SHAKO II Napoleonic Wargaming

SHAKO IIOver the years I have dabbled with numerous rule sets for Napoleonics, starting with some home grown ones, and most notably a Bruce Quarrie inspired concept based on articles in Military Modelling (UK) in the early 1980’s referring to gaming Quatre Bras and Waterloo with Airfix Plastic figures at 10 figures per battalion! Years later I had moved on, and although the club I belonged to had a scattering of players who played Napoleonics in 15mm (with Corps d’Armee rules) and 25mm (with club rules developed from Paddy Griffith works) I had moved on to 1/300th scale (6mm) to enable large grand battles with huge forces, and was using the Anschluss “Ebb & Flow” rules – designed for fighting large mass battles in 1/300th scale, and representing every battalion and skirmisher formation, and using no dice! Frank Chadwick’s Volley & Bayonet was also around, and although a generally good rule set it best suited 1/300th scale (which I we played for a while and got quite good game results historically) – but which for me lacked the visual appeal.

Both E&F and V&B were great rule sets for micro-figures, depending on what you wanted to simulate, but by this time the days of 6mm Horse & Musket for me were over…

However with a change of cities and clubs interest waned and I found myself again faced with 15mm Corps d’Armee. Around this time Napoleon’s Battles emerged – I dabbled with the idea in 15mm for a while, played a few games, but on the whole was not overly inspired and again lost interest – not before buying a large mountain of 15mm lead! SHAKO (first edition) also emerged around this time, interested me, but most Napoleonic Gamers in my area lost interest or didn’t like the rules – the 15mm players went back to Corps d’Armee or similar, the 28mm players moved on to Principles of War (POW). It was POW that reignited my interest in Napoleonics, and since then I have been endeavouring to build my first decent sized 28mm Napoleonic Army(s). While POW got me enthused several of the gamers in my area again lost interest and 28mm Napoleonic’s faded for a few years – however, now with the arrival of SHAKO II, and renewed interest by some of the local Napoleonic players, on am on my way to a new era of Napoleonic Gaming in 28mm!

I hope to start adding review and commentary about SHAKO II, After Action Reports, and photos, in the future…

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