Another C4ISR Test Game

Today, gaming buddy Don agreed to test C4ISR (my science fiction version of Command and Colors rules). I really liked the game, but more importantly, I think we both came up with what we did and did not like.

What we tried:

• Battle dice were 10-sided, with the faces: Infantry-Infantry-Armor-Artillery-Air-Grenade-Medic-Flag-Miss-Miss. Note that the odds are reduced compared to the Memoir '44 six-sided battle dice. Also note that artillery is hit on its own symbol now.
• Grenades only hit in close combat.

• Infantry attacking Anti-Personnel (AP) Targets: dice rolled are 3-3-2-2-1-1. (That is the number of dice at each hex range, so 3 dice at 1 and 2 hexes, 2 dice at 3 and 4 hexes, etc.)
• Infantry attacking Anti-Armor (AT) Targets: 4-2-2-1.
• Mech Infantry attacking AP Targets: 3-3-2-2-1-1.
• Mech Infantry attacking AT Targets: 4-2-2-1.
• Armor attacking AP Targets: 2-3-3-2-1-1.
• Armor attacking AT Targets: 4-4-3-3-2-2-1-1
• Artillery attack AP or AT Targets: 3-2-1. Note that for artillery this is not hex count, but board section count. In other words, 3 dice for the same board section, 2 dice for an adjacent board section, and 1 die for a board section two away. (On a normal gameboard there are six board sections: Left, Center, and Right for each half of the battlefield. For a Breakthrough-sized board there are nine board sections. For Overlord-sized boards it is 12 board sections and Overlord-Breakthrough-sized it is a whopping 18 board sections!)
• All units use 1 less die if the unit has taken any number of casualties.
• Terrain was more like BattleLore than Memoir '44. Rather than subtracting dice to attack in or out, the maximum number of dice were indicated instead. Buildings were 1 die shooting in and 2 dice shooting out (1 die for Armor shooting out). Woods were 2 dice in and no restrictions out. Hills were 2 dice up, 3 dice across (hill-to-hill) or down. We did not use any other terrain types. Artillery was unaffected by the battle dice restrictions of terrain, either in or out.

• Artillery count as AP targets.
• Mech Infantry and Self-Propelled Artillery count as AT targets.

• Light Infantry move 2 hexes and Battle or 3 hexes.
• Elite Light Infantry move 3 hexes and Battle.
• Mech Infantry move 4 hexes and Battle or 6 hexes.
• Armor move 6 hexes and Battle.
• Artillery move 1 hex or Battle.
• Self-Propelled Artillery move 2 hexes and Battle or 4 hexes.
• Units must stop when they enter the first hex adjacent to an enemy unit; they cannot move through.

• Units with support ignore 1 Flag.
• Units with support can Battle Back in close assault.
• Units are supported if two friendly units can provide them support.
• A unit can provide support to a unit it is adjacent to.
• An artillery unit can provide support to a unit within two hexes of it.
• A command unit can provide support to a unit within two hexes of it.

So, although the game is based heavily on Memoir '44, it really takes elements from all of the Richard Borg games. The idea is that C4ISR is at a much lower scale; each unit is a squad or platoon, at most. Each Town hex is more like a Building hex. Using boards from Squad Leader would be more appropriate, in terms of scale.

Units move and fire much farther. The Armor units being able to move 6 and fire 8 hexes means it has a large threat zone. Of course, at this scale, sufficient cover and line-of-sight-blocking terrain is a must.

There were a few other rules that we added, but they did not come into play. For example, the ability of a unit to move through a friendly unit. I also had a few ideas, but Don was not keen on them, so we set them aside.

So, how did it play? Very interesting, I think. The ability to ignore Flags due to support meant that units often stayed in formation. This in turn meant they could battle back in close assault, making them more likely to keep their positions without burning cards.

The long ranges often came into play, then we switched to everything being close assaults, and finally we went back to firing at 2-3 hex range, in order to avoid the battle backs.

The terrain had a great impact on the game. As most infantry was holed up in buildings, most battles were with 1 die, unless it was artillery. In fact, artillery is how we dug infantry out of buildings. We may have to change Armor to getting 2 dice in close assault against buildings to represent the effect of HE in enclosed spaces, but we will see. Using 1 die for infantry fighting house-to-house was a slow, slogging process, and I was fine with it.

Another interesting effect was the penalty of a die to a unit that lost one or more figures. This has a contrary effect to how you play Command and Colors normally, which is to focus fire on a unit until it is dead, and producing a victory point. This gives you an incentive to spread the fire around, pinning units here and there (my explanation of what the -1 die represented). Don focused on that tactic, and as a result a lot of my fire was reduced (but not all – firing into a building with a full unit or reduced still only gives you 1 die). I, on the other hand, kept trying to eliminate units and get to victory.

So, what did we want to change? Most things, actually. Although the game was fun, I could see the complexity in remembering how many dice to roll based on the range was going to be a problem. I mean, in Memoir '44 it is 3-2-1 for infantry, 3-3-3 for armor, and 3-3-2-2-1-1 for artillery. Pretty easy to remember. Infantry in Battle Cry is 4-3-2-1, artillery is 5-4-3-2-1, and cavalry 3, so it is also easy to remember. This model is not (although I did get the hang of it about 75% of the time, by the end of the game). Next experiment will be with a fixed number of dice, like BattleLore, with the same terrain effects (restricting the maximum number of dice, rather than subtracting dice). Also, we will probably extend the range of weapons even farther.

I think support should be a unit within two hexes. Aesthetically it looks much better. Units are not in solid phalanxes and supporting units can be in buildings across the road (i.e. one hex between). Artillery should provide support to any unit in its board section.

Our scenario was not really representative. I am not sure which scenario we played, but it was a Memoir '44 Breakthrough board scenario. The Allies were spread out and the Axis were concentrated, so the latter just started rolling over units eventually. But the low number of dice rolled, along with changing the probabilities of getting hits, meant that it took a long time. Our game last much longer than the normal Memoir game, about twice as long, and about 50% longer than a Breakthrough-board Memoir game.

Sorry no pictures, but it would have just looked like a Memoir game as I was using those figues as proxies. Not enough 6mm science fiction troops painted up yet.

New Figures from Onslaught Miniatures

Speaking of 6mm science fiction miniatures, expect some more comparison photos of the new figures from Onslaught Miniatures. When I made my purchase, Don (of Onslaught Miniatures) only had the Prowlers, Mantis Beasts, and Overseers at the time. I knew I wanted to get the Gashers, Stalkers, and Winged Stalkers, but when the newsletter came out saying that the Abominations were now out, I knew it was time to order.


Perfect for a Genestealer Cult army in 6mm.

