2x2 Napoleonics

 I have been interested in checking out the wargame 2x2 Napoleonics ever since Chris McDowell posted about it on his blog.

However between life, other hobbies that took priority over it, and just general distraction it has taken me well over a year to get around to trying it out, but I finally did! Yesterday I sat down with a friend of mine and we played a couple of games, using some matchstick armies that I made for the units (inspired by this excellent blogpost)

Units for the two armies.

The system itself is quite simple and straightforward, requiring a few pieces of terrain, around 14-16ish bases of units for a 40 point pickup game, and all rolling is done via just one six-sided die.

This post will not be a full on battle report, as both games took about an hour at most to play through and I don't remember enough specific details to write a compelling one, but I will use the post as an opportunity to share a few photos from the games and talk about my impressions of the game.

Board setup and initial deployment in Game 1.

2x2 Napoleonics does a few things that I found pretty interesting. One is that you do not deploy your entire force at the field at once, but only get 10 army points worth of units, unless both players draw when they roll for initiative at the beginning of the game.(For every time you draw and reroll, each player gets 10 more AP worth of units they can field from the start). Everything else is reinforcements, which not only enter from two designated entry points which players place before the game starts, but also enter in very specific order, which you also have to set up before the battle has actually started.

Second, the defender (the player with the lower score rolled on that initiative roll) gets to setup the terrain on the board (picking the battlefield as it were), which again means that a lot of important game decisions are made from before any actual fighting starts.

I quite like this, though I will admit that at least with these two first games it meant that neither of us were quite sure what we were doing and if we were doing it well. I imagine the tactical nuances of setting up the board and properly arranging your reinforcements only get better as you play more games.

Game 1 in progress. That unit of French Grenadiers caused absolute havoc during the game, eliminating two or three of the 5 units needed for a victory all by themselves.

A problem we ran into as we were playing was some lack of clarification on a few points, which mostly stem from the rules being quite short. The rules, for example, have no real information on whether you can break up a units movement allowance to let it go around obstacles (it says you can pivot and turn around freely during your move, so that implies you can?). Because if you can do that, then the rule for moving sideways at 2 times the cost makes zero sense, as you can simply turn around and move "forward" for free, then wheel back around.

Another question relating to movement was whether units can pass through friendly units or not when moving. That simply is not addressed at all.

Lastly line of sight is a bit vague in the rules, having only one example in the end showing you that, yes, units do get in the way of line of fire, but apparently a whole-ass town doesn't, only providing a cover bonus for the infantry unity within the town? We ended up simply making some rulings of our own to keep the game going, but it felt like these were easy enough to address in the rules in the first place.

Board setup and initial deployment for Game 2

Some things I did like in the system is how brutal and decisive combat can be, with units fighting in the open often resulting in casualties of some kind. Since a fast game's win condition is for a player to simply lose 5 units, it does indeed lead to quite fast game.

Conversely, the setup of Game 2 that you can see above, with 3 towns and a lot of woods, provided for some really hard to assault defensive locations, with the French Grenadiers parking themselves in the larger central town and not really being dislodged out of there for the entire duration of the game


All in all I quite enjoyed 2x2 Napoleonics, which is honestly impressive as I have almost no real interest in that time period as far as wargaming goes, but I always enjoy a nice set of clean rules that facilitate quick games. Both my friend and I are interested in playing it again, though potentially with some tweaks in the army compositions as some units definitely felt weak and under-performing in the two games we played. Either that or simply finding a real world historical battle and recreating that one.

What follows now are going to be just a few more photos from the games.

British reinforcements lined up and waiting to get to the battle.

French Grenadiers fending off a British assault on the larger town and coming up victorious.

The two armies slowly and cautiously approaching each other on the outskirts of town.