My Aims

Historically authentic wargames. Ordinary sized table. Enjoyable and playable rules. Big battles feasible with two players. Looking good.

Those are my modest requirements.  But they are not met by any rules systems that I have seen. So I am building my own. This is a work in progress. On this site I am describing my journey – and I welcome any help.

There are three main themes to this project:

  1. Developing rules. I publish the latest version on this site. But I am engaged in an extensive rework. I also look at rules in other periods, notably WW2, but also the Great Northern War.
  2. Researching historical battles. These provide scenarios for my games, and also test the authenticity of the rule systems. I have completed a project on Vitoria 1813, and posted resources here, including the best researched order of battle you will find anywhere. Work on the 1815 campaign is ongoing. I have also looked at Sorauren 1813 and Albuera. I have also made a digression into WW2 in 1943, in the Mediterranean theatre, especially the combat between British and German forces.
  3. Developing the visual appearance. The games should evoke the events they are recreating: both the troops and the terrain they fight over. Somehow I have into model aircraft too.

My blog gives news and views on my progress, on these themes and tangential ones. I hope you can share some of my enjoyment of this project.

Matthew Green

5 thoughts on “My Aims

  1. Mr. Mathew,

    Congratulations for your blog, I’ve found it very interesting for napoleonic enthusiasts as I am. Good luck with your projects in wargaming, more or less I try to make the same -in minor scale- with my blog rules Pas de manoeuvre!.

  2. Hi Matthew

    Glad to have stumbled on you discussion C2 in Grand Tactical Napoleonics from 2014. I am still determined to find or write that rule set that puts the Army commander in his place….i.e. a long way from directly influencing his corps commanders. Rules that convey the sense of time and space of the broad area of battle and the friction associated in trying to control things. Your discussion covered a lot of areas that interested me. I will have to have a closer look at your rules.

  3. Thank you Andrew. Sadly progress has been very slow since 2016. Twice I have gone for major rewrites as the complexity got out of hand. Still I’m hopeful of the current approach. I’m not getting much time to develop it, but I’m hoping that will change soon and I can publish a draft later this year.

  4. Hello Matthew, nice to meet a fellow traveller especially one so erudite.
    I have been gaming all periods up to ACW for 40+ years and am still looking for the perfect set of rules; currently working on Ironbow 2 for Dark Ages with a friend – they need a bit of work but they have terrific potential.
    For Napoleonics I have decided to start with a set of home-grown rules and add the best bits from other sets of rules, so your discussion points are just what I need.
    A friend has recommended General de Brigade’s command and control system.
    You roll a dice and put down a chit for a brigade. The chit might say ‘defend’ and the battalions of the brigade can do anything within a certain area from the commander- so they can’t advance or attack, but can face a flank if a threat emerges from that direction. To change the chit can take time and commanders are limited to how many chits they can issue each turn – I might run a few tests on the table to see if the system has merit.

    1. Thanks Peter. Good luck in your journey! I am more than a little frustrated at the moment because other activities in my life are intruding, and I’m making the slowest of headway with my Napoloenic project. GdB is quite popular at my club, though I have only played it once, quite a long time ago. Right now I am working on a higher command level – though the more detailed level certainly produces fine gaming! I have blown hot and cold on order-chit systems like GdB’s.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.