Description

Legacy of Glory is a set of rules for fighting tactical Napoleonic battles. The preferred figure scale is 1:60 and the ground scale is 1" = 50 meters. Play is divided into 2-hour Grand Battle Turns, with each Grand Battle Turn subdivided into six tactical turns. Players normally take the role of army and corps commanders, and receive a variable number of command points each Grand Battle Turn, the actual number being determined by the talent rating of the historical general they're representing and the roll of two 10-sided dice. Commanders issue orders to the units under them, with each order requiring a different number of command points. Once an order is issued, there's some delay before it can be executed. The minimum delay depends on distance between the commander issuing the order and the most distant unit affected by it, and there's a variable number of tactical turns of additional delay, dependent on the quality of the generals involved and the roll of two ten-sided dice, before the order actually gets carried out. The smallest units on the board are infantry battalions, cavalry regiments, and artillery batteries, but orders are issued only down to division (or elite brigade level).

Actions within a tactical turn are divided up into multiple phases, most of which are skipped in any particular turn because they don't apply (e.g., the infantry combat resolution phase is skipped if no infantry units are in melee this tactical turn). The designers state in the foreword that one of their objectives is that experienced players should be able to run wall-clock time and game time just about in synch--that is, a Grand Battle Turn should not take more than 2 hours to play, even at the hottest point in the battle.

The original rules came in a bookcase-sized box, and included a rulebook (with rating charts for units and generals, by nationality), three pages of combat charts, three sheets of thin board status markers, and a pair of different-colored 10-sided dice. An updated set of rules was supposed to be issued in 2000-2001, but appears to have fallen by the wayside. Some play test versions of the updated rules do exist.

These are NOT simple rules. They require a fair amount of knowledge of the Napoleonic period to play, since they reward historical formations and tactics and penalize certain forms of rule-lawyering. The ground scale requires a fair amount of playing area, enough that most historical battles could only be put on by a gaming club or run as a convention event.