Thinking About the Bruce Quarrie Napoleonic ruleset...

As you do. Or at least, as you might do, if you are a wargamer of a certain age who likes Napoleonics. I don't think I would ever go back to playing Napoleon's Campaigns in Miniature as written. The mechanics are just too effortful to go through in the number of times you need to do it to be fun for me as an essential part of the game, regardless of any other vices or virtues.  In any case, this post isn't a review, or anything like that - I already did one of those - but more a meandering wandering through the ruleset, and perhaps see if there are any concepts I might salvage. I have used the Polemos sets I most often play, Ruse de Guerre, General de Division and Marechal d'Empire as the basis for comparisons.

This post on TMP is the proximate reason for my current interest. It contains a reasonable defence of the Quarrie rules, although I can't 'quite' agree with most of it.

'National Characteristics' are probably the most remembered part of the Quarrie rules (along with rules for the prices of loaves of bread, etc.). Not being critical for a moment, what is it trying to achieve and what does it actually achieve?

 

Each unit is rated for how good it is at firing, melee, morale and movement. The middle two are divided into two categories, the latter into four. The categories of movement aren't particularly an issue, the author just incorporates the move rates of different formations into unit ratings as opposed to having them as modifiers in the movement rules: no real issue there. Morale is broadly divided into 'normal morale' and 'discipline/reaction'; melee into 'charge bonus' and 'normal melee'.

Quarrie wants to embed certain differences in performance between different armies. These differences are not to be considered as primarily functions of unit experience I think, since there are separate modifiers for being 'Raw' and 'Veteran'. I think this is pretty under-developed in the rules, but I it is technically possible to have 'Raw Old Guard' and 'Veteran Old Guard', as distinct from just the 'Old Guard'. This looks to take place at the unit level, so a 'new' unit of Old Guard should indeed be 'Raw'. So, the basic ratings look to be considered a product of selection, training, doctrine and military culture.

Most line infantry are pretty similar. Russian, Polish and British Highlanders & Fusiliers are considered to be better in melee. All British infantry are considered better at shooting.  British, some Confederation of the Rhine troops, Poles and Russians are considered to have higher morale, Austrians lower. Spanish infantry is just a bit worse at everything. Light infantry shoots better than line infantry. French infantry, along with some Confederation and British Highlanders are considered most 'enthusiastic', Poles and Spanish the least. After that, each nation's troops get one better for an additional level of 'eliteness'; so Grenadiers will be a bit better than line infantry at everything; Guards one better than that. If a nation has more than one 'level' of Guards, so much the better for them because each score will tend to be raised by 'one' every time.

Quarrie took the historically untenable view that skirmishing was always done by units with some kind of light infantry-esque designation. Other writers (Griffith and Barker) were correct that a light infantry name just as often implied a tailor's flourish on a jacket or a different colour of feather as anything real. 

In the TMP thread I linked to above, one writer makes the following remark:

Glenn Pearce, a current rules author who posts here occasionally, asserts that there are no differences in unit quality from one army to another, that formations are a needless detail, that it doesn't matter what figures go on a base, and that Napoleonic and ACW battles don't look any different. These principles are are a return to Donald Featherstone's of sixty years ago. 

 

I know (online!) Glenn Pearce a little (he is the author of Polemos: Ruse de Guerre, and prior to that played a lot of Polemos Napoleonic and can firmly state that he does entirely believe there were differences in unit quality from one army to another; it is simply that those differences can be much more easily, and perhaps better, simulated by using troop quality ratings without a blanket -1 for being Spanish. So in his rules, there are basically 6 types of infantry: well-trained, trained and poor quality infantry, which are either light infantry or line infantry. 

There are middle grounds. Black Powder's approach is a little closer to Quarrie's in using a stat-block approach. The stat-block is much simpler though, and big differences are represented by a special rule - British Cavalry can be prone to 'galloping at everything', French infanty get an additional bonus for attacking in column, whatever. Neil Thomas' approach is closer to Glenn Pearce's (same basic 6-types of infantry, more-or-less), but also uses the special rules used by Black Powder.