Although I like these, and think they will be a blast to paint, I have to be honest and say I was looking forward more to his OTC (not-Tau). But I understand his position. If you start a miniatures line you need to finish it, otherwise people will complain about starting too many lines and finishing none. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. So I will have to wait patiently for the OTC and buy and paint the Abominations in the meantime. I am sure Don won't mind. At this price, neither will my wallet.

BattleLore over Vassal Tournament Update

Well, I am proud to say that I made it by the hairs of my chinny-chin-chin into the Semi-Finals for the BattleLore over Vassal tournament. I only had one bad loss (but it was bad) in the main rounds and I thought it had knocked me out as a contender, but it turns out only one player did not have at least one bad game. Of course, that one player was the guy I had to play in the Semi-Finals!

But, we played our match on Saturday and I lost 5-6 in the first game but won 6-2 in the second, for an 11-8 win in the match, moving me to the Finals.

Today, I watched the other two semi-finalists play and the winner of the match also lost 5-6 on the first game and won the second 6-2. (Weird. Not only that, but we both lost as the Goblin player and won as the Dwarf player.) Ironically, the winner was Chris, the guy I play BattleLore all the time over Vassal. I think I taught him too well! Worse still, he knows all my tricks!

So we will start the Finals this week. Wish me luck!

As for the Samurai Battles over Vassal tournament, I think that is dying a slow death. I did complete another round (there are six, plus semi-finals and finals), but have not gotten any response from the other players. As it turns out, Samurai Battles looked much better on rice paper than it plays. Very disappointing.

The Impact of the Turn Sequence on the Solo Gamer

Over on my Solo Battles blog I wrote an article about the impact that the turn sequence of a game's rules has on the solo gamer. I only mention it because it has gotten a number of very interesting and thought-provoking comments. If you are into game design, you might want to check it out.

Other Gaming News

I finally finished making a simple gameboard with a 2" square grid so I can start playing a gridded version of De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) 3.0. I have given up that the author is going to refine the rules enough to get out the geometric tricks, so as John Acar suggested on a thread on TMP, simply go to the grid; that always gets out tricks like kinked lines and such. I know I won't be able to play in tournaments using these rules, but I think I can get the guys locally to play it. Expect to start seeing some write-ups on my Dale's DBA blog.

Aztec Battleboard

 I have updated the battleboard for the Aztec faction, including a separate rules page, so you can print it double-sided. I decided to remove the Tomahawk Studios background, as someone suggested that people might find it confusing when this is an unofficial, fan-made variant, but also because this is less ink intensive for printing out. I may come up with a true ink-saving version once everything has been shaken out.

There are no changes to the Saga abilities; I think they worked out well in my test games, although they can always use more testing. The real addition to this version are the Cuachiqueh rules. These are a new unit type, basically an upgraded version of the Hearthguard. like the Irish Curaidh. The difference is that I made the Cuachiqueh two figures for 1 point, rather than buying 4 Hearthguard, designating two as this special unit type, then trying to balance advantages and disadvantages to justify the point cost. Personally, I think they did it wrong for the Irish, and if I were playing them, I would definitely buy the Curaidh as I believe they are under-costed.

After long discussions on the Mesoamerican Saga forum, I decided to keep the atlatl weapon as a "super javelin" rather than try to model it as a pilum (a pre-melee weapon), or as both. I have been reading more about the period, including Hassig's Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control and Castillo's The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2) Written by Himself Containing a True and Full Account of the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain. (The latter book is free on Kindle. There are free Kindle readers for the Mac, PC, iOS, and Android.) So far neither has given a really good impression about how the weapon was used, just that it had good penetrative powers. So "super javelin" it is, despite this You Tube video on atlatl versus steel armor.

My biggest problem, at the moment, is coming up with a new Saga ability for the Tlaxcaltec faction. I took out the Shielded Volley ability, which emulated the way Tomahawk Studios modeled shielded archer units for the Byzantines. Personally, I don't think that the model works, at least not for the combination of abilities I gave the Tlaxcaltec. So I scrapped that ability and am in search for a new replacement. Unfortunately, I have not really hit upon anything in Hassig's book about them, so it looks like it will just be something from the pool of abilities already out there that "fits". If you have any ideas, let me know.

Aztec Faction Rules

So that battleboard is already changed to the new style, including a rules page, but I am not going to publish it until I figure out what the new ability will be.

Ralph sent me some clarifications on his Bolas ability for the Inca faction, so I will update that and may re-publish soon, assuming all of the kinks are ironed out. I think there are more.

It turns out that there are some players in Mexico that are trying out these battleboards, or some variation of them. The more feedback, the better. Unfortunately no pictures or battle report, but it sounded like it was a game between the Aztecs and the Anglo-Saxons. (Who knew?) The good thing it that it did not seem that the Aztecs were over-powered compared to the Old World factions. Although I never expect these factions will be allowed in a tournament – they are starting to ban the use of banners, and those are official rules from an expansion – it is still good to hear that they play well with others.

Historical Gaming Night

The local gaming club wants to get something going for historical gaming – the idea is for one person to host a game, providing (or arranging for) the figures, terrain, etc. and doing the setup so that the other players can just roll in and start rolling dice – so we are going to give Saga a whirl as the first hosted game. I just bought a painted collection of "Vikings" (120 foot and 10 mounted) and started re-basing them on Saturday. I intend to take before and after pictures as I touch up the figures. (They are what you would call "wargaming standard" paint jobs for most of the figures, although some are pretty nice, especially the mounted.) Don has been collecting Normans, so the game will probably be those against a band of Vikings. As this is the first game for another local player (I will be refereeing, looking up rules, and generally keeping things moving) we will be keeping the forces to four points and I figured the Vikings are pretty straight forward to play.

As Don has never played the Normans, I think it will be an interesting challenge for him, despite the fact that he has more Saga games under his belt than his opponent. Normans have the inherent conflict of being half shooting army, half mounted melee. The goal will be to commit the mounted troops early enough to make an impact, but not so early that the missile troops have not softened up the enemy sufficiently. I cannot think of any worse result than throwing in the Knights and getting beaten up so badly that you feel compelled to retreat the unit for fear of losing a Saga die. Although the Knights may utterly crush their opponents, if the result is an exchange of your unit versus his, you have probably gotten the worst of the exchange.

I'll have to read the Norman battleboard, but I think it is as "conflicted" as the army composition is. If I recall correctly, it has both shooting abilities and mounted charging abilities. Personally I prefer abilities that can be applied to as many units as possible. So a board full of abilities that apply only to specific units is, in my mind, hard to play. The Vikings are relatively straight-forward. Their theme is to shed fatigue, so that is useful for most any unit they would have.

