SHADOW OF THE EAGLES

◗ caliverbooks.com ◗ £29.50

Last month I reviewed Osprey’s Absolute Emperor: rules for the Napoleonic period designed for Revolutionary Wars to Waterloo. Well they do say that the problem with busses is that there’ll be another one along in a minute... Caliver Books have sent their latest hardback rule set: Shadow Of The Eagles: Wargames Rules For The French Revolutionary & Napoleon and – as ‘choice’ is something I spoke about in last month’s (and indeed this month’s) editorial – I guess we all need to be careful what we wish for!

Written by Keith Flint (author of Osprey’s Honours Of War rules) this is a splendidly produced, A4 full colour hardback. It is sprinkled with some pretty art (with a splendid cover painting by Chris Collingwood); and is liberally peppered with very decent photography of well painted 28mm figures on cracking terrain. So that’s all off to a good start.

The rules are designed principally for what can certainly be thought of as a classic Napoleonic period historical wargame: with 10-20 units per side, and aimed at lasting for a couple of hours. In Napoleonic terms, that makes it a divisional level game, with the overall commander controlling a division of perhaps three to five brigades, along with a few units acting independently.

Rules are comprehensive, I would say: certainly more detailed than Absolute Emperor but – whether that’s your thing or not – you do have another choice. Dice employed are described ‘normal d6’ (just checks his calendar... yup: still 2021...) with just the odd ‘radical’ pair of Average Dice thrown for some movement (specifically fall backs). You’ll also need a snappy, inch-delineated tape measure. Units are designed for maybe 16 to two dozen Infantry and half that for cavalry and you might want to use some tokens to indicate casualty markers unless you want to do bookkeeping. The game turn is split into five phases: Initiative; Movement (side A moves then side B); Firing (simultaneous); Close Combat (again, simultaneous but with the order of play determined by the initiative winner from phase 1); Generalship and Rallying.

When it comes to comparative levels of detail, to give just one example of differences between Absolute Emperor

(specifically one that I touched on last month) and Shadow Of The Eagles, the former has only one type of Artillery, where as the latter splits this into Light (4 pdr); Medium 6 pdr to 9 pdr); and Heavy (over 12 pdr). Bear in mind that I’m not advocating one over the other, I’m just trying to give an comparison of the level of detail employed by the two systems.

The rule book also contains some useful graphics showing things like infantry and cavalry formations, skirmishers and skirmishing screens which are very handy, and gives options for other elements which don’t always feature in rulesets like, say, pre-game bombardment. The rules are followed by some notes and then Wars and Campaigns and (what are effectively) army lists. Finally there are a couple of scenarios – A Divided Enemy and Control the River – which are readily adaptable, ‘Red versus Blue’ games, and are pretty flexible. There’s a third scenario – “Borodino (a la Asquith)” – which is a nice touch and a little more involved. All have good maps and clear instructions.

The author says in the rules that they are not aimed at competition play however they do seem pretty comprehensive but are not bafflingly written in ‘legalese’ which is a very good thing. The QR sheet at the rear is just an A4 double sided which is always an excellent sign!