My name is Dennis Dubois. For thirty-four years I taught history at a high school here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, mostly American history to juniors and, when they would let me, an elective on Europe from 1789 to 1815 that I am told some of the students still talk about. I retired in 1993. I have been painting Napoleonic soldiers a little more than half an inch tall since 1971, and by my wife Barbara's count, which she keeps in a spiral notebook because she does not trust mine, I have painted about 2,400 of them.

On the second Saturday of every month, six of us gather in my basement around a Ping-Pong table, put a battlefield on it, and fight one of the battles of the period over again, as near to the real thing as we can make it. Sometimes history repeats itself. Sometimes Marshal Ney is played by a retired pharmacist with an aggressive streak, and it does not.

This page is for the club, for anyone in the Lancaster area who would like to join us, and for anyone anywhere who loves the period. One of our members, Karl, put it together for me. Karl was in my European history elective in 1972. He now writes computer programs for a bank and is the only one of us who knows what a "frame" is, and he has promised not to use one.

We are six, and we have been the same six since 1994, which in a hobby like ours is a sort of miracle.

We would welcome a seventh, especially someone with Bavarians or Saxons. You need not own an army to start. Every one of us began by pushing someone else's figures around the table.

We play Napoleon's Battles, the boxed rules from Avalon Hill. We chose them because they let six old men fight a whole battle, an army corps or two a side, in one Saturday. The unit on the table is the brigade, the generals are figures of their own, and a good general matters, which is as it should be. A bad general matters even more, which is also as it should be.

Over the years we have added a few changes of our own. Purists may avert their eyes.

1. Hidden troops. Anything out of sight of the enemy, behind a wood or a ridge, is marked by a blank card until someone could reasonably see it. This alone has made our games far more like the real thing. Most of the real thing was not knowing.

2. Written orders. Before the first turn each commander writes his orders on an index card. To change them during the game he must send a mounted courier figure across the table to the general concerned. Couriers can be late. Couriers can be captured. Gordon once had a courier ride straight into a French cavalry brigade, and I am not sorry.

3. The reinforcement die. Troops that arrived during the real battle arrive at the historical hour, plus or minus a die roll. History is a guide and not a timetable.

4. No measuring before you commit. You announce the move, then you measure. Maurice's rule, and the best one we have.

5. Nightfall. The battle ends when the sun went down on the real day. We look it up.

Our figures are 15mm: fifteen millimeters from the sole of the foot to the eyes, a little more than half an inch. They are mounted several to a stand on cardboard bases, and a brigade of infantry is a handful of stands. The great advantage of 15mm over the larger figures is that a whole battle will fit on a table you can reach across. The great disadvantage is my eyes. I paint now with a magnifying lamp that Barbara gave me for my sixtieth birthday, with a card attached that read "So you'll stop complaining."

The table is a standard Ping-Pong table, nine feet by five, with the net taken down, a sheet of green felt over the top, and Maurice's hills under the felt. For most battles we lay it out so that the table covers two or three miles of country from end to end. Roads are strips of brown felt. Woods are lichen on bases. Streams are blue yarn, and if your cavalry crosses blue yarn, it is crossing a stream and slows down accordingly, no arguing.

Most recently: on September 11 we refought Quatre Bras, the battle of June 16, 1815, two days before Waterloo. It was very close. Read the full report, with the orders of battle on both sides and what really happened alongside.

Next: Saturday, October 9. Jena and Auerstedt, both at once, on two halves of the table, just as they were fought on October 14, 1806. Gordon has the Prussians, and he knows how that day ended for them. He says he's going to do better. We shall see.

Also on this site: a painting guide to the French line infantry and the British redcoats of 1815, and the index of our refights since January of last year, with how each one came out.