In any case, it would be relatively simple to take the headline elements of national characteristics and apply them to Polemos: Ruse de Guerre or a similar ruleset, if you wanted. It would look something like:

Infantry:

British +1 firing

Scottish Highlanders +1 firing, +1 close combat

Russians and Poles +1 close combat

Spanish & Neapolitans -1 to everything (firing, close combat, rallying from shaken)

Austrians -1 to rally checks, +1 close combat when attacking (first round only)

French +1 close combat when attacking (first round only)

Light Infantry +1 firing

Cavalry:

Spanish & Neapolitans, Irregular cavalry -1 to everything (firing, close combat, rallying from shaken)

Lancers +1 close combat when attacking (first round only) 

Light cavalry -1 in close combat with other cavalry

Cuirassiers +1 close combat, +1 to rally checks

British Dragoon Guards +1 close combat, +1 to rally checks

Artillery:

There is some absolute weirdness in the fire factors here; amusingly the Royal Horse Artillery is much better than the Horse Artillery of the Imperial Guard at firing cannon! Trying to find a pattern is a little difficult but maybe:

Austrians, Spanish, Neapolitans -1 firing, -1 rally checks

French +1 rally checks

One would then apply the 'Poor' and 'Well-Trained' labels as required, although Well-Trained would now better be thought of as 'Veteran'.  One would need a separate 'Elite' category too, which would be a double-strength 'Veteran'. This would cover all the various 'elite' troops of the Napoleonic period.

So Veteran-Elite French Light Infantry would be +4 firing, +2 close combat (+3 when attacking in the first round), +2 rally checks

Raw Spanish militia would be -2 firing, -2 close combat, -2 rally checks

I strongly believe that Quarrie, in line with many other rule-writers, has erred in differentiating more amongst the top end of the quality scale than at the bottom. I don't think it is true of many periods, but it is slightly more defensible in some than in the horse-and-musket era. Think of it this way: there is no lower bound of troop quality before one gets to 'indistinguishable from a civilian just handed a pike ', but it is very hard to  describe how much 'better'  one experienced Napoleonic soldier could be than another. Shako was notably good in this regard, usefully dividing the lower end of the scale - but many other rules, not so much.

The Polemos rulesets tend to ignore formations. The only exceptions to this are that in some rules (but neither of the Napoleonic sets, nor Ruse de Guerre) there is a march column formation. This is to simulate the beginning of a battle in earlier periods where deployment had to be done in a certain fashion, or getting caught in an ambush unawares. But there are no meaningful unit formations (yes, squares get mentioned in one set: however, mechanically they make no difference, they are for narrative only). However, I think we can replicate some of the thinking through the tempo point system. The tempo system has 3 elements: the player (expressed through the bidding system), the commanders (who generate the tempo points) and the costs in tempo points of performing those manoeuvres. It is therefore quite a simple matter. Quarrie in essence thinks that the French and British are quickest, later Prussians and Russians in the middle, and the Austrians, Spanish and early Prussians are the slowest. To the extent that one agrees with with one can either:

1 - Reduce the average competence of those generals to reflect that a general would have to be comparatively amazing to wring out of Austrians the same performance that the average French general would need to get the same performance out of his troops. Conversely, the average French and British general could be somewhat improved.

2 - Increase the tempo cost points to perform different actions. For instance, in Ruse de Guerre, the side that has the initiative (i.e. 'won the tempo') is able to get their troops to perform simple movement for zero cost. Instead, the costs for those armies considered less mobile could increase, so it cost a single tempo point to move such a force. And further, each army could in effect have its own menu: Russians for example could be good at simple actions but less good at more complex manouevres, or whatever the prejudices of the gamers involved believe. Polemos SPQR basically uses this system anyway and it works fine.

 

In addition to 'morale', which does the things that you would normally expect morale to do, Quarrie's rules also have the concept of 'Control'. This might be understood as the tendency to go battle-mad (or not). Ruse de Guerre basically eliminates most of this kind of thing - one of the reasons it is such a smooth set to play is that involuntary moves, especially sequences of involuntary moves, add in quite a lot of complexity to rules (because it multiplies the number of interactions units can have across phases basically); this becomes even more true when the chances of various things happening are probabilistic. So I can see where he was coming from. However, Quarrie and many other rules writers want their British cavalry to 'gallop at everything' etc. And the Polemos Napoleonic rules do have this concept. What might that look like:

