The Age of Eagles is a set of rules for Napoleonic Wargaming. It was based on the popular Fire and Fury rules for the American Civil War. The rules are designed for fighting large scale actions involving corps or whole armies, with the smallest game unit being a brigade. Each infantry or cavalry figure represents 90 men. Each Ground scale is 1 inch to 120 yards (1 mm : 4.32 m) which is a scale of 1 : 4,320.

Check out the Gallery pages for lots of photos of 15mm figures.

Although not on show much at club meetings yet, several club members use these rules outside the club to fight large 15mm battles.

There is an active Yahoo discussion group and website.

See http://www.ageofeagles.com

As with all Napoleonic rules, command and control is important. Each turn to move a brigade, it is necessary to roll a dice and add any applicable factors from a small list. As brigades take casualties, they become harder to control. This may reduce or stop their movement. In bad cases they may refuse to change formation, retreat or even rout from the table. This severe behaviour tends to only happen towards the end of a battle.

Turn Sequence

Each turn represents 30 minutes. Sequence is :-

1. Initiative roll-off by players.
2. Movement by 1st player.
3. Shooting by 2nd player, then by 1st player.
4. Combats are resolved by both players
5. Breakthrough movement by 1st player and breakthrough combats if any.
6. Movement by 2nd player.
7. Shooting by 1st player, then by 2nd player.
8. Combats are resolved by both players.
9. Breakthrough movement by 2nd player and breakthrough combats if any.

Basing

Basing for the majority of infantry (those that fought in 3 ranks) is the same as for Napoleon's Battles - 4 figures (2 ranks of 2) on a base with 3/4" frontage x 1" deep (19mm x 25mm). Basing for infantry that fought in 2 ranks (such as British and later Portuguese) is slightly wider at 1-1/8" than the 1" of Napoleon's Battles. This is so close that rebasing is not essential. For those metrically inclined, 1" = 25.4mm.

Napoleon's Battles was very popular in recent years but has fallen out of favour. This often occurs after people become too familiar with the good and bad points of a set of rules and look to try something new. New rule sets often use similar basing to previous rule sets so as to encourage players to try the new rules and to reduce the amount of re-basing required.

Cavalry has 2 figures (1 rank of 2) on a 1" x 1" base. This looks much better than the 1" frontage x 2" deep base with 4 figures used for Napoleon's Battles. By cutting the Napoleon's Battles bases in half, they can be easily converted to Age of Eagles. 

Artillery bases have the same number of figures as Napoleon's Battles, but different slightly in size. The frontage of a base depends on the number of guns in the historical battery. A cannon or howitzer model has 2 figures if it is light artillery or 3 figures if it is heavy artillery.

Divisional commanders are usually a single figure on a 1" x 1" base. Higher commanders usually have more figures and a larger base to suit.