New 6mm Science Fiction Miniatures

Unfortunately, I was scheduled to paint the new Abominations from Onslaught Miniatures this weekend, but the preparation for the Saga game (which was originally scheduled for tonight) and Round 1 of the BattleLore tournament Finals took up all my time. I did get one figure completely painted (waiting for basing), and one of each of the others started. (I usually paint one figure completely in order to get an idea of what something will look like, and to help me decide what order to lay the colors down onto a figure.) The figures are very easy to paint, as the details are sufficiently raised or etched, and clearly visible once primed. Running a brush along a detail is usually sufficient to pick it out neatly.

Basically the Abominations are similar to the old Genestealer Cult Hybrids. Some figures have two arms, some three, and some four. Some of the arms have fingers on the hands while others have claws similar to their Prowler figures. I hope to get pictures up later this week, along with size comparisons.

In the meantime I "discovered" another line of 6mm science fiction figures: PFC/CinC. Their Solar Empire Marines line looks pretty good. In the past I have found CinC miniatures to be softer metal, and less well defined than GHQ. This line looks about the same, in that the figure looks more rounded or "softer" than Onslaught Miniatures or Microworld. Not that it is necessarily a bad thing, just different. Despite the name, it is not just Space Marines, however. They have a Felid race, intelligent, weapon-using Raptors, and another humanoid race. CinC also has a second line of 6mm science fiction vehicles. Most are of the GEV design, but the tracked tank hunter is a particularly interesting design, sort of like a shorter Merkava.

BattleLore Tournament

Round 1 (or two) of the Finals in the BattleLore tournament has been completed, and I won 8-2. Chris wanted to play the side with the Goblins first – as he sees it as the weaker side he wanted to get them out of the way – but our random draw of forces made for a pretty even affair with mostly human forces on both sides.

Chris came out of the gate swinging and drew first blood, taking out a critical unit of mine (the Dwarf Heavy Swords), on the flank I had planned to win on. We exchanged losses and were at 2-2 when "The Event" occurred: Chris drew, as a replacement to the card hand we both shared, the BattleLore card. Now the ironic part of all this is that Chris dreaded the event, figuring I would hose him with the card. I, on the other hand, did not want to play it, as you can only move three units on average (albeit, with large combat bonuses) and I had cards that would allow me to move more units. But by the time The Event occurred, Chris was pressing very hard on the flank I was trying to withdraw, so I played the card not because it was a good play for me, but because I could not risk him rolling a lot of Blue banners or Lore and completely crushing that flank. So I played it in order to deny him the card.

Well, that play was The Event because I used two units to attack and was lucky enough to break his attacking formation. I ended up reversing the situation on that flank, using my cavalry to chase down his fleeing troops who were desperately trying to reform. I intentionally pushed my one heavy cavalry unit in order to chase down a unit, knowing that it would be vulnerable to a counterattack. When the counterattack came, I had a First Strike card that allowed me to ambush the attacking unit and I rolled so well I destroyed the unit outright. (That was "The Second Event".) That put me at 5-2 and had resulted in the last formed resistance on that flank broken. With three units scattered on the flank and only three victory banners to go, I had my plan. Further, the cards had been cooperating and giving me access to card after card on that flank. Chris was well and thoroughly demoralized.

It took quite some time for me to whittle down the enemy units to a point that the time was ripe for "The Final Event". It came in the form of a Mounted Charge card, allowing me to pick off two strength 1 Goblin units hiding in the rear, and a strength 3 Sword unit. Chris had been prepared for this, and attempted to stave off the killing blow by holding onto an Evade card (allowing a unit to escape from combat), but I attacked all of the units in such a way that there was no retreat.

It was an exciting game (for me) and Chris is swearing vengeance, but honestly I think the forces were more evenly balanced than the games he and I both played in the Semi-Finals, which were heavily stilted against the Goblins. I have prepared the game and tonight Chris and I will do our deployment (and maybe a few turns), probably finishing the game either over the course of several week nights or next weekend.

Although I have had great fun in this tournament, and proud to have made it to the Finals, I am getting weary of the "pressure" of scheduling games and trying to notify people so they can watch (and then seeing almost no one show up). Now I have a few more email addresses, and a sense of how fun some of the guys might be to play, so I can probably get a few more games in the future. Not that playing Chris is a problem! He has obviously gotten better, and like me, likes to analyze the games afterwards; what worked and what did not.

Tlaxcaltec Battleboard

I have updated the Tlaxcaltec battleboard and created a faction rule page for Saga. I dropped the concept of modeling the warrior units as two separate units, one melee and one bow-armed. Now they are a sort of "super Warrior" unit that fights as well as any Warrior unit in melee, but can also fire bows. In order to keep in line with the Saga design philosophy – where each advantage has to be countered by an equal disadvantage – the bows cannot be fired on the move. (I admit that it is not much of a disadvantage, as no moving fire is still better than no fire, but this is a draft.)

To replace the Saga ability that supported the old warrior model, the Welsh Taunting ability was added. Seems like a dangerous sort of ability for the Tlaxcaltecs, but Ralph suggested that they use it to draw units into bow range, rather than onto Uneven Ground, which is the Welsh tactic.

The Tlaxcaltecs now have their version of the Cuachiqueh, so Berserkers for everyone!

The other difference from the Aztecs is the lack of atlatl. As that weapon is tied to a Saga ability, giving them the weapon meant giving up an ability. Overall, I think it is easier just to forego the atlatl for the Tlaxcaltecs as the Warriors and Levy are all missile-armed.

I think the Tlaxcaltecs will do pretty well. Although the Aztec battleboard is pretty focused (its theme is that it inflicts FATIGUE), the Tlaxcaltec board is designed to inflict casualties at range. So like the classic battles Don and I used to play with Welsh versus Anglo-Danes, one side strives to stay at range while the other side strives to get stuck in. If the former can inflict enough damage before the latter inevitably close the gap, they will probably win.

I am looking forward to trying out these new boards. First, however, I have a "normal" Dark Ages Norman versus Vikings game to umpire first.

Tlaxcaltec Faction Rules

If you have any questions regarding the battleboards or faction rules, feel free to comment or join the Mesoamerican Saga forum and post.

Onslaught Miniatures announced that the next wave of their 6mm science fiction line is out, and I had to buy some. This time it is the Abomination, reminiscent of Genestealer Hybrids. As I loved the game Space Hulk (First Edition, along with all of the expansions, and the articles from White Dwarf magazine), I still have a collection of 28mm Genestealer Hybrids from Citadel Miniatures. These are not reduced sized copies of those original miniatures, but they definitely give you that feel, just as their Legion figures give you the feel for the Tyranid species without actually copying them.


First up are the three variants of the close combat Abominations. As you can see, two are four-armed and one is two-armed.



The body armor is well formed. I painted the armor a dark gray, then picked out the high spots with blue paint. For the flesh I primed the figures white, washed them in GW purple wash (the one no longer available; I have not tried the new ones), then picked out the high spots in sunburned flesh. If you click on the pictures, you will see a greatly magnified image.

Next are the Abominations with squad automatic support weapons.


