DisclaimerNapoleonic Wars offers a unique competitive experience that cannot be found in any other Mount & Blade module. NW offers the definitive tools for complex, organised tactics and its regimental scene embodies this to the fullest extent. Groupfighting, while generally on a much smaller scale, is unique in giving an equal playing field to every player - the only difference between each one being their skill. Thousands of players have passed through this module at one time or another, competing at different levels, and every individual that has taken part has left their personal mark in some way. Everyone has their own story and their own memories, and all of them are unique and special.
The competitive scene of NW has existed since the release of the module, and arguably even before that on Mount & Musket, which makes judging and comparing players from different time periods incredibly difficult. This issue is exacerbated by the absence of detailed statistics and recordings for many eras. While the tournament archive produced by Tardet and Tiberias has been a great help in this regard, there is no way for us to be able to evaluate every tournament, every team and every player fairly. I hope that everyone who reads the above lists has that in mind as they do so.
In making this list, a combination of memory, recordings, statistics, old list threads, tournament pages and archives were used. All of these were reviewed not only by myself and Herishey, but by close to a dozen other community members - all of whom had their input evaluated fairly and equally to create the most accurate lists possible.
What makes sense one of the greatest then? Attempts to answer this question have filled articles, books and videos in all fields where humans engage in competition, and even fields where humans don't engage with the primary aspect of competing it is brought up on a regular basis. When looking at examples of fully fleshed out esports, we noticed three things: Firstly, people try to define a set of criteria that is supposed to reflect the complexity of the given task in their fields. Secondly, the element of time plays a vital role because it adds context and meaning. Thirdly, unless a certain criteria is directly measured in statistics, the assessment of the greatness of someone is and always will be subjective. Even if a certain criteria is directly measured by statistics, the evaluation and importance of that criteria compared to the other ones is subjective.
Inevitably, this means that despite our best attempts to be fair and impartial in assessing the greatness of NW's legends, there is no doubt that there are many flaws in our lists due to the subjective nature of the evaluation process. Therefore, should you find yourself disillusioned with your rating or feeling as though you have been underrated, do not worry. Each individual knows best what they have achieved, who they are better than, what their mark on the game is, and no list or rating can degrade that experience.
What makes someone one of the best of all time?This takes us back to the set of criteria that we just mentioned above: the criteria that are always established before rating greatness. In the case of NW, we have mainly looked at the following criteria in order to assess the greatness of a player: Raw mechanical ability, gamesense and awareness, the ability to teamplay and communicate, clutch and fear factor, the dominance of a player compared to other players in their role, the importance of the era relative to other eras, longevity, their successes and of course the importance of the player within their team.
Based on our understanding of these terms, that will most likely be congruent with the understanding of most but certainly not all players, the ratings are based on an evaluation of every player in these categories. Even if we had the use of clear statistics for K/D, most of the above categories are not reflected at all, whereas others, for example, the amount of kills someones has gotten might give you an idea of their raw mechanical ability, but certainly not a clear, objective assessment.
Additionally, we are fully aware that some of the categories have a high positive correlation. For example, should a player be hugely dominant compared to the other players of their role in an era, their fear factor is most likely equally high.
ResourcesThe primary resource for this list is Tardet and Tiberias' tournament archive, which we are very grateful for being given access to. Additionally, Herishey's infinite memory provided a great cornerstone for us to work from and evaluate the accuracy of using actual statistics and factual data. We have scoured dozens of tournament boards, looked at hundreds of events and tournaments, consulted a huge number of highly respected community members - both new and old gen - and have completed a work which we genuinely feel reflects the magnanimity and scale of the NW scene. I must also give thanks to Scar for his permission to use the Native version of this thread as a template from which I could adapt the bbcode. While I could have designed an aesthetic myself, there is no doubt that every forum piece produced by Scar comes with the best look possible.
The following people helped out and were happy to have their involvement made public:
- Gibby (base lists, bbcode adaptation, opinion on all lists)
- Golden (opinion on all lists)
- Herishey (provided vast majority of names, opinion on all lists)
- Python (opinion on all lists)
- Elsse (opinion on all lists)
- Evanovic (opinion on some eras)
- Eddie (opinion on some eras)
- Shadey (header and sub-headers)
- Drake (opinion on all lists)
- Stark (opinion on all lists)
- Rikkert (helped with both regimental lists)
- Tardet (provided a lot of data for the player ratings/groupfighting teams lists)
- Tiberias (provided a lot of data for the player ratings/groupfighting teams lists)
- Water (opinion on some eras)
- MarxeiL (opinion on some eras)
- DOMI (opinion on some eras)
- Kore (opinion on some eras)
- Gi (helped with the all time regimental list)
Many more people had a hand in these ratings, but only the above explicitly stated that they are happy for their involvement to be made public.