My father, Gary Thomas, has always loved Naval warfare and hand crafted ships for both the Armada and Nelson periods. Although he has long since given up table top gaming and moved to computer games, in fond memory of those 1:1200 scale ships I thought I’d type up his rules. I have slightly edited the text, but the rule mechanisms remain unchanged.
Napoleonic Wars
In the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1803) and closely related Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) France faced successive coalitions of European states. In the Revolutionary Wars France expanded its control to the Low Countries, Italy, and the Rhineland. Napoleon built upon this and conquered much of Europe. However French success unravelled quickly after Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia (1812). The Napoleonic Wars ended with Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo (18 Jun 1815). The wars depended on extremely high numbers of soldiers, recruited by modern mass conscription. My main interest is the grim contest between France and Spain (plus allies) in the Peninsular War (1808-1814).
Shako Orders of Battle for Albuera
Shako offers a default orders of battle for the Peninsular and Fields of Glory (FOG) – the Shako scenario book as opposed to the rules – has some Peninsular scenarios, including Albuera. I thought it would be interesting to compare these to each other and to the Historical Order of Battle.
Albuera Wargaming Project for the Peninsular War
I wanted to build some Peninsular War Armies for Shako based on a historical Order of Battle. The Battle of Albuera (16 May 1811) seems a reasonable starting point or perhaps finale since it requires three armies: Spanish, Anglo-Portuguese, and French. The two overall commanders (Beresford and Soult) were competent and several significant others were also present including Joaquín Blake y Joyes who commanded the Spanish, José de San Martin who was one of the famous Liberators in the South American Wars of Liberation , and José de Zayas who was arguably the best of the Spanish divisional commanders during the entire war. The French and Anglo-Portuguese are roughly the same numbers (ignoring the Spanish). The orders of battle are close to those in pick up lists for Shako.
Sources for the Peninsular War
An annotated bibliography for the Peninsular War.
Timeline of the Peninsular War
The timeline of the Peninsular War. It is a pretty rough lists of actions at the moment.
Austerlitz – An Engle Matrix Game
The Austerlitz Matrix Game was devised by Chris Engle but the version here is revised by me (Steven Thomas)