Platoon Forward for Napoleonics

Joe Legan wrote the excellent Platoon Forward which is a character based campaign system that allows you to add and extra layer of personality to WW2 skirmish gaming.

As soon as I had read the introduction I knew it could be used in a number of other periods, Colonial through to Horse and Musket.

Very often our Skirmish games had been stale encounters with little context of the wider campaign, players would through their troops against impossible odds because it was the last turn of the game.

Platoon Forward has changed that, our lead heroes have some depth they react differently based on their character traits, perhaps the biggest changing to our skirmish gaming is the use of the scenario generation rules and the incorporation of enemy blinds, common through out all of the Too Fat Lardies Rule sets. You never quite know what you will be facing or how many.

We have adapted the Platoon Forward tables for our Zulu War games through to the current encounters set in the age of Napoleon.

Our inhouse adaptions can be found below.

Type A Blinds

Type A Blind
D10	Battle	Patrol
1 - 4	As per Platoon Forward	As per Platoon Forward
5	Infantry Section (1,2 Militia, 3-6 Regular)	As per Platoon Forward
6	As per Platoon Forward	As per Platoon Forward
7 - 8	Infantry Section (1,2 Militia, 3-6 Regular)	Infantry Section (1,2 Militia, 3-6 Regular)
9 - 10	D6. 1 – 5 Infantry Squad (1,2 Militia, 3-6 Regular) and Platoon Leader, 6 Artillery Piece.	Infantry Section (1,2 Militia, 3-6 Regular) plus Platoon Leader

Type B Blinds

Type B Blind
D10	Battle	Patrol
1 - 3	As per Platoon Forward	As per Platoon Forward
4	As per Platoon Forward	As per Platoon Forward
5	Cavalry Section	As per Platoon Forward
6 – 7	Cavalry Section	Regular Musket Section.
8	Artillery Piece.	Cavalry Section
9	2 Cavalry Sections plus Platoon Leader or Artillery Piece plus Platoon Leader.	Cavalry Section
10	2 Cavalry Sections plus Platoon Leader or Artillery Piece plus Platoon Leader.	Cavalry Section

Type C Blinds

Type C Blind
D10	Battle	Patrol
1 - 4	As per Platoon Forward	As per Platoon Forward
5	Artillery Piece.	As per Platoon Forward
6	Cavalry Section or General Staff	2 Cavalry Sections plus Platoon Leader or Artillery Piece plus Platoon Leader.
7 – 8	Artillery Piece.	Regular Musket Section.
9 - 10	2 Cavalry Sections plus Platoon Leader	Cavalry Section

When generating Friendly supports the following should be replaced.
Artillery replace with Cavalry.
Armour replace with Field Artillery.
Light Support replace with Skirmish Section
Engineers replace with Veteran or Guard Section
Anti-Tank Gun Replace with Field Artillery.

Platoon Forward is a fantastic system that presents club players or the solo player with a hidden enemy that can change from game to game. Running in at £7.00 it has given us one of the best returns in a rule set for a long while.