Version 3.04

Changes since v3.02. Version 3.03 was superseded before it saw general release, so everything it carried is folded in here.

Short version: the army lists have left the rulebook and grown into a booklet of twenty-eight armies. There is a new one-page Officer's Dispatch for the plainest version of the game. And the rules themselves have one real change — a limit of one manoeuvre per movement phase — along with a tightened rout move and a good many clarifications, nearly all of them drawn from the feedback form.

New: The Army Lists Booklet

• Twenty-eight lists in five sections: France & Her Satellites (10), The Coalition (8), The Peninsula (3), The North & The Small States (4), Beyond Europe (3). The Austrian, French, and British lists have moved out of the rulebook and are expanded and split by era here.

• Every list includes a historical character note, an allowance table in the standard notation, and a ready-made 40 AP sample force (each verified to sum to exactly 40 AP).

• Each list carries its own Staff Point allowance, which replaces the standard maximum of 4 when playing from the lists. This is the main lever for command quality: the Grande Armée may buy up to 6; Prussia 1806, Bourbon Spain, the Ottomans, and the Mamelukes may buy none.

• Every army carries exactly one named special rule — deliberately minor chrome: a modifier in a narrow circumstance, a new use for Staff Points (the French Empire adds them to rally rolls, Prussia 1813 rerolls failed rallies, Württemberg buys +1" of movement), or a once-per-game grace (Poland auto-rallies one unit, Britain 1815 cancels one follow-up, Brunswick rerolls one melee die). Others include British Reverse Slope, French Late Empire La Grande Batterie, Prussian 1806 Frederician Drill, Russian Stoicism, Ottoman Endless Host, and Mameluke Ferocious cavalry.

• The Guerrilla rule (Spanish Guerrilla) is deployment-based: reinforcement points on any board edge, and starting units may deploy anywhere on their own half of the board.

• An Allied Armies rule — encouraged, with both players' agreement — for combining two or three historically allied lists (Waterloo, Anglo-Portuguese armies). Only one contingent's special rule applies; the player chooses which.

• The rulebook keeps the unit point costs, the standard template, and the notation, and points to the booklet. Both books now share a single costs file so the two cost tables cannot drift apart.

New: The Officer's Dispatch

• A one-page reference for the standard game only — core units, core modifiers, ten shooting modifiers instead of thirteen and eleven melee modifiers instead of sixteen. It omits Light Infantry and the Dense Woods rules, unit sizes, the irregular units, Lancers, and the optional rules, and says so plainly at the foot.

• It is the sheet to hand a first-time opponent, or to use if you would rather not meet every modifier at once. The full Quick Reference Sheet remains the complete game.

Main Rules Changes

• One manoeuvre per movement phase. A unit may make one pivot, wheel, or spin during its movement phase, before, during, or after its move. It costs no distance, but it is the only manoeuvre that unit may make that phase.

Sideways movement (×2 distance) and reversing (normal cost) change no facing and are therefore not manoeuvres. Turning to face a unit moving into contact happens in the opponent's movement phase and does not count against a unit's own manoeuvre.

Why: as written, free unlimited pivots made the ×2 sideways cost dead text — "spin, move, spin back" was always cheaper. Facing now matters, which is what makes the flank modifiers matter. Suggested and playtested both ways by The Skald, who prefers this at this scale.

• Routing units no longer choose their direction. A unit routing from shooting moves directly away from the source of the shooting; a unit routing for any other reason moves directly to its rear. The routing player does not choose between the two.

Why: the old wording let the owner pick whichever option dodged the enemy, so "touched an enemy = Destroyed" almost never bit. Also spotted by The Skald.

• Irregular Cavalry may now initiate melee against Disrupted infantry (previously against no infantry at all). Irregular horse will not close with formed foot, but falls gladly upon broken men — this delivers on the promise in the cavalry design notes that Disrupted units are cavalry's prey. The Mamelukes' Ferocious rule still allows charging any infantry.

• New unit: Irregular Mounted Shooters (2.5 AP, move 5", range 1") — Irregular Cavalry that may also shoot: small-arms (bows count as small-arms) at −1. Shooting Pins them as usual; a mounted swarm's escape is the voluntary rout available to Light Cavalry. Available to Russia 1812–14 (Bashkirs and Kalmyks), the Ottoman Empire (delis), the United States (Kentucky Mounted Rifles), and the Spanish Guerrilla.

