Good day Gentlemen
I would like to ask, if I may, for a show of hands if you are using older rule systems dating from the era of Featherstone, Grant, Young etc. for your iNation games and/or 18th century war gaming?
I suspect from my recent visits to many of the iNation blogs and the replies to 'the war game' posts on various fora that this may be the case. If so, I would also be interested in a show of hands as to how many of you play them as written or have developed in house amendments or additional rule sections.
Reason? Would those that answered be interested in a wiki to share their experiences with rules writing and amending with an emphasis on early to mid 18th century warfare with the option of visual demo's or AAR's
In this day of "old school rules" becoming increasingly popular and somewhat "new school", the release of revamped Grant and Featherstone rules I'm thinking it might be of interest to the enthusiast. What is your opinion?
regards
dave
Great news that Jeff is posting again, if in limited form, huzzah!
2 hours ago
12 comments:
Dave,
In the tradition of Grant, Young, etc. I have been playing my own rules . . . written to fit my ideas of what I wanted to emphasize.
But I do believe that quite a few of us use either "Charge!" or "The War Game".
-- Jeff
Not me. Might and Reason played as written. Love 'em.
-J
Home written rules would definitely be a welcome addition to the formation of a wiki/forum.
A suggestion raised by a TMP member was the inclusion of a campaign rules section which again would be a welcome addition, as many of us have to create our own campaign rules.
regards
dave
Grants The Wargame for me, plays well and can be adapted easily.
Using my own, developed out of a set written for the ACW by Charlie Wissencraft.
Down the club I tend to use Black Powder.
Charge based rules for me with a few tweeks for based up figures.
M &R for me..no time whatsoever for "old school"
Charge! here, with no modern 18th century rules at all....
Hooked to the hobby by 'The War Game' (greatly superior to 'Charge!' imho), replacing the artillery templates with dice throws, less 'debatable' and more consistent with the way musketry effect is assessed.
Fond memories of WRG 1685-1835: simple, fast and with a pleasant 'Old School' feel with its 'Bang! You're dead!' dice.
Easy to 'fine tune' for a given sub-period, e.g. by adding severe restrictions on the use of skirmishers, attack columns, infantry squares… in a Lace Wars context.
Easy to convert to visually appealing 'big battalions' simply by doubling the number of ranks and the number of 'to hit' dice / 'fighting element' (& giving a 50% saving throw to artillery and other models, the number of which stays unchanged). A 'standard' unit of 8 companies / divisions (of 6 infantrymen or 4 has all the tactical / visual flexibility one can wish for.
A practice I advocate regardless of the rules used is to refrain from removing casualties. I adopted it with WRG Ancients 6th Ed. when Phil Barker mentioned it in a private letter while preparing 7th and was definitively convinced. The 'rationale' -that casualties cause the unit to shrink in depth rather than frontage- applies even to 18th C. linear warfare, at least within the limits of losses a unit can suffer without automatically breaking under most rules.
This requires a *little* record keeping -for each unit ticking squares on a scaled line on a sheet of squared paper- but the advantages are worth the effort.
WRG Ancients also had visual conventions for showing the 'state' of an unit without littering the battlefield with markers.
I prefer Featherstonian type rules for Mid -18th century - simple mechanisms that don't distract too much from wargaming tactics, and no over emphasis on "realism". Those who care to can read a little more about my rules on my latest posting.
http://notjustoldschool.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/wigs-and-wine-updated.html
Chris
My little playing group have dabbled with Grant rules but didn't get too excited with them. I like them!
More recently we have experimented with Featherstones ACW rules and the group is a bit more keen on them. We will probably make a few amendments though.
We are about to check out Slim Mumfords Ancient Rules from the 1970's.
Details on my blog:
http://jim-duncan.blogspot.co.uk/
Jim
Not much old school for me, 18th C mostly use Age of Reason (first linear minis rules for 25mm minis I was introduced to) or SHAKO.
For Napoleonics I like Napoleons Battles, SHAKO.
The only 'nod' to the old school stuff is Bruce Quarrie's "Napoleon's Campaigns in Miniature", which I have experimented with the minis rules and really like his approach to the campaign situation and build-up details.
I have used many different home-spun rules, including Bluebear Jeff's "Tricorne Wars", which certainly includes much more 'chrome' for the battlefield commanders than just about any of the others I have used.
There was one that had 'command cards' that just got silly with the variations that could come about - so much so that you almost could not predict what any unit would do at any time (light horse being the worst) including changing sides of the battle (ON THE BATTLEFIELD!).
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