time and I was a happy
bear. After that a couple of years tweaking has resulted in the
revised edition you have before you.
The
design parameters of these rules are to be able to play a visually pleasing,
historically accurate wargame of a corps sized Napoleonic battle in an
evening. Formations must look right and the rules should benefit those
who use historical tactics and penalise those who don’t. Much is
often made of the “scissors, paper, rock” relationship of Napoleonic
cavalry, artillery and infantry to each other. This simple concept is
a truism but the real truth of Napoleonic tactics is much more complicated.
Therefore the problem for providing playable, but realistic rules is
deciding the balance between historical realism and playability. I
have attempted to do this by following Frank Chadwick’s methodology of
having a simple basic system, but bolting on enough “chrome” to deal
with the one-off situations. You learn about these situations by
playing the game and thinking about some event: “that result isn’t
right”, and by reading the history and thinking about some event: “would
the rules allow that to happen?” Then you tweak. Hence, the
more we play and the more we read the more we tweak. Well, for now,
the tweaking stops here!
The
figure scale is derived from the minimum size requirement of a unit to look
right in line, column and square. This to me provides the basic visual
requirement for a game to look “Napoleonic”. Make the scale bigger
– say like In the Grand Manner – and you are not going to get the
30-40 units you need for a corps on the table. Make the scale smaller
– say like Volley and Bayonet, the trial DBX Napoleonic
rules, or Napoleon’s Battles – and you are talking about using
brigade-sized units. OK, by doing this you can fight Waterloo in a
day, but in doing so the British never actually get to form those squares
tipped with steel and the Old Guard never actually gets to advance in
column. So you have to decide what you want. To play Waterloo
with A Near Run Thing rules would take at least eight players, a few
days and a very big table. These are options not open to most
gamers. However you could easily break the same battle down into
several corps sized actions that would work very well . . . and would look
great too!
The
ground scale is derived from the figure scale. The time scale, and the
concept of multiple moves that goes with it, is an honest attempt to
rationalise the age-old wargamer’s fudge of time. It is based on WRG
7th Edition systems and on Frank Chadwick’s premise in Command
Decision that a unit could do a lot in 20 minutes, but not in every 20
minutes. Time and distance come together in the restriction on only
making two march moves in one turn because otherwise the poor footsloggers
would be covering the ground at the pace of Marathon runners. The
terrain restrictions and the rules on passage of lines might seem very
liberal to some. Remember though that we are talking about 20 minute
moves and, although the column or line of figures on the table looks pretty
solid, they represent units made up of companies and squadrons, platoons and
troops, each capable of independent movement and flexibility.
Interpenetration only becomes really problematic in the immediate proximity
of the enemy.
The
Command and Control system is derived from DBM but fiddled with to
reflect brigade and divisional command. The “+1 for every brigade
after the first” ensures that, if everything in the division is in its
place, in good order, and in command, then even with the worse dice they can
all do something. The use of the brigade box allows units to operate
in different formations, and do different things – move, change formation
and recover disorder – all for the same one pip, because I assume that the
brigade and unit commanders know what they are doing. Casualties and
dispersal soon make this fall apart – just like the real thing! The
demoralisation effect of a wrecked brigade having a –1, and the extra pips
necessary to keep suffering units going forward, or even remain in place,
soon soaks up your pips. On the other hand regrouping gives you a good
reason to pull brigades out of the line to recover and fight again, rather
than just blow them all away as happens in so may games.
The
combat system is much tweaked Featherstone. What slows most games down
is either lots of dice throwing, or lots of tables, or lots of both.
In this system you consult one table and you throw at most one dice for each
unit. Often it is not necessary to throw at all: for instance an
average line battalion firing at another line with no special circumstances
inflicts one hit . . . quick and simple.
The
durability of a unit (i.e. number of hits it can take) is determined by its
size and morale and this is more real than the apparent difference in
hits. For instance a veteran unit will usually see off an average unit
in a fire-fight. Average cavalry is effective but brittle whilst an
elite cavalry unit can make a real dent in your opponent whilst still
remaining effective itself. Hit points are not entirely a reflection
of the number of casualties a unit has suffered. A better way to
regard them is a reflection of the amount of time a unit can endure combat,
not forgetting that a lot can happen in 20 minutes, but not in every 20
minutes. Thus an average infantry battalion in line can stay under
sustained, long range fire from an artillery battery for an hour and still
function but 20 minutes of close range firefight or melee will usually
finish it for the day. The better and bigger the unit the longer it
can take this treatment. Regrouping units gives you an opportunity to
get them back into reasonably good shape so that they can be used
offensively or sustain a prolonged defence again.
 Thus
the grading of troops is important. Please do not get carried away by
over-grading your favourite unit or nation. The great majority of
troops should be “Average”. The term is not an insult.
