Some Pros and Cons

What are the advantages and disadvantages of playing Napoleon's Battles (or any other set of miniatures rules) on computer instead of using miniatures on a tabletop? Let's take a look...

(Some of the features of gaming this way are double-edged, and so appear under Pros and Cons.)

Pros

• There is no painting involved
• Starting a new game is a simple as running the relevant scenario editor and opening the game file.
• You can save as frequently as you want, allowing you to look back at the course of the battle.
• You are not limited by numbers of figures, so the big battles like Leipzig are within reach.
• The JTNB battlefield maps are in many cases much larger than those that can be created on the standard NB 5' x 9' table giving much more room for maneouvre. For example, the screenshot at the bottom of those post shows (most of) the JTNBs Austerlitz map, and the red rectangle shows the portion covered by the map from the NBI Austerlitz scenario.
• You are no longer constrained by the space available to you, both in terms of space for a gaming table and space needed for storage of figures and terrain.
• Play does not need to be completed in a single session. This means that you can break for dinner, a holiday, whatever, and find everything exactly how it was when you come back so you can pick up where you left off.
• Portability - if you're a laptop user, you can take your terrain and figures with you wherever you go.

Cons

• You don't get the true 3D view that a real life tabletop gives.
• There is no painting involved
• Solo play only. This system works best and is really only practical for someone playing solo. I supposed it's possible for two people to play the same scenario simultaneously while exchanging information about moves etc over Skype, but I can't imagine that being anything other than slow and impractical. Perhaps one day there will be a VASSAL module for Napoleon's Battles.
• You have to play on the maps you get with the games. There is no map editor. However the John Tiller Napoleonic Battles series covers the vast majority of French Revolutionary and Napoleonic engagements.
• No sound effects. The scenario editor doesn't have sound effects for movement, firing, etc. You can however, run another minimised instance of the game - in play mode - and have the background battlefield sounds that it provides.
• Play does not need to be completed in a single session. This can mean the player is more prone to distraction, possibly stretching games out unnecessarily.

The JBNBs map of the Austerlitz battlefield. The area covered by the NB
 scenario map is shown by the red rectangle.