Infantry: Highlanders; French, Austrian, Prussian, Portuguese, Austrian & Confederation Light Infantry; Bavarians +1 to Pursuit rolls

Spanish Line Infantry and Guerrillas -1 to Pursuit rolls

Cavalry: British Cavalry, Eastern European Irregular Cavalry +1 to Pursuit rolls

Spanish Cavalry -1 to Pursuit rolls 

Quarrie uses the above factors for pursuit, or when a commander leaves their troops, or after an attempted charge fails to make contact. Including the second option might make for an interesting mechanic within Polemos, by using the 'Pursuit' table if their commander moved over a certain distance away. However, probably the above modifiers are sufficient within the current structure of the game.

The firing modifiers probably don't warrant inclusion, since they are mostly encompassed within existing concepts. However, Quarrie is keen to give troops which used 2-deep line a fire bonus. He fluffed the maths a bit in the actual rules IIRC, but his logic is basically:

Troops that used 2-deep line: +1 fire combat rolls, -1 close combat rolls

As we can see, it becomes quite hard to win firefights against British infantry.

Quarrie has quite an interesting command and orders mechanic, in terms of the time it takes. He uses written orders, which is a method I have very little patience for in most circumstances, so I won't delve into that. But what he uses, although the rules are slightly under-written, is an interesting delay mechanic. Essentially, for each 'node' in the command chain, it may take, depending upon the circumstances and the quality of the commander involved, 0-3 turns (each supposedly representing 2.5 minutes) for any given order to be translated into action. Now, it isn't particularly clear in the Quarrie rules whether this is envisaged as primarily a two-step procedure (C-in-C to unit), or as something which should go down through the chain of command; and if the latter, what is the lowest level of command that this should be applied to. Now, I think the logic of the Quarrie rules is that it should go all the way down, including individually rated unit commanders. However, my suspicion is that I think he played it down to Brigade commander level only. In any case, we can port something of this across to Polemos rules, by limiting the rate at which certain commanders can 'absorb' tempo points. We might say that Decisive commanders can 'absorb' 3 points a turn (from whatever source), Capable commanders 2, and Plodding commanders only 1. This should achieve something of the same effect. What I quite like too is that all commanders in Quarrie have a 50% chance on any given day of being one level down from their theoretical performance: so an 'A' class commander has a 50% chance of performing as a 'B' class commander. This could be quite easily adopted into Polemos, although one would need to define the performance characteristics of a 'worse-than-plodding general' - that is a pretty trivial task, however. 

Quarrie also posits 'Control' modifiers - essentially modifiers to pursuit tests, so some generals' troops are more likely to pursue beaten enemies, others less so. The best generals get to modify either way. This is all fairly easy to include. Quarrie also gives different quantities of morale boost for different generals, and whether they were attacking or defending. I think this is a pretty terrible and unrealistic idea, but it wouldn't be impossible to include. However, Quarrie suggests quite huge swings (+5 to -1, depending on the general) and I don't think that reflects what Napoleon and Wellington actually did, or were good at. But it could be done.

Campaign

After my recent campaign, which did feature attrition, sieges and assaults in a not entirely convincing way, I did re-look at Quarrie to see how he handled sieges and especially, campaign attrition. He uses the following rates:

Bivouacked in friendly territory: 0

Bivouacked in allied territory, marching through friendly territory: 1.3% / week

Marching through hostile territory: 2% / week

x2: half rations, winter, guerrilla effects in Russia and Spain

x4: totally out of supply

 

To slightly extend this, you might also have:

Marching through allied territory: 1.5% / week

 

x2: barren country

 

Recovery:

10% / week when at rest for a full week (no offensive moves) 

The rules Quarrie gives for foraging are pretty simple, with an urban area of a given size on a scale of fertile/barren terrain able to support a certain number of troops, with any excess 'out of supply'.

Siege Rules:

Odds (Attacker:Defender) / Defender points

4:1 / 1

3:1 / 2

2:1 / 4

1:1 / 6

1:2 / 8

1:3 / 10

1:4 / 12

Add difference between General's factors

(for Polemos, would add the difference between the general's ratings, so Decisive = 2, Capable = 1, Plodding = 0)

Food supplies for defender: +1 / week available

Ammunition supplies for defender: +1 / week available

 

Now, I think there is a mistake in this next factor. Quarrie gives +1 to the defender for every day's march away a relieving force might be. Taken literally, the fact that a relief force is marching to relieve Danzig from Cadiz should make it pretty much invulnerable! So it should be a minus, I presume.

