Twilight of the Emperor: Wargame Rules for European Battles in the Age of Napoleon – 1800-1815

The Twilight of the Emperor rules is a set designed to fight large historical battles on a reasonable sized table and with a reasonable number of figures. The player is the army commander seeking to marshal the full forces that their historical counterpart had to achieve victory and not some brigade or division commander controlling a few battalions or squadrons in the fight for some sector of a battlefield. The concentration is on the 'big picture' rather on relatively unimportant details. The rules reward historic tactics and practices while making typical 'gamer' tactics obsolete. So, players will want their forces to be in at least two lines with a reserve and not strung out in a line as is commonly done in other rules. The system is intuitive and easy to pick up. The units are typically around 3,000 foot or 1,500 mounted and so the units are often the equivalent to a 'brigade' or large continental regiments. The scale is flexible with all distances, ranges, movements based on half of the frontage of the units you use. For example, if your units have a frontage of perhaps 120mm (about 6 inches) the standard measurement unit in the game will be 60mm. There is no figure removal so you can base you units as you wish, with any number or size of figures on a base, etc. As long as the units are the same frontage it does not matter and indeed neither does it if the armies involved are based differently. While any unit size can be used if the frontage of a unit is in the region of 120mm then many battles can be fought on a table 1.8m by 1.2m (6 feet by 4 feet) or similar. Most standard battles should be playable in a typical afternoon or evening playing session. The rules cover warfare in Europe in the era 1800 to 1815, and perhaps those a little earlier. The rules include scenarios for Austerlitz (1805), Abensburg (1809), Talavera (1809) and Dennewitz (1813). —description from the publisher