This a simple house rules proposal, esp. for those who play without Tactician cards.
It always struck me as a little gamey and ahistorical that infantry never fails to form square if ordered, as long as its owner has a card to play. While it didn't happen often, Napoleonic infantry did sometimes fail to form fast enough, or had their squares broken by charges. I came up with a fairly easy little house rule that allows for some degree of unpredictability in cavalry/infantry encounters.
Basically, when the owning player declares that they want to form square, they must roll a six-sided die. In order for their unit to form square, they must roll at or below the unit's "square factor"--typical figures would be a 4 for an LT (4/6 or 2/3 chance of forming square), 5 for GR (5/6 chance), 6 for Guards (6/6, automatic). To account for the "weight" of charges and to get what I think would be the right numerical spread of success/failure, I propose that LN have a 4 against light cav. and a 5 against heavy cav., essentially giving them a 4.5.
A few obvious modifiers-- +1 if stacked with a leader, -1 if reduced to one strength.
That's pretty much it; an inf. that rolls successfully forms square as normal, and its owner plays a card face down. If it fails, the cav. attacks normally, and no card is played. An inf. only needs to roll once successfully in order to form square, and does not need to re-roll against subsequent turns to remain squared (unless of course it comes out of square voluntarily). If an inf. fails to form but survives the cavalry attack, it can attempt to reform whenever it is next attacked by cavalry (including during the same attack sequence, if it is forced to retreat and attacked again by the same cav. unit when it exploits).
Attached you'll find summary chart for reference.
Since I have played Russia and France most extensively--as you can probably tell from my scenarios--I have used Russian and French unit types as examples, but it's easy to extrapolate to the other powers.
My friend and I are testing it out for the first time. My sense is that cavalry attacks are sufficiently rare, and the square factors sufficiently high, that this will not impact gameplay much, but maybe it creates some incentive to charge LN infantry with heavy cavalry, with a 1/3 chance of overrun.
Thanks for your attention as always!
Kirill
| Type | French | Russian |
| LN | 4 | 4 (+1 LC)* |
| LT | 4 | 4 |
| GR | 5 | 5 |
| GLT | 5 | |
| GG | 6 | |
| YG | 6 | |
| OG | 6 | |
| MI | 3 | 3 |
The square factor represents the unit's chances, out of 6, of successfully forming square.
Units with a leader attached receive a +1 increase to their square factor.
Units reduced to 1 strength experience a -1 reduction to their square factor.
* LN receive +1 to their square factor when attacked by LC, GLC, COS, or (M)LNCR
Dice guide
| Sq. Factor | Units fails to form on |
| 5 |  |
| 4 |  |
| 3 |  |
| 2 |  |