Slitherine

The Emperors and Eagles errata is now up on the fieldofglory website.
http://www.fieldofglory.com/fog_nap

Can I ask why the British have been so downgraded by the Emperors and Eagles lists?

Forcing the Light Division commander to be exceptional makes it very expensive, while historically the commanders of this division (Robert Craufurd, William Erskine and Charles Alten) were solid generals they were not brilliant.

Also being slower than other reformed foot makes them significantly worse off in game situations(with no corresponding reduction in points cost), while the British were usually defensive they showed in several battles that they could, when required, move quickly and aggressively.

Can I ask why the British have been so downgraded by the Emperors and Eagles lists?

I don't believe that they have been downgraded. As long as you use no more than 2 light infantry uunits, you can still have 2 skirmisher attachments per division, which is still proportionally more than they had historically. I actually feel that they are better now, since I've always preferred to use artillery as attachments rather than units in a British army.

Forcing the Light Division commander to be exceptional makes it very expensive, while historically the commanders of this division (Robert Craufurd, William Erskine and Charles Alten) were solid generals they were not brilliant.

Without the exceptional commander the light division would almost always be selected. You can still use it but at a considerable cost. An exceptional commander is much better value than it was before (re-rolling failed recovery tests) and makes a flank march with this division a good option.

Also being slower than other reformed foot makes them significantly worse off in game situations(with no corresponding reduction in points cost), while the British were usually defensive they showed in several battles that they could, when required, move quickly and aggressively.

I agree that they are somewhat handicapped by this, but they can have 100% veteran infantry if they wish - which is not an option for any other army.
I'm not going to change their definition at the moment, but may consider something slightly different for a 2nd version of the rules.
I've often used British myself, and although it requires a different approach I haven't found them to be too disadvantaged.

Hi Terry,

on page 171 of E & E for the French army of 1813-14 the minimum for French Dragoons and Chasseurs is 8. Is it intentional that the maximum is also 8? It seems to be the only occasion in the book where combined minimums are the same as the maximum? It seems quite restrictive.


many thanks,

Russ

I just noticed the errata for p 173, impolicitly seems to do away the words ( p 173, RH 1st bullet) "all other troop types have their maxima divided by 2 -- rounded up."

Is this only for E&E or also triumph?

Disappointed_Brit wrote:Can I ask why the British have been so downgraded by the Emperors and Eagles lists?

Forcing the Light Division commander to be exceptional makes it very expensive, while historically the commanders of this division (Robert Craufurd, William Erskine and Charles Alten) were solid generals they were not brilliant.

Also being slower than other reformed foot makes them significantly worse off in game situations(with no corresponding reduction in points cost), while the British were usually defensive they showed in several battles that they could, when required, move quickly and aggressively.

I should say that I was very conscious of striving to avoid an overly anglo-centric approach to these rules and lists. But despite that some ( well made) comments on the British list at the back of the in the rules ( which was really a prototype) were that we had over-egged the Brits altogether! But that said I would make the following points:

Aggression and attack capability notwithstanding the British army’s preferred model was still to fight in line hence move as unreformed but fire as reformed.

The Light Division ( and brigade) was one of several examples of how we would model some famous formations. You don’t have to use it ( or the others like Lutzow’s freicops) . We put these in to add colour and to show how you could model formations at the sub corps level . But you can create your own versions of those within the overall lists if you prefer .There is of course always a tension in this kind of thing between game design issues and historical representation and illustration.

Making the Lt Div commander exceptional is to encourage its use as a rapid moving flanking force with the three CPs for that level . I do think Crauford was an outstanding general of that Division but whether he would have ever proved so at the Corps level we can never know.

Having faced it in a non-standard game Peninsula laid out game all I can say it was pretty powerful in just that role virtually destroying my left flank.