As you can see, two are held slung low – the left hand actually holding a handle on top of the weapon – while the third uses a more traditional grip. The first figure is three-armed – he looks like a leader signaling with upraised claw – and the additional of a "bionic eye" lends to that aura. I like him; I need to add some markings to his armor indicating that he is a leader.

As with the previous figures the armor is well defined, making it easy to pick out the detail with a paint brush. I started getting a little better with the faces on these guys.



Finally, we have the Abominations with the heavy weapons. Two weapons look like the weapons on the GW Epic Orks with heavy weapons; they look like missile launchers to me, which is great, because it gives the unit some anti-armor capability. The last looks like a shoulder-mounted laser weapon.


It almost looks like I painted the teeth white on some of these guys, but that is just the purple wash not getting into the crevice of the mouth and leaving it white. I cannot see it with the naked eye, but I had to laugh when I saw the pictures.
The openings on the front and back of this weapon are well defined, so it warranted a wash in order to highlight it. I was worried that the wash would overpower the light gray color, so I used Army Painter's Soft Tone Ink. I probably could have gone darker, using something like an armor wash.

The 'sun glasses' worn by this figure is purely an accident of painting. But he does look cool!

All in all, these figures were very fun to paint. In all of the GW Epic figures that I have, I was never able to get any Tyranid forces on eBay, largely because others outbid me; they were very popular (and expensive). From a skirmish viewpoint, using something like In the Emperor's Name (ITEN), FUBAR, or Angel Barracks' KR16, the Abominations are probably a better force to collect. When gaming at a larger scale – where units are squads or platoons – the Legion are an excellent choice to represent mass attacks by the 'Bugs'.

New Science Fiction Rules

Speaking of which … Ganesha Games has come out with a new set of science fiction rules called SWATTERS! It has some interesting concepts for representing multi-unit combat (think Sixty-One Sixty-Five for science fiction) that I think can be applied across many genres. I hope to do a review and battle report soon.

Well, I need to keep off of the forums for awhile, so I hope to get back to the painting table and finish some sample figures of the rest of the Legion line (I bought the Gashers, Stalkers, and Winged Stalkers when I bought the Abominations). I have also painted up some Dark Realms figures, but I am a little unsure I like the results. The figures are great to paint, don't get me wrong, but I think I chose a bad color scheme.

Angel Barracks has come out with a new draft of his KR16 rules. They are free, so other than your time, there really is no cost to downloading them and trying them out. As far as I know, they are only available on the Angel Barracks forum on Yahoo. (If I am wrong, don't worry, Michael will probably correct me in the comments section.)

iPad Gaming

I got into the game Frontline Tactics on the Mac. It is a pretty repetitive game and you will probably find it additive for about 20 hours, but as part of an experiment with the online account, I downloaded the game it to my iPad. I had a point where I had to wait someone for awhile, so I started playing the game on my iPad to while away the time.

There is a new mobile gaming technology that I heard a podcast about that allows the developer to pop up an ad, at appropriate breaks in the action, while gives the gamer in-game rewards for play. It is not too annoying (it pops up at the end of each mission) and I have tapped on a few to see what they were offering.

I surprised the wife with an early delivery of flowers for Mother's Day. My wife used to not like to receive flowers, but now that she has a lot of land, she likes trying to see if she can take the cutting and get them to grow. I have not given her flowers in awhile so she was surprised by the gift. "Why did you decide to give them too me this year?" she asked. "Oh, just because …"

… just because it earned me 250,000 credits in the game Frontline Tactics, that is!

There is a board game called Eclipse that has been converted to the iPad. It has been a long time coming and greatly anticipated. As it was less than $10 ($6.99, I think?) I decided to pick it up, because of all the buzz.

Stay away! It is a huge time drain!

Seriously, the game is very fun and has gotten me interested in the board game itself. People that play the board games say that the iPad version has a few implementation issues (i.e. the rules are different from the board game), but only one crashing bug has been reported (that I have heard of) and it is apparently not likely to be triggered.

Money well spent (even if the time is not).

BattleLore

And finally … the BattleLore over Vassal tournament is finally over. (I love the gaming, but scheduling within a time limit creates pressure I really did not like. In the end I was starting to get irritated over the scheduling issues.)

I won both rounds, scoring 8-2 and 8-7. Yes, I won the tournament! As strange as it sounds, this was the first BattleLore over Vassal tournament that has ever completed, so that makes me the first champion. This for a game no longer printed and poorly supported by the license holder.

One of the things that came out of it, however, is how much Chris and I prefer the Epic version of BattleLore. It actually lowers the luck factor of the card draw, plus uses larger maps and more units. It seems like we will be using this format more often in the future.

New Readers

Welcome to new readers Les and Dehewes. Dehewes' profile pointed me a nice Kindle blog that shows new Kindle eBooks that come out and go on sale. Les has an interesting blog, Wargaming France 1940, where he games that subject in 6mm. He is also a solo gamer, so it will probably be a source for ideas for me for my Solo Battles blog.

I hope you guys enjoy the blog content. Feel free to leave a comment when something strikes you.

Staying off of the forums has helped me get some more painting done. Part of the purchase from Microworld Games were the Torakk Riders from Dark Realm Miniatures. To me, these 6mm science fiction miniatures are very reminiscent of the rider in Ralph Bashki's movie Wizards. (Here is a link to the movie poster. I am not going to link in the image itself.) Of course the riding beast is different and the rider has Kraytonian armor, so I guess it is just the pose.

I started off by priming these figures white. I then used various browns, yellows, and reds in washes, inks, and glazes to get my beast tones. I then painted a darker flesh color for the 'horn' and the 'beak', then washed it in brown to blend it in.

For the rider I first coated him in gloss, then washed him in Citadel Nuln Oil (a black wash). That got the black mostly into the depressions and only lightly colored the white primer. I then washed the armor with Citadel Camoshade and that colored the figure the green that you see. I then picked out the equipment in various colors and washed over them in browns or greens in order to blend in the colors.
Yes, I did actually paint the eyes white on these guys. They were pretty well defined in the sculpt.

These guys had a bit larger base, ½" circle punched from magnetic business cards, which I covered with sand, painted my standard Cocoa color (which is colored more like light caramel), washed in dark brown to give some depth, and then added static grass.

All in all it took about two evenings, as this style requires a lot of time drying (due to all the washes and glazes).

The figures were fun to paint, but … they are not 6mm, in my opinion. Never mind that the total figure height is so tall, but the rider itself is much larger than the GW Epic Space Marines and larger than even the Kraytonian infantry, which they are supposed to duplicate. Torakk Riders must be the 'cuirassiers' of their day!

I know I have not posted anything in quite a while. I have been gaming, but as I am helping play test a new set of rules I have been reluctant to post pictures as I do not have permission from the author. (Although I have noticed that other play testers have been posting pictures of their games.) The rules are tentatively called 100 Dice and is from Sergio Laslicia (and presumably, will be published by Ganesha Games).

