It's getting to be a long month - I haven't added to this blog at all yet. Tired and - here and there - ill, I didn't visit the club (which put up its new shelves), play any games (other than lots of chess at work), or get much preparation in. I have desultorily labeled most of my Wofuns, which will be for another post.
I have done some reading. Currently on early Napoleonics, which I knew very little about going in.
I like Helion and Company, having started with their Paperboys publications and gone on to their other works. Their series of wargaming "guides" has its ups and downs. I read a good review of this one and ordered it - but had to do it in physical form as it's not available as an ebook. Helion has a lot of publications but are inscrutable when it comes to which ones are available electronically, and their relatively high costs get shipping tacked on. I ordered this one through Amazon rather than their site, which was a mistake. While it came quickly, it was in a shipping envelope rather than a box, and the spine was a bit battered and a page at the back torn. It's quite large - not just 300 pages, but A4 size and squarebound. That explains the price.
About a third is potted history of the War of the First Coalition. For a modern wargaming book, I'm a little surprised there wasn't much illustration, and the maps were so sparse and basic (not even borders) that for someone who doesn't know their way around France, the narrative could be confusing. There are a lot of statistics, names and footnotes. I've decided that even with descriptive text, maps with colored arrows are best for visualization.
The next third is your typical chapters on organization, uniforms, painting, etc - the stuff you need to know to collect an army. Not bad, but again sparse on the images. There is a full page showing the stages of painting a figure, but there are 20 stages so even on an A4 page it's hard to pick everything out.
The rest are scenarios. Interestingly here, there are naval scenarios as well as land, and there are also a range of scales and rulesets. I prefer generic scenarios in part because I don't play many of the more popular rulesets - though there are a couple here for
General de Brigade, my local club's go-to for Napoleonics. The naval choice here is
Sails of Glory, for which I have the starter set but find too complex for my taste. However, I think I can get away with using Junior General or, for the smaller scenarios, Limeys and Slimeys. I will sadly miss this week's annual regatta (delayed from December) and set in a fictional 18th-century Russo-British clash in the Pacific Northwest. But maybe I can get the group to try the action of Banda Aceh, in which two British 74s were challenged by a squadron of large French frigates.
While
Throwing Thunderbolts didn't awe me, it did allude to plenty of interesting campaigns and people. One of the most heavily-used references was
The Road to Rivoli, on Napoleon's Italian campaign. In the introduction and afterword, the author has much to say about this campaign (1796) as a prelude to Napoleon's better-known battles - it was his first independent command, and it was where he met many of the officers who became his closest aides and marshals. The future Lord Nelson even shows up, poking his nose into relevant ports that Napoleon relied on for supply.
The first part of the book is biography of Napoleon's life, focusing particularly on his education. While I knew his initial aim was to join the navy, I hadn't known that there was a possibility of his family ending up in Britain.(!) On the one hand, the wars just wouldn't have turned out the way they did had that happened, and (as happened in France) he wouldn't have gotten a place until 1793 (which would mean, like Hornblower, he'd never have made admiral in time to do anything pivotal), but what a setup for an alternate history tale!
The key point, though, was his early reading of French officers who had a) served in Italy and b) focused on planning and preparation. The first gave him a background in Italian military geography that stood him well in the 1796 campaign; the second prepared him to build an army that could carry out the orders he gave it. Nearly all of his place in the following narrative is of writing letters, ordering supplies, setting up camps, scouting fortresses, firing or promoting generals, and looking out for decision points - that being the inevitable spot where military plans break down. His opponents had to think about their reactions, but Napoleon was a step ahead of him with the thought "if my opponent does this, I'll need to do that."
He also spent the campaign building a team of subordinate commanders. One of those he sacked had once been his own commander; others he had to cajole into taking promotion.
The Austrians and Piedmontese get plenty of attention too. (One was named Spork, a name I will swipe for my Imagi-nations forces.) While relatively disorganized in comparison - and flatfooted by a monthlong knockout campaign at the start - they gave the French a couple bloody noses and recognized, if belatedly, what they were up against. They were, however, fighting with older tactics and older generals, and Napoleon's planning and attitude kept up the momentum. I am reminded of Patton's dictum that "a good plan today is better than a perfect plan next week," and there were points where Austrian commanders dithered or moved back and forth.
Both sides were poorly supplied, and winter warfare, sometimes over the same ground as would be fought over in WWI, is well described.
Overall, a very enjoyable book. The maps are marginally better - the real problem is that I'm reading an ebook, so can't easily flip back and forth. But the description is much better, and the writing more lively. There are plenty of quotes from memoirs and letters.
What next on my bookshelf? Some Warhammer 40K stuff. I've picked up the final two volumes of the Horus Heresy series but not read them yet, and just received my reprint of the original
Rogue Trader rulebook - a very interesting read, since it is virtually divorced from the game as it is today. Much more an RPG/GM-run skirmish game than a wargame. A delightful throwback with a 2000AD comics vibe to the illustration and background.
As it's President's Day this week, I have a two day weekend and will try to catch up with another post soon. Thanks for reading.
