I’ve gotten this question a couple of times now. Was Pub Battles inspired by Napoleon’s Triumph? Surprisingly, no. Though I can see how people would think that.
Where did Pub Battles come from then? It actually started from us playing mini rules, except we hated the idea of painting and storing lots of minis! What was it? Napoloen’s Battles from Avalon Hill that came with starter counters to use until you replaced them with minis later? That’s what put us on this path.
We started making our own custom cardboard counters to play mini games on maps. Then we moved on to Kriegspiel. We loved the realistic period looking maps of Kriegspiel.
Pub Battles actually started with cardboard counters. Then metal metal rectangle pieces. They looked nice but were too small to see and too hard to pick up. We started experimenting with different sizes of pieces and materials to find the most natural and easy size to grab and move around. Once we had the piece, then it was just a matter of sizing the maps and movement to match!
I actually have a copy of Napoleon’s Triumph but we’ve never played it. We never seem to be able to carve that much time out of our schedules these days. Interesting how they developed in completely different ways but ended up looking similar. I think you will find the actual game play entirely different.
It would be fun to see somebody do a comparison/contrast article/review on Pub Battles and Napoleon’s Triumph. Is anybody interested in doing this? Let us know!
I just remembered. Another key source inspiration for Pub Battles was actually Total War Shogun. I’m writing another blog on this soon.
Sur it is different : understand all the rules of Simmon game is costly in time and you have to read it and understand it again if you let the game sleep a couples of months. Pub battles games are intuitive and simple to keep in mind. Just a quick read and go to play with it. Then you can concentrate yourself about the battle.
Nevertheless I love the look of the kriegspiel like all the wargamers i presume : and i do think pub battles come from kriegspiel rather than Simmons games (whom games look like kriegspiel too).