I am also working on code at night, working on an idea for a gaming server. I cannot go into it much, but the basic idea is to create something along the lines of Days of Wonder's Memoir 44 Online. That has been taking up a lot of time.

Finally, I accidentally got sucked into Minecraft, which I find relaxing in many ways ... well until the Zombies, Skeletons, Creepers, and Spiders start swarming you, that is.

Hopefully I will get some games of Saga in soon, or at the very least something reportable.

I decided to get into a few Kickstarter projects, as reported previously, and so I thought I would give an update on my success with it so far.

Up Front– Funded on January 13, 2013. Estimated delivery was for June 2013. As of December 2013 it has not been delivered and no delivery date is set. Yes, this is the one that so many people said "you'll be sorry!" because the project was headed up by someone who had lawsuits in his rear-view mirror. Because of an error on my part, I got way too much of it. Lots of excuses and lots of time in which no updates were forthcoming. Looks bad. Oh, this is supposed to be a re-print and update to the classic Avalon Hill game Up Front.

Rivet Wars – Funded February 4, 2013. Estimated delivery was for September 2013. As of December 2013 it has not been delivered and delivery is slated for "ample time before Christmas". Hopefully that means 2013... I have a fair amount spent on this too, but not as much as Up Front. If I get it, I think the money will be well worth it.

Sergeants Miniatures Game: Red Devils – Funded February 24, 2013. Estimated delivery was for May 2013. It was delivered November 27, 2013. I bought the minimum on this one as I was still skeptical about the game, having read a fair amount about the previous version, Sergeants Miniatures Games: Day of Days. My skepticism mostly arose from the cost of the painted miniatures, and that you really could not play without buying the those miniatures (because they came with unique cards you need). So if you wanted to play a game with 15 miniatures on a side it was going to set you back. And did I really want to invest in another WW II skirmish game, only this time with 20mm miniatures? (Obviously the answer was "yes"...) I am hoping to provide a review of these rules soon.

Small World 2 (Take 1) – Cancelled by project managers as they felt that it was confusing as to what the project was really about.

Small World 2 (Take 2) – Funded on April 10, 2013. Estimated delivery was for October 2013. Delivered September 12, 2013. Game is much better than before, so was definitely worth the $8.

By Fire and Sword – Funded on May 20, 2013. Estimated delivery was for June 2013. Honestly, I cannot remember when this arrived, but as I only ordered the rulebook I was not held up by waiting for the sculptors to finish their task. This company was really good about providing updates and has sent a stream of PDFs, army list additions, etc. about that product and others they offer. Unfortunately, Eastern Renaissance went to the back burner sometime ago, despite having Polish and Cossack armies painted (but requiring rebasing). Someday... There have been some funny errors though, like the "Regimental Rooster Sheet".

So, all in all my big, high expectation purchases were utter flops, with regards to delivery times (or even if they will deliver). By the time I got up to June 2013 three projects were supposed to have delivered and none did. At the time I could see that  three of them were in trouble with their schedules. I decided that I had enough, at least until something delivered.

There has been some interesting conversations about how Kickstarter (and P500 projects) are "killing" retail hobby stores. That may be – although I think it is just one more nail in the coffin rather than the single most important reason – but I honestly cannot see any of the hobby shops in my area, and probably any that I have frequented in the past (that still remain), speculating on buying into Kickstarter or P500 for me. They all want to: a) wait until it goes retail and actually ships; and b) wait to see if it will sell. They have enough SKUs on the shelf as it is.

Added to that they want to sell it for full retail, when the companies are essentially offering a discount to invest in their project early. So who do you support, the manufacturers of the content, or the ones that sell it locally? So many gaming companies are using Kickstarter or P500 to gauge interest. If you wait and play it safe, like the retailers, the game may never come. Tough decision, especially as another local hobby store has just failed.

Ah well, we can't save them all.

I hope to get a review of Sergeants Miniatures Game: Red Devils out soon, along with some news regarding what I have been doing with my time. It is not really gaming, but it is gaming related.

Have you ever played a double-blind wargame? That is where each player has his own map, counters (or miniatures), and can only see his own forces and the enemy forces within line of sight (LOS). They are a lot of fun and tend to be much more intense than a standard face-to-face wargame, but because they generally require an umpire (to tell each player what their forces see) and are a lot of work. As noted on BoardGameGeek, double-blind has been used with naval wargames, but for land-based warfare only nine board games are listed in the category. That is because writing rules to replace the need for an umpire is very hard. But computer games do it all of the time as the computer acts as umpire for the two sides.

I have noticed a few computer applications out there that handle the rules of miniature wargames, such as Carnage and Glory. Some people love them and others hate them. Part of the issue (from what I have read; I have never used them) is that the program take a little time and effort to use. But in exchange, you get a set of rules that can easily handle a lot of complications with ease. Remember those rules from the 1980's, like Fire Fight and Challenger II, that had loads of modifiers and special cases? Computer-based rules seem good for that.

But in the end, those rules don't require an umpire (more like a bookkeeper), so they don't really solve the problems that double-blind wargames do, which is limiting the information that a player has about the opposing forces and where they are located. A good computer program for that would be a good idea.

That is what I have been working on all this time (and why I have not been gaming). The idea is for players to order their forces on a computer (I am initially targeting an iPad or Android tablet) and then the application reveals what both player's see. The idea is that the application acts as an aid to miniatures gaming. Only the miniatures that are visible are placed on the tabletop.

From this comes a slew of additional ideas on enhancing the wargaming experience:

• The application "knows" the rules.
• It can hide specific dice results and give general comments on the state of troops or damage (friendly or enemy).
• It can hide the command and control mechanics so that a player does not know their command "limit" for the turn (say if you are using a command point, or PIP, system). When the last point is used the computer tells them "you are done giving orders".
• Line of sight can not only be blocked, but it can be obscured, allowing for units to be seen, but not identified by type or grade. (At a 1000 yards those blue blobs are probably French soldiers, but are they the Old Guard? Or your Prussian allies?)
• Timed moves can be enforced.
• And, of course, you can track a number of additional factors (fatigue, smoke, ammunition, etc.) that would be too tedious to deal with without a computer.

Now I did not think up all of this myself. (I am working with a published game designer, but at this point I haven't asked for or been given permission to use his name.) My original idea was something along the lines of a cross between Vassal and Memoir '44 Online. I wanted a gaming platform that would allow me to play games remotely, but the application would know and enforce the rules. That would have meant an application used by each player, over the internet. The game designer convinced me of his vision, which was to create a pass-and-play application that would enhance the miniatures wargame experience by providing the ever-elusive double-blind wargames umpire.