Inferior is meant for troops with poor training, and little field
experience. Bad is intended for the worst parts of armies such as the
Spanish or Neapolitans, (and before I’m accused of bias I am the proud
owner of armies for both those countries) or other units with no redeeming
features. Veteran is intended for Grenadiers of most nations and
veterans of many campaigns. (Thus, for instance, most French units in
the Grande Armée in 1806, would be Veteran whilst their Prussian opponents,
long service regulars though they be, would be graded as Average because of
their lack of combat experience). Elite is meant for the best of the
best - French Old Guard and similar. Also, be careful with the
“Trained Light” classification. Many so-called Jaegers could not
operate in skirmish order whilst some “line” troops could happily
skirmish if called upon to do so. The national characteristics are my
own interpretation to give the “flavour” of a particular nation.
If you disagree feel free to change them as you like. The rationale
for using national characteristics is to allow special, historical behaviour
without having to over-grade troops. Thus you can reflect the
stubbornness of Russian infantry, or the confidence of British infantry
lines to face columns, by using average troops with this national
characteristic, rather than having to grade them all as veteran which would
then affect all aspects of their performance.
The
morale system is based on the premise that troops only need to test when
they have to do something out of the ordinary. For instance troops
need to test to charge, but not to counter-charge if they are of the right
type and are in the appropriate formation. Infantry in square will
face cavalry, but must test if they want to face them in line.
Likewise an infantry line will happily meet another line, but has to test if
it is facing a fearsome column coming at it. Some of the “morale”
tests are not entirely a test of morale. For instance the test for
moving squares is really more to do with training. But I wasn’t
going to have a totally different set of such tests and anyway you can argue
that confidence is just as important a factor as training when it comes to
doing things under stress on a battlefield and that the reason that most
units have a low morale rating is because they are badly trained in the
first place. Personal leadership, demonstrated by attaching brigade
and higher generals, gives significant benefits in morale and in mêlée.
But it brings with it command and control penalties, not to mention the
personal health risk to the brave general concerned.
Since
you will not be present for any traditional “rule reading rituals”
before games, the following points may be useful.
The
brigade box can be used on any alignment . . . up/down, left/right, or any
angle in between. Put the asterisk over the brigadier’s head and any
of his units that are at least partly within the box are in command.
You can only use one alignment per command phase (i.e., you can’t put the
box on one alignment to have some units in command and then rotate it to
claim some other units in command. It's either/or). Incidentally, the
size of the brigade box is taken from the deployment area of a Prussian
regiment in defence and attack given in Nafziger’s Imperial Bayonets.
Fortunately this happens to be roughly the same size as an A5 piece of
paper.
Figure
basing doesn’t matter as long as it is consistent. Ideally a 600 man
(12 figure) unit should have a front of 180-200 yards, i.e. 4”. We
use 1cm frontage for infantry, 1.3-1.5cm frontage for cavalry and 3-4 cm
frontage for artillery. You need the figures based so that you can
form line, column, square and skirmish. Since everyone asks, my
preferred basing for a 12 figure French line battalion would be 2x4 figure
bases for the centre companies, 1x2 figure base for the grenadiers and 2x1
figures for the voltigeurs. This will allow you to form a neat square,
form a two company wide column of attack, and throw out a skirmish screen,
whilst minimising the number of separate pieces that you have to fumble with
moving them across the battlefield.
One
important factor in speeding up play is that you do not have to rummage
around removing figures or bases when a unit suffers casualties. To
keep track of losses you can use a unit roster to keep track of hits but
this means paperwork and slows the game down again. We use casualty
counters in various denominations of hits with poor dead and wounded toys on
them. They are quick, clear and add nicely to the visual effect , but
you have to remember to move them with the units. Casualty caps or
little rings seem popular in the States. These can be put on the toys
so that you don’t leave them behind but they don’t look very nice.
You choose.
You
need some sort of order of battle so that you know what comes under who and
how many hits a brigade can take, e.g.:
Brigade
Stilton: 25 hits, demoralised on 13
Yarlsburg
Grenadiers: Veteran – 5 hits
Ist.
Bn Camembert Rgt: Average, large – 5 hits
2nd
Bn Camembert Rgt: Average – 4 hits
3rd
Bn Camembert Rgt: Average, small – 3 hits
Gorgonzola
Jaegers: Average, Trained Light, Rifles – 4 hits
Battery
Brie: Average, 8lbers – 4 hits
I
know that preparing OB's can be a bit of a pain for some players, but for me
doing the research and coming up with an historical OB is part of the fun.
If this is not your cup of tea, then all that you really need to work out is
the total of number of hits in the brigade so you know when it reaches its
halfway point. Anyway, the size, equipment and quality of your units
should be self evident if you have the right figures properly painted.
Having
seen how long this introduction is you must now realise why I didn’t
include it in the rules themselves! Anyway, enjoy the games and let me
know if you have any queries or improvements.
Peter
Hunt, September 2001
A
Near Run Thing (3rd Edition) - Rules
Quick
Reference Sheet
Command
Box (print on clear acetate)
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