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Volley & Bayonet Rules

The Volley & Bayonet rules were written and developed by Frank Chadwick and Greg Novak and was first published in 1994. A second edition, “Volley & Bayonet: Road to Glory”, was released in 2008. Like the first edition “Volley & Bayonet: Road to Glory” are a miniatures rules system designed to model warfare in the period from 1700 to 1890.

The aim of the rules is to not to model small scale actions but to allow major battles to be refought. As such the troop and time scale allow the deployment of large bodies of troops on the wargames table. Further, in Volley and Bayonet the role of the player is defined as that of corps or army commander, thus the divisional, and to a greater extent brigade or regiment detail is generally below the level of player involvement. Having such a wide time span the rules also use specific period rules, which allow the flavour of these “sub periods” to be added in, or removed, as required. This allows one basic set of rules to be used for armies from several periods.

Volley & Bayonet is not aimed at competition play, and certainly not for play between armies from different sub periods. It is however ideal for re-fighting historical battles, scenarios and entire campaigns. Indeed with Volley & Bayonet battles such as Gettysburg, Ligny or even Waterloo, seen below, can all be fought on your wargames table, something not possible with many other rule sets.