I think I can morph the code from his vision to my original one, but network programming takes a lot more time so I see the pass-and-play version as a good stepping stone. After all there is a lot of coding just to deal with the interface, rules, line of sight calculations (you would not believe the math I put myself through), etc.

So, when will I be done? Who the hell knows. But the good thing is that I am plugging away at it.

Not that I will be discouraged if the feedback is less than positive, but I would like to hear your comments about computer-assisted miniatures gaming, pros and cons. Do you think that they (would) get in the way? Would you ever allow the computer to roll the dice for you? Is losing control – a lot of control – something that you think would add to the experience? Have you ever played a double-blind wargame with an umpire?

Sound off!

First, let me start by saying that I did not label this post as a "review". I did not get deep enough into the game to actually review it. But I did get deep enough to get an impression, and you probably have a pretty good hint with the title.

So, Sergeants Miniatures Game (SMG) has been out there for a couple of years. I am not really sure of what the first iteration was but I first became aware of it about a year or so ago when reading about Day of Days, which featured the US Paratroopers in Normandy. Now to be honest, I was sort of tired of this particular theme, having several games and scenario books about this very thing, so I was not immediately sucked in. Secondly, the expansions were expensive, way too expensive for something that was just a set of painted miniatures (20mm, at that!). So I read reviews, downloaded teaser rules, and generally bided my time. I had too many other good WWII games to worry about adding yet another.

Then I heard that a British Paratroopers in Normandy version (Red Devils) was coming out. As I have never collected the British, in any theater of WWII, I thought that this might be justification enough to try it. So I invested in their Kickstarter project and waited.

Having received it a couple of weeks ago, I decided to give it a try and report back on what I thought. The reality is that I have little to report. I started to set the game up and stalled on certain aspects of the game. I went back several times and each time I could not come to grips with starting the game.

The first problem is that the game is tedious to setup. If you have ever complained about setting up a board game like Arkham Horror, which has a lot of different components, all of which need to be separated and shuffled, you probably won't like SMG. What makes SMG unique, and those pre-painted miniatures expensive, is that the soldiers represented by the miniatures and cards are intended to be unique. Your set of miniatures and cards in your boxed set will not match the miniatures and cards in my boxed set. If you buy expansion X, the cards and miniatures you get will not be the same as mine. I am not saying that the game is collectible – if you order another set of something the random element built into the manufacturing process will generate another unique set of stats for the cards and a random miniature will be placed in the box. You can't "collect them all" because there is no finite set; there are literally random elements to the production of the game.

What that means is that you take these cards, presenting the soldiers, scenarios, terrain pieces in place, etc. and build decks in order to play the game. Each player (not side, player) has an action deck and each game has a Story deck. Different factors determine which cards are in play and which are excluded. As there is a point building system for the sides, that means that pre-game play requires you price out your forces, build your decks based on who you selected, the terrain (primarily landmarks) used in the scenario, and so on. So there is really no way to pre-build all of this unless one player simply decides to play what he is given.

Then there is the factor that the cards represents the soldiers at different points (ranks) in their careers, along with rules about how many soldiers you can have of any given rank in your force. So a soldier may have one set of cards when a Lance Corporal, but another set when they are a Sergeant. In addition, so cards are purchased with points, adding further to the variability.

All of which is to say that the game does have a higher replay value, given this variability. But, only if you can muster then wherewithall to play the game in the first place. After having the game sit on my dining room table for two weeks, in various stages of pre-game configuration, I finally tore it down today, much to the rejoicing of my wife who wanted to eat a holiday meal at the formal dinner table again.

If I ever get through this, I will let you know. But I strongly suspect that I will never play this until I get to a convention where the game designer is giving demonstrations of it, everything is preset, and all of the rules questions you have can be instantly ironed out because the game designer is there to help you along. And if it plays well enough, it may motivate me to try it at home. Until then, however, it will sit on the shelf.

One of the things I have been trying to do is play a lot more games with a system before reviewing it. After a couple of early examples of enthusiasm when reading the rules and then finding the gameplay revealed serious flaws I think this tack might be a bit more productive.

Rivet Wars is one of the Kickstarter campaigns that I bought in to. Less than the Up Front Kickstarter (which still hasn't shipped), but more than the Sergeant Miniatures Game Red Devils. So far I consider this my most successful purchase through Kickstarter.

What is it all about?

Rivet Wars is a tactical, miniatures board game. This seems to be a growing area of gaming, using miniatures to replace the traditional hex counter but still using a game board as the playing surface. As with most board games it does not use free-form movement, but rather uses a (square) grid to regulate measurement and control the number of units that can fit in an area (i.e. control stacking).

Rivet Wars is basically a science fantasy version of World War One. There are steam tanks, rocket cycles, monowheel cavalry, manned walkers, jetpacks, and so on. One key feature of the game is a simulation of Real Time Strategy (RTS) computer games (like Starcraft, Command & Conquer, etc.) by removing the traditional "get points, buy an army, set up forces" style of gaming. Rather, each turn the players get a set number of points with which to buy the 'next wave' of troops coming in to take the scenario objectives. If you need more speed, you can buy the faster units. If you need to capture objectives, you can buy more infantry. (Right now, the only limitation on force composition is the number of units I have of each type. That will change as Wave 2 ships and we start incorporating those figures into the game.)

At the heart of the game is rock-paper-scissors. Like many good games (DBA springs to mind), units are good against some unit types, but not against others. It is the combination of units that allows you to fight effectively in the game. Your opponent buying lots of heavy armor? Buy more anti-armor units. Even better, the game does not make both sides carbon copies of one another, only in different uniforms. The Allied infantry, for example, is good against unarmored infantry, whereas their Blighten counterparts are better against armored targets. To kill infantry the Blightens call upon their cavalry (dragoons riding monowheel vehicles, to be exact) for the job, while the Allied cavalry (men riding tracked motorcycles that fire missiles, called Rocket Cycles) does better against armor.

A second concept of the game is the use of plugs. Essentially some special models (mostly tanks, walkers, and aircraft) have holes bored into them allowing you to plug different components into them as a way of customizing the unit. Need more anti-infantry firepower on your Sturmpanzer? Plug in the turret with twin MGs. Need anti-air firepower? Plug in the AA missiles instead.

The two other elements that stand out in the game are the deck of Action cards and Secret Mission cards.

The Action cards are events that you can hold in your hand to alter the outcome of a normal game. Examples are off-board artillery barrages, an aircraft strafing the battlefield, a gas attack, increased production from the factory (can deploy more troops), a paratrooper drop, and so on. Play of these cards is key as they can often turn a battle to your advantage.

