Introducing sappers | Marshals Unleashed Napoleonic Wargaming

During the early 19th century, the role of sappers was not limited to traditional military engineering tasks such as building fortifications and digging trenches. Instead, they became an integral part of the offensive operations, responsible for breaching enemy defenses and creating avenues for the main attacking forces. These highly specialized engineers were trained to handle the dangers and challenges associated with undermining enemy positions and constructing siege works. The sappers were distinguished by their distinctive uniforms, which often included a leather apron to protect against splinters and tools such as axes, shovels, and explosives. Sappers possessed versatile skills in a wide range of engineering tasks. They were adept in the construction of pontoon bridges, vital for ensuring the rapid mobility of troops across rivers and obstacles. These engineers also played a pivotal role in the creation and maintenance of supply lines, building roads and repairing infrastructure to facilitate the movement of troops and supplies.

Abilities
In Marshals Unleashed Napoleonic wargaming sappers have the ability to build pontoon bridges, sandbag walls / barriers and wooden fences.

Advantages in using their tools
Blocking roads with wooden spike fences, building pontoon bridges to cross your troops across rivers, building sandbag fortifications to protect artillery and other units against cavalry attacks, sappers can also be used to breach through wooden gates, wooden palisades and fences, taking 3 turns to do so.

How to use in the gameplay
To build an element whether it be parts of a pontoon bridge, fence or sandbag fortifications, one turn is needed to add one element on the battlefield using one action point. It’s not allowed to use all 4 action points and add 4 elements in one turn. To build an element, the sapper unit must be positioned in the same battlezone ( the big squares on the battlemap) as the location you intend to build your element.Once elements are built, it is not possible to move them during battles.

Destroying sapper’s elements
Each element built by sappers can be destroyed by using artillery as howitzers, each element has a 2 damage point which can be marked by a damage icon upon the element. Add the damage icons on top of the wooden fences, sandbag barriers and at the sides of the floating pontoon bridges elements.

Unit statistics
Defense 4
Move 2 / charge range 1
Charge damage 2
Fire range 1
Fire damage 1

Unit sheet
The unit sheet consists of 8 sapper units and 4 elements of each type of build you want to use on the battlefield, you can print as many elements you need in order to prepare your campaign or battle.