After weeks of work, we finally played our first game of Fistful of Lead: Horse & Musket with our Napoleonic figures. It occurs to me that despite Napoleonic skirmish being a major thing in the writings of Donald Featherstone and the British wargaming magazines I used to read in my youth, this was the first Napoleonic skirmish game that I have actually played.
I used the scenario from a Sharp Practice campaign (which FG and I used to fight our Sludge campaign), pitting three squads of French soldiers - the 26th of the Line, the Legion du Midi, and the Hanoverian Legion - against two of British - the famous 95th Rifles. The Rifles had the advantage of range, and started hidden and in cover.
The rules were easy to pick up and remember, but despite only giving the Leader and Second traits (instead of giving every figure traits as per the rules) we had difficulty remembering to use them. The need to spend a full turn reloading after each shot made shooting less effective than in more modern games, so the French decided to force the issue with a bold advance into hand-to-hand combat. This turned out badly for them, and they fell back from the village.
Overall the rules are fun and quick, although I find that the use of a d10, while OK in shooting, makes hand-to-hand combat too swingy. I enjoyed the rules enough to want to expand my collection so I can provide both sides for a game that I can take to future conventions.
2 comments:
You have inspired me to add those rules to my Christmas wish list!
Napoleonic skirmish seems to be one of those odd, neglected genres.
It certainly isn't for lack of rules support: Featherstone (as you mention), Sharpe Practice, and a Blades and Shakos publication.
It surely can't be lack of popular media with the ubiquity of Sharpe.
I suggest the problem is its weakness compared to "full fat" Napoleonics.
Skirmish tends to short-change cavalry and artillery detachments.
And the Napoleonic era has scores of big battles, with standards, batteries, columns, lines, squares and thundering cavalry charges.
A minor distraction during the "realism obsessed" 1970s was that we generally got all skirmish fighting wrong - from club rules to Advanced Squad Leader.
It's one thing to spend a 5 second turn on a magazine reload in a WW2 game.
It's low-fun to commit to 4-6 5 second turns to reload your musket.
Especially when shooting has a 5-15% chance to hit.
I'm sure modern rules eliminate many of these problems.
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