The Secret Missions are basically additional victory conditions above and beyond the normal given for a scenario. Most scenarios require the player to earn a number of victory points, which are obtained by holding specific squares on the board, or in killing special enemy units (heroes or large vehicles). Secret Missions offer additional victory points such as killing three enemy in one turn, moving an infantry into the enemy deployment zone, attacking with three cavalry units in one turn, killing an enemy tank, and so on. Each Secret Mission gives the specific requirements to complete and the number of victory points awarded. These can easily allow a player to come up from behind and snatch victory out from under you.

Game Ratings

So, using the review system from before, here are the game ratings for Rivet Wars.

Drama– do the rules create tension during play?

Both the Action and Secret Mission cards are designed specifically to increase drama, as they allow the player to do unexpected things, like produce more units or get one closer to victory by awarding points for play that typically does not produce points.

Rivet Wars rates 4 out of 5 in Drama.

Uncertainty– are there enough elements that introduce uncertainty into the game?

The rules have a number of chance elements, from the roll of the dice for combat resolution, to the draw of the Action and Secret Mission cards. I have seen some games won almost entirely on Secret Missions while other games had none come into play for either side, despite both players trying to use them.

It is not a completely random game, however. The player has to make critical choices regarding troop mix and placement. At the core of the game is getting infantry to take objectives, which is definitely what a tactical game of World War One should be about.

Rivet Wars rates 4 out of 5 in Uncertainty.

Engaging– do the rules allow the player to make meaningful decisions that lead to consequences?

I definitely find the game engaging. The primary decision each player must make is: what troop mix do I buy every turn. I think that aspect of the game design (using RTS elements in a board game) has been very successful. It gives the player a critical decision to make every turn. Infantry are essentially the weakest and slowest troops on the board, yet you must purchase them as they are what take the objectives.

Combining that with Action and Secret Mission cards is critical, however. An example might be that you have drawn a Secret Mission to make a glorious cavalry advance (get three cavalry units into No-Man's Land in a single turn) to inspire the troops. This requires you spend the points on that unit type where you might not normally. If you draw an Action card that gives you a free cavalry unit it might just entice you to spend the points necessary to knock out the mission in a single turn. That decision, however, will come into play for many turns as you now end up a little cavalry heavy ...

Rivet Wars rates 5 out of 5 in Engaging.

Unobtrusiveness– do the rules get in the way?

There are a few icon indicating special abilities given to troops. In fact, almost all troops have special abilities granted to them. The good thing is that there are very few to remember. That is about the only time you look up the rules.

Rivet Wars rates 4 out of 5 in Unobtrusiveness.

Heads Up– are the rules playable without frequent reference to a quick reference sheet?

Combat is about the only time you look at a reference sheet (or cards). Each unit attacks with a certain number of dice, which depends upon the armor or type of the target unit. So that you usually look up (although there are a few that you will eventually remember, just because you use them so much). The unit also has a number of attacks allowed, so units you don't use as frequently probably also need a reference check. Combat itself is trivial. After determining the number of dice to roll per attack and the number of attacks allowed you start chucking dice. Except in one rare case there are no die roll modifiers. If you score a 5+ you hit, otherwise you miss. Most units have one hit point so one hit equals 'remove the unit'.

Although the above may not sound that good, it is extremely fast and simple. But you do reference that chart all the time.

Rivet Wars rates 3 out of 5 in Heads Up.

Appropriately Flavored – do the rules 'feel' like they represent the period or genre being played?

This genre is World War One science fantasy. Right now, without all of the extra goodies, it is pretty basic. I did not like that the Germans ... I mean Blightens ... use Panzerfausts (a World War Two weapon) as their primary weapon, but I understand why they did it. So there is a bit of World War mixing. But given the background of the world (this is not Earth), and that the war has been going on for some 20+ years, that does not bother me too much.

The RTS aspect of the rules feels really good. It feels like your forces are coming into the fray in waves (albeit with a little less organization than you might like), and that somehow feels right. You imagine a whistle blowing as fresh troops enter the board every turn. Very much throwing more troops into the meat grinder. The fact that troops recycle adds to that feeling.

What might feel out of whack are the ratios of firing range to movement, firing range between weapon systems, and figure scale to ground scale. This is a very abstract game. Single figures probably represent units, but they fight as if single men (or machines).

Rivet Wars rates 3 out of 5 in Appropriately Flavored.

Scalable – can the rules be scaled up or down – in terms of figures or number of units played – from a 'normal' game?

Right now my game is limited by the number of figures and tile boards I possess. (That will change when Wave 2 comes in!) But I could get several games together and piece them up, no problem. Scaling is achieved by adding more figures to select from, more tiles to fight over, more deployment points to buy troops with every turn, and adding more players to manage the troops.

Technically the game is two-player, but alternating between players on a side and having them control sectors of the battlefield is a pretty easy solution to adding players. With the base game only it is not advisable to try and play with more than one person per side.

Rivet Wars rates 4 out of 5 in Scalable.

Lacks Fiddly Geometry – do the rules require fiddly measurements or angles?

It has squares. Need I say more?

All measurements are in grids (squares). You count horizontally and/or vertically with one diagonal allowed. Very easy. There are no angles whatsoever (everything fights 360º) and no line of sight issues at all. I love it.

Rivet Wars rates 5 out of 5 in Fiddly Geometry.

Tournament Tight™ Rules – are the rules clear and comprehensive, or do the players need to 'fill in the blanks'?

This game is the primary reason I decided to play several games before reviewing. For whatever reason I approached this game with some misconceptions about how the game was played. It was only after a few games that we discovered that we were playing a few major rules completely wrong. Part of it was bad assumptions on my part, but others were that critical rules were buried in a single sentence and never referenced again.

I finally got on track by watching a Let's Play video made by staff of the Cool Minis or Not company (the company that produces Rivet Wars). That cleared it all up. (In fact, I have now started looking for more Let's Play videos for all new games, in order to double-check my assumptions. Beware, however, that some gamers are just as wrong as you are!)

There is an FAQ out there to clear up some of the hazy spots. We have also come up with a few questions of our own. This problem lies with the increasing number of games that rely on Special Abilities and the blanket statement that "rules for these abilities override the normal rules". It is typically the interactions between special abilities that gum up the works. (I have seen this happen with Warhammer 40K, Warmachine, Memoir '44, and many others. I think it is just a problem with this game design element.)

Rivet Wars rates 4 out of 5 in Tournament Tight™ Rules.

Solo Suitability – do the rules have elements conducive to solo play?

Two key elements of the game – Action cards and Secret Mission cards – rely on keeping information hidden from your opponent. Can you play with these cards face up and revealed? Yes, but it lowers the Drama and Uncertainty scores if you do.

Rivet Wars rates 2 out of 5 in Solo Suitability.

Component Quality – are the components provided made with quality?

This is a new rating, meant primarily for board games, which addresses the quality of the physical components.

Cool Minis or Not makes excellent board games.

The card stock is good, but maybe a little thin. The cards are easily shuffled, however.

