GAMING AIDS

Gaming Aids

Below are gaming materials created by CSGA members for use by anyone interested in these areas of gaming. Please feel free to download anything that interests you.

Ancients Tools

Go Tell the Spartans

Contributions by: Lamont Anderson, Paul Pease, Luis Nunez, Ed Strecker

"Go Tell the Spartans..." is a set of rules that is available as a free download from this site. These rules are still in beta test at this moment (v1.53 [new again and very much improved, thanks to playtesting by Mike Garland, Ed Strecker and Erick Nason] now available)- but they may be near completion at this point; future rules changes will focus on "chrome". The latest change has eliminated most ofthe klutzy modifiers by incorporating many of them into a single unit property, and the fire-melee-recoil rules have been greatly simplified. Downloads include the rules and an OB-Tagmaker Excel spreadsheet that semi-automatically creates unit tags as you fill out an OB. Just click on the Unit Type on Page 2 (Elephants, for example), and you get a dropdown list; select the unit, and all the unit specs are filled out on your tag (IF you have completed your OB on Page 1). All of these elements are primarily authored by Lamont Anderson.

Templates PDF.pdf

GoTelltheSpartansv1.53.pdf

GTStags2.0.xls

Napoleon's Battles Tools

Here you have access to a number of "tools" or "rules" that have been developed for Napoleon's Battles (NB) by various club members over the years. Each segment below will describe the resource and provide a link for downloading. These files are either Word documents or Excel spreadsheets.

CSGA Campaign and House Rules for NB

Primary Author: Tex Robinson
Contributions by: Paul Pease, Luis Nunez, Lamont Anderson

These rules were developed over 3-4 years where each player builds a corps/army using 1812 specifications and plays it against one or more opponents. As a result of tabletop performance, a player's personal command rating will increase (everyone starts their corps commander at 3" P (4) -1) and his force will get larger over time (the Emperor/King sends him new troops as a reward!). This set of rules is not the most current (a problem with constant revision and tweaking), but it is fairly complete. Note that the beautiful formating and graphics arrangements in this document were done by Luis Nunez.

The Nunez Tables for NB

Author: Luis Nunez

Have you ever constructed an NB force on a point basis and asked yourself "what kind of historical general can I get for 11 points?"; or "why can't I have one unit characteristics sheet that has all of the stats for the Poles, French, and Berg, rather than three orange cards?" Well, Luis created two MS Excel spreadsheets that we find invaluable here at CSGA.

The first spreadsheet is the NB Roster tables; it includes instructions for use on sheet 2.

The second spreadsheet is the Generals table, which has all of the Historical Generals from the Blue Book.

Both of these sheets make intelligent use of filters for selecting, for instance, all French cavalry generals who cost 15 points as a corps commander.

Should you find these tables useful and wish to share them with colleagues, be sure to credit Luis for all of his hard work in creating them. Perhaps just calling them the "Nunez Tables" is enough.

Campaign Rules Oct 03.doc

Campaign Rules Oct 03.pdf

NBroster.xls

Generals.xls

CSGA NB Rank Ladder and Handicap System for Competitive Gaming

Author: Lamont Anderson

Our long-term commitment to playing NB in a tournament format has led to the evolution of our campaign rules, and to the current mechanism that we use to establish a rank ladder (like a chess ladder) and gaming rewards that reflect relative performance on the table top. In other words, in tournament play, an experienced gamer with a larger army is expected to win out over an inexperienced player with a smaller army. Accordingly, the expected outcome should not yield great rewards to the victor. On the other hand, a lower ranked general who beats a superior has accomplished something special, and he deserves all the reward he can get.

This system is an MS Excel spreadsheet that keeps track of Rank Points and the Rank Ladder and determines the rewards for gaming in each tournament battle. Players enter their names, general quality (P=1, A=2, V=3, G=4, C=5, E=6), and army size (in point value), and then enter casualty points and points for taking objectives at the end of the game. The algorithm then determines the Rank points earned and the number of reinforcement rolls earned by each player or side. Rank points are entered in the Data sheet, reinforcement rolls are entered from a d100 roll on the battle page (which yields the types of reinforcements earned; see the NEW Ruleset above for explanation). The Rank Ladder is then sorted on Rank Point totals, and you are ready to play another game.

Improved OB Label Maker for NB

Author: Lamont Anderson

So. You crank out that great OB for the 1814 Battle of the Mincio River, Austrians trying to force a river crossing against the Italians, and now you have to make all of the unit labels as well. That was then. Now, with this MS Excel spreadsheet, you make your OB (it automatically calculates total men and total # of brigades) on Sheet 1, go to Sheet 2 and click on the drop down boxes to fill in the label cells, format the label cells for color and border, and print (using File>Set Print Area saves ink).

Note that the front page of the spreadsheet is designed for army construction in our campaign system, but you can ignore the irrelevant parts. You will want to fill in the yellow column with "I" for infantry, "C" for cavalry, "G" for gun, so the correct army size can be calculated. On the second sheet, just click on the top cell of each tag for a drop down (leaders and infantry and cavalry), or the 2nd cell in a gun tag (last tag on the right in each contiguous block of tags).