That said I have wondered on these pages before whether we have slightly “overdone” light infantry units and attachments by capability and by points cost . And where we have hybrids of reformed and unreformed whether we could tweak the points as we could also make Austrians move reformed and fight unreformed for example from 1809- the obverse of the Brits .

That's Col. Gray's recommendation for Austrians and Russians in the FOGN options he gives for his AOE scenarios. Fits intuitively with the use of columns and limited skirmishing.

on page 171 of E & E for the French army of 1813-14 the minimum for French Dragoons and Chasseurs is 8. Is it intentional that the maximum is also 8? It seems to be the only occasion in the book where combined minimums are the same as the maximum? It seems quite restrictive.

It basically means that you MUST have 2 units of 4 cavalry - either of which can be Dragoons or Chasseurs.
The only other unit of Cavalry you can have is the Horse Guard.

I just noticed the errata for p 173, impolicitly seems to do away the words ( p 173, RH 1st bullet) "all other troop types have their maxima divided by 2 -- rounded up."

The Errata is a "clarification" NOT a replacement of the existing rule - which remains in place except that:
Where the allied list is subject to a specific restriction (cavalry, guard, etc) the none-selected types have their maximum ignored.
We also remove the reduction of the maximum for the troops types selected in such a case. This is so that those lists with a string of units of a max of 4 bases can still be chosen.
In retrospect we may have been better allowing at least one unit of each troop type in these situations, but we'll see how this works first.

Gotcha so a list that has 0 min and 4 max of say infantry of cavalry.
Still have the 0 or 4 option.

A list that is 0 min and 8 max
will only have the 0 and 4 max options in an allied list.

Do I have this right?

The Russian Army in the Balkans list P 128 E&E has maximum arty of 2 for each of med and hvy, but unit sizes of 2 -3. I presume the maximums should be increased to 3 for both types ?

This does not seem to have been pick up in the July Errata hopefully though in time for the next errata.

Re: Page 173: UNIT ATTACHMENTS: Add a new Paragraph: Artillery attachments count towards both the minimum and maximum bases permitted in the main lists of Eagles and Empires only.
Use the following rules: The full allowance of attachments can be selected if there is no artillery in the main list.

So, the French Armee du Nord 1792-94, with no minimum but a maximum of 2 medium artillery bases and 2 horse artillery bases, can only have either:

a) a single small artillery unit (medium artillery) + a single small horse artillery unit

or

b) up to 4 artillery attachments if no artillery units are used.

BUT, the list also says in the attachment section, "at least one per inf/mixed division."

So how is this possible?

The first bullet point in the errata states:
• Compulsory attachments do not count against the bases in the main list.

Since the "one per division" is compulsory, these are not counted against the bases allowed in the main list.

Ah! Thank you, oh great one!! It's amazing what a brain can miss!

French Army in Spain 1808-09 List

Was just wondering why their is no French Light Infantry options in the Core Infantry list? They were certainly there with the 1st and 5th Corps in1809.

For the 1799-1800 list on page 72, errata says you can have a single mixed division. Can you also make a cavalry division, and what restrictions on unit types would there be?

If no restrictions given (and there seem to be none):

-any cavalry in the cavalry division (doesn't say you can't have one or what's allowed in it)
-any cavalry in the mixed division

French Army in Spain 1808-09 List

Was just wondering why their is no French Light Infantry options in the Core Infantry list? They were certainly there with the 1st and 5th Corps in 1809.

It's an error....I'll add them in the next A&E update

French Army in Spain 1810-12 page 166.
French Dragoons have their unit maximum as 6 and then the Total maximum As 12, should the line separating veteran and drilled carry on through to the unit maximum column?

I'd like to humbly submit that the minima of Light Infantry in the 1805-1807 French list be 4. There were several corps that only had one Brigade of lights in one division, and as I said in my 'Davout at Auerstadt' thread, by making every corps have 2 Brigades, you make it impossible to do some historical corps. I don't think dropping the minima to 4 would seriously be a game changer (and would make me very happy... if that counts for anything )