Nearly Napoleonic Battles

Austrian Army

We are in the middle of a family visit, and consequently have not had much opportunity to wargame over the past couple of weeks.   So I have had lots of time to think about wargaming instead.

For the past nine years almost all our wargames have been provided by our long running 1813 campaign.   Since April 2009 it has provided us with 273 battles to wargame.  There is a blog of the campaign showing orders of battle, campaign diary and all battle reports here

http://1813pbemcampaigndiary.blogspot.com.es/

As a break from the campaign, we refought all of Wellington’s battles in the Peninsula as a series of one off games.   We used our existing terrain and model soldiers, but made an attempt to recreate both the terrain and orders of battle.   We fought a total of 13 battles between November 2009 and May 2012.

http://wellingtonsbattles.blogspot.com/

We then tried to do the same with Campaigns of Napoleon in 2013.  But they are much larger and proved too difficult to recreate.

http://wargamecampaignsofnapoleon.blogspot.com/

For the past couple of weeks I have been considering how I could wargame the major battles of the Napoleonic Wars as a one off project.  

I don’t want to have to create new armies, paint new figures or make new scenery.   My existing 1813 campaign works well and I doubt I could design anything which would suit us better.  So any new project would have to be tailored to match the existing table, scenery and organisation of figures.

One 28mm army per side is just right for my 6x6 foot wargames table. 

I have 35 different combinations with my 2x2 foot scenic squares.  This has proved sufficient to create almost any wargames table, certainly all combinations that I required.

Given the above I am only left with the choice of a name.   The wargames will be based on historical battles, but will make no attempt to recreate actual terrain or actual orders of battle.   I will use historical commanders names and make the wargames table look as much like the historical battlefield as possible.

I have started a new blog for this series of wargames.   I want the name to clearly indicate that these are not historical battles, but rather based on them.   I also wanted a catchy one word name.   Jan and I have spent a week considering possible names, and the best we could come up with is Nearly Napoleonic Battles.   Almost Napoleonic Battles was a close second, but we both felt that the former sounds better.

https://nearlynapbattles.blogspot.com/

If anyone has any suggestions for a more appropriate name I would love to hear it.