• The rulebook's Unit Point Costs table now includes Lancers (3 AP), Irregular Shooters (1.5 AP), Irregular Warband (2 AP), Irregular Cavalry (2 AP), and Irregular Mounted Shooters (2.5 AP). The Army Lists booklet treats all of them as standard units.

Clarifications

• Pre-measuring is allowed — any distance, any time, whether it is your turn or not. (Jude Sawyer)

• Every unit counts towards victory, artillery and HQs as much as infantry and cavalry. (Jude Sawyer)

• Artillery does not Pin itself by shooting — only small-arms does that. Artillery can of course be Pinned or Disrupted by enemy shooting like anything else, and must rally before moving again; a Pinned artillery unit may still shoot from its current facing. (Tom and Eric, Colorado Military Historians)

• A Pinned or Disrupted unit may never follow up. Follow-up is a move, and such units may not move. (Tom and Eric)

• Any unit type may follow up, and may do so repeatedly — infantry as well as cavalry. Cavalry is merely better at it, having a longer move and better melee modifiers. The "king of the multiple-melee turn" line in the Flow of Battle now says so explicitly. (Xavier Zambrano)

• On Squares. A new section in the Flow of Battle sets out why there is no square rule: at a thirty-minute turn and a brigade-sized unit, squares form and unform inside the timeslice, so the game asks only whether they formed in time — which is what defensive fire measures. Formed infantry shoots at charging cavalry at +3, so five times in six the charge is turned away and once in six it is not (Albuera). The Melee chapter now points here for anyone looking the question up. (Jude Sawyer, and every player who has ever asked)

• The Defensive Fire section now includes the worked example behind that arithmetic.

• The Light Infantry description opens with a scale clarification: every unit already includes its own skirmish screen; Light Infantry represents the rare formation composed wholly of skirmish-trained troops (rifles, jäger, Grenzer, caçadores). The unit's rules are unchanged.

New Optional Rules

• Flank & Rear Melee. Delete the "Enemy is in melee with more than one unit" modifier; instead, an enemy contacted in its flank or rear gives +2. A defender that turns to face an attacker is not flanked by it. Much the same arithmetic for two attackers, but it rewards catching a Pinned or Disrupted unit from the side, and makes mass attacks somewhat weaker (three attackers give +4 rather than +6). (Tom and Eric)

• Fighting Withdrawal. A melee difference of 1 or 2 does not rout the loser; instead the loser moves back one base depth to its rear and is Disrupted, and the winner does not follow up. Differences of 3 or more are resolved normally. Longer games, fewer sudden collapses; the author prefers the standard rule. (Tom and Eric)

Wording & Consistency

• The shooting-modifier tables are aligned on "shooter/shooting" (the word "firer" appeared only there): "Firer is Large/Small" is now "Shooter is Large/Small", "HQ in base-to-base contact with firing unit" is now "with shooting unit", and "Target is fired on flank" is now "Target is shot on flank".

• QRS correction: the −2 modifier read "Out of target's flank or rear", which reversed the meaning. It now reads "Shooting out of own flank or rear", matching the rulebook and Plate II.

• Movement Modifiers now says a stream costs "an extra 1″" rather than "an extra inch", matching the rest of the section. (The Skald)

The Muster Roll

• Paul Davies and Jude Sawyer have answered the muster.

Player Feedback Check

• Derek Gray asked, with admirable economy, for "More Army lists please". Twenty-eight of them, with a book to themselves.

• Nicholas Downing asked for fewer +1s and −1s. The Officer's Dispatch is the answer: the same game, presented with only the modifiers a standard force actually uses. The full rules keep their chrome, which is where a good deal of the fun lives — but nobody need meet all of it at once.

• John Mumby carried in the questions from his grandson Jude Sawyer, and from Tom and Eric of the Colorado Military Historians. Between them they account for most of the clarifications above.

• Michał Malinowski has no new entry above, and only because his own catalogue was answered in v3.01 and stands unchanged: the combined-arms targeting fix, the small-arms wording, the multiple-melee procedure, who may follow up, lingering melee contact, the undefined word "formed" — and the defensive-fire pushback, which he proposed and which went in whole. A good deal of the present clarity is his.

• Every clarification in this release names the player who asked for it.

• Other suggestions remain under consideration.

What Has Not Changed

• The core shooting, rallying, melee, and victory structures are unchanged.

• Light Infantry's rules are unchanged — battle-tested as they stand; the booklet simply gives the unit more armies to appear in.