 

Distance in day's march from possible relief force: -1 / day

 

The Defender's points total indicates the behaviour:

6 or less: surrender once breach is made

7-10: fight that number of days then capitulate

11 or more: continue to fight until at 50% or less of original strength, then requires 6 on a D6 / day to keep fighting. 

Losses:

Entrenching (30 days*): Attackers 1 fig (i.e. 33 soldiers) / day, Defenders 0.5 fig (i.e. 17 soldiers)

Siege bombardment begins: Attackers 1 fig (i.e. 33 soldiers) / day, Defenders 1.5 fig / day (i.e. 50 soldiers)

Sickness (cumulative with above): Attackers 0.5 fig (i.e. 17 soldiers) / day, Defenders 1 fig/day (i.e. 50 soldiers)

Multiply attackers by 1.5 / week after the first, defenders 2 / week after the first

Street fighting: Both sides 1 fig / day 

 

*Given that the figures are given in weeks, I would choose 28 or 35.

Quarrie doesn't give a figure for how long it takes to make a breach though. This feels a bit of an ommission. Checking on the figures that CS Grant gives in his 'The Armies and Uniforms of Marlborough's Wars', actually effecting the breach seems to take only 2-4 days, if I am reading it correctly. Given that Quarrie gives a slightly quicker figure for the preliminary engineering, if we call effecting the breach the work of a week, that seems about correct.

POSTSCRIPT:

Potential Errors in the National Characteristics section:

In the version I am using (the Kindle version), I spotted the following anomalies in the National Characteristics tables (there were quite a few TBH):

The movement in column of Scandinavian Life Guard cavalry is given as 110; this seems to be a straight typo it should be 310. This is true of Prussian cuirassiers too.

Spanish cuirassiers and guard cavalry seem to have slightly low road movement rates, and Spanish lancers, dragoons and hussars seem to have low skirmish movement rates. 

Spanish horse artillery isn't considered to be pulled by horses, given its movement rates. I think if you are making the argument they didn't really have any, then you should probably not bother listing them as a separate troop type.

Confederation of the Rhine cuirassiers seem to have a columnar movement rate that is too low.

Confederation of the Rhine dragoons have a control rating which is much too high (think typo, probably should be Morale:6 Control:2); there is a similar error for the Hussars, and several of the other categories of cavalry.

Portuguese Atiradores have a typo in for their columnar movement.

The skirmish movement rates are a bit all over the place. Some units have a skirmish move rate the same as their road move, some the same as the columnar movement, some an entirely different movement rate. There is no discernable principle in play here. I would suggest that it should be the same as the columnar rate for all cavalry. For the infantry, the situation is somewhat more complex: one might make the case that some of the nations have skirmish movement rates aligned to their road movement (French, CoR and Italian line skirmishers, but not Guard or Dragoons on foot; Polish; Portuguese and Prussians); other countries (Spain, Russia and Scandinavia) align with their columnar movement; yet others (Austria & Britain) have some units which align with Road movement (British & Austrian Lights - think the Austrians are their grenzer units), some which align with Columnar movement (British Fusiliers) and some which have entirely different ones. I don't think there really is any underlying logic here, and if there were it would be indefensible. I think overall it would be best just to align the skirmish move rates with columnar movement for everyone.

The fire factors for the Young Guard and the French Grenadiers seem way too high relative to everything else.

Giving British 'Dragoon Guards' and 'Fusiliers' higher ratings than 'Dragoons' and 'Line Infantry' is anomalous in the Napoleonic-era.

Austrian uhlans can't skirmish; everyone else's can.

British hussars can't skirmish; everyone else's can. 

British, Confederation, Italian and Portuguese Dragoons can't skirmish; everyone else's can. I think this may be defensible in the British case, since the Light Dragoons can skirmish: but I think if you were to make this argument, you should make the British more like heavy cavalry and raise their meless scores and reduce their movement rates.

Can see why Spanish cavalry control factors could be low, can't see why Spanish Hussars should be even lower than that low baseline