'Napoleonic Battles: Austerlitz'
Developer's Preview
By Doug McNair
March 2007

Our long-running “Rectangles at War” series (Rome at War, War of the States and Napoleonic Battles) has always been my favorite game system to run at con demos. Gleeful eight-year-olds consistently beat the hell out of me at it, though it’s not like I rig the game in their favor or anything. . . .

So when Rob Markham resurrected the Napoleonic branch of the Rectangles family with his Austerlitz design, I wanted to make sure the core Rectangles rules were as good as they could be, and gave them a thorough review. By the end of the first few playtests, it became clear that three areas needed reworking: command radius, initiative, and assigning reserves.

Command Radius: A Horse is a Horse

In past Rectangles games, each leader has had three ratings: command radius, tactical rating, and initiative rating. The latter two present no problems; each leader is better or worse at tactical leadership in battle, and better or worse at taking decisive action and rallying his troops. But the idea that some leaders can consistently get orders to their troops over a longer distance than others, in the same amount of time over the same terrain, is not so plausible. After all, the average dispatch rider under Napoleon’s direct command doesn’t necessarily ride any faster than one reporting to some other officer, even a green brevet-colonel who just received a battlefield promotion this morning.

Rather than putting afterburners on Napoleon’s post horses, it makes more sense to just give each leader his own tactical and initiative ratings, and have every leader’s command radius be the same. This radius equals the distance a dispatch rider with a movement allowance of 4 could theoretically move in any direction from the leader’s position.

Radius can be increased or decreased by the terrain in the leader’s area, meaning a leader’s radius is greater when traced down a road, and smaller when traced through difficult terrain like woods or streams. This makes control of roads and bridges crucial not just to movement but to command and control, and adds an extra level of excitement to battles for such tactical objectives. (“If I cut behind him and take that bridge, all his troops beyond it will be out of command since the stream the bridge crosses cuts their leader’s radius!”)

Initiative: The Key to Leadership

Also in past Rectangles games, all formation leaders that were inside their army commander’s command radius during the command phase were automatically in command for the rest of the turn. This mechanic worked in conjunction with the concept that better or worse army commanders had larger or smaller command radii. But it also meant for practical purposes that armies commanded by poorer generals would set up and maneuver on a smaller front than armies commanded by better generals. In addition, when an army commander was killed and replaced by a commander with a smaller command radius, the whole army would tend to pull in its flanks for no other reason than to put its formation leaders inside the new army commander’s smaller radius.

Whether such battlefield behavior is historically accurate is debatable, but it felt a bit artificial to me. Instead, it seems simpler and more realistic to treat an army commander’s initiative as the key measure of his generalship. After all, when a formation leader is outside his army commander’s command radius, he has to roll against his own initiative to put his own troops in command. Taking the same concept up one level in the command structure, it seems logical to use the army commander’s initiative to determine how many of his formation leaders he can put in command each turn (they are to him as the troops are to the formation leaders).

Making the army commander roll against his initiative for each and every one of his formation leaders would be cumbersome, so I simply said that he can automatically put in command a number of his formation leaders equal to his initiative rating (if they are inside his radius). The rest (whether they’re in his radius or not) must successfully roll less than or equal to their own initiatives, or they and their formations will be out of command for the turn.

Assigning Reserves: Keeping It Real

In earlier Rectangles games, each player’s headquarters unit could assign reserve units at will to any desired formations, with the number of units the HQ could assign being equal to the HQ’s command radius. This wasn’t a major issue if an army doesn’t have huge reserves on the battlefield, but it is at Austerlitz. Marshal Murat’s huge cavalry reserve is a deadly weapon in the hands of the French player. Indeed, if he can assign cavalry groups to other formations at will, the assigned cavalry can immediately charge into any breaches the French make in the Allied line, cutting said line to bits in short order.

On the flip side, it gets a bit cumbersome when one reserve leader is in command of several reserve units. If the French HQ’s command radius is less than the number of units commanded by a reserve leader, that leader could take some of his units with him but not others, unless he wants to wait around another turn for the rest of his units to get assigned. This seems less realistic than simply giving the leader his reassignment orders, and then having him tell his units to mount up and go.

To solve these problems, I stuck to the concept that initiative is the key to leadership (in this case, an army’s organizational ability), while giving the horrors of military bureaucracy their due. In the new Napoleonic Battles rules, each player can assign one reserve unit, or one leader and all units under him, per turn.

To make the assignment, the owning player must roll less than or equal to his HQ’s initiative rating. If he does, the unit or leader/group is assigned to any formation the owning player wishes and can activate on the same turn, when its new parent formation activates. If not, the unit or leader/group is not assigned and stays in the reserve for now (the player can repeat the attempt in future turns). This means that bureaucratically-efficient armies like Napoleon’s will still have a good shot at getting their reserves assigned properly. But it also takes into account the potential for miscommunication and bureaucratic infighting that can mess up even the most competent general’s contingency planning on the battlefield.

These changes and a few others have made Austerlitz and other Rectangles games I’ve worked on since then simpler and more intuitive, and have increased their realism while getting rid of “gamey-ness.” I think you’ll enjoy the results, which I will debut soon in Part I of my article on Austerlitz tactics, which will of course come with a full replay!

Order Austerlitz now!