The tiles are thick and sturdy, but interestingly they immediately warped (and I am in a low humidity climate). Once I put the boards back into the box and placed all of the other (heavy) components on top, they unwarped, but I can see a little warping and unwarping each time. I am hoping they will eventually flatten out.

The plastic miniatures are made from hard styrene plastic, which I generally like, as it takes paint well and holds it better than soft, flexible plastics. That said, some of the details, such as swords, rifles, bayonets, turret handles, and such I can easily see being snapped off. I get nervous about that everytime I use the miniatures (which is probably one of the reasons I have not painted them yet). I am actually thinking of stiffening them in some way. I'll let you know as things break and I find solutions.

The only thing missing from the game, however, are card holders. Very simple thing, I know, but it is one of those things I like about Memoir '44 that I wish so many games would do. The more impact that cards have on game play the more they should include card holders so the cards stand up and are always displayed to the player so they are reminded of a card play. (Sounds like sour grapes from someone who missed playing a card at a critical point, doesn't it?)

Rivet Wars rates 4 out of 5 in Component Quality.

Test Games of Rivet Wars

We have easily played a dozen games of Rivet Wars so far and for me it is one that will not get old. I eagerly await Wave 2, which will include new units, more of the current units, plastic terrain pieces, and new scenarios. I hope they will include additional cards in the future (the community is already doing so).

At first we thought that the Allied side was heavily favored, but I think it just took some getting used to the Blighten side with its reversed roles (i.e. infantry is good against armor for Blighten while cavalry is what you use for the Allies to stop armor).

Best of all, we have seen games where one player was steadily trudging towards victory while the other just did not seem to gain any substantial victory points, then a critical turn would occur where the player would be able to fulfill several secret missions while killing a key enemy unit and they game would be completely reversed, with the player that was behind would leap in front, and sometimes leap straight to victory. That makes the stuff for exciting and memorable games.

Summary

Outstanding quality, easy to play, very quick to setup (almost no setup time in fact), very few rules questions and no real disputes, no fiddly bits: who could ask for more? Highly recommended.

Rivet Wars continues to be one of my favorite miniatures games and it continues to get a lot of play around here. The base game had infantry, cavalry, support weapons, tanks and heroes – basically one of each type – and it was asymmetrical, each side had its own feel rather than being carbon copies of one another. Here is a photo of what you got in the base set.



Now here is a photo of what I have to use to hold the base set and everything I got from Wave 2. (The base set pictured above can be seen on the left, crammed in this 106 quart (3' x 1 1/2') storage bin.)



The amount and variety I received in Wave 2 is just insane. I hesitated playing with any of it because the sheer magnitude of it all simply boggled my mind. Nonetheless, I eventually got over the shock and started using some of the new stuff. That is when the first issue hit.

There is too much!

That is right, there is too much new material and trying to absorb it all is overwhelming. It is like trying to eat one or two pieces of each type of candy on Halloween night; you are going to get sick. So, let's break it all down.

Variations on a Theme = Dilution?

The first thing the expansions did was add variations on a theme. For example, the Blight infantry was good against light armor while the Allied infantry was good against unarmored targets. Wave 2 added Blight infantry that is now good at unarmored targets and Allied infantry that is good against light armor. Wait a minute! The brilliance of the original game was the asymmetry built in between the two sides; an elaborate rock-paper-scissors. Blight infantry brought a response of Allies buying infantry (which are good at killing Blight infantry), so Blight bought cavalry (which are good at killing Allied infantry), which forced the Allies to buy their cavalry (which are good at killing Blight cavalry), but the Allied cavalry is vulnerable to the original Blight infantry ... so the whole cycle starts again. And when the dice go against you and you don't clear the enemy off the field fast enough so that they start to accumulate, the Allies bring out the artillery while the Blight bring out the machine guns. Both side had an answer to any given tactical situation, but it was not the same answer.

The variations do not completely break the "feel" of each faction, but it certainly dilutes it. Take the new Blight Trench Raiders. The original Blight infantry did 1 die against unarmored targets (infantry) and 3 against lightly armored targets (Allied Rocket Cycles). Their opposites, the Allied infantry, did 3 dice and 0, respectively. The new Blight Trench Raiders do 4 dice and 0, respectively. Yes, they have a compensating penalty (a very short range) for their increased dice against unarmored targets, but the point is that the new Blight infantry are not a variation of the old Blight infantry, they are a variation of the old Allied infantry.

However, all is not lost. There is one more factor that severely limits the dilution: the lack of new models. One of the limiters in the base game was how many models you had of each type. With only three Blight cavalry models you could not have four. What Wave 2 did was dramatically increase the number of models that were in the base game while only giving 1-4 models of the new units. So those four new Trench Raiders will only go so far, especially as we wargamers want to put all our models on the table. So we expand the size of the games and those new models get diluted even further. In fact, they start to become a distraction, as they act so differently from the original models. (Note to those that play Rivet Wars: my gaming buddy tends to want to always play Allies, regardless of the game, so I always play Blight / Germans / Confederates / "The Bad Guys". Because I don't switch back and forth between sides, I tend to think in terms of that one side, so anything that plays "like the Allies" is a distraction.)

In our last game, for example, I probably had purchased 20-30 Blight infantry over the course of the game. Only three of those were the new Trench Raiders. They had a specific mission to do and in the end that mission was largely frustrated.

The Air War

The big new addition to the game is adding air units. Air units had always been a part of the game design – the base game had references to the war in the air even though no units could fly – but it wasn't until The Battle of Brighton that the flying machines came out in full force.

The rules for air units are pretty clever. They make excellent use of the game grid and overcome a problem that typically comes up in board games: how to represent units in the air being in the same 2D space as enemy units on the ground. (They have ground units in the grid squares while the air units fly on the grid lines. Watch a YouTube video on the introduction of air units to Rivet Wars to see what I mean.)

Battling in the air is fun, but I think we all came to the same conclusion at once: it is a distraction. Let's face it, in Rivet Wars infantry is the King of the Battlefield. Only infantry can take strategic objectives, the primary means of scoring victory points. Air units cannot score victory points unless you add a scenario special rule that says otherwise. And air units are not really good at dealing with ground units. In fact, the air units on the board cannot replicate the effects of the Strafing action card, which does not require an air unit to play! (That is actually probably a good thing. The Strafing card can be tough.)

The primary issue is that air units typically have to keep moving and/or they have a limited fire arc, both of which work towards their not being able to attack every turn. It takes a lot of effort, and correct anticipation, to get into a position where you can fire more than one turn in a row.
But planes do look great! Here is my (unfinished) Allied ace model, Reme Funck (apologies to René Fonck, who this character is based after). It still needs insignias. I am debating about whether to use the decals that came with the set.



Conclusion

Wow! I don't want this to sound like a bad review, as that is not the intent. I really like all the new models and choices. I guess I am just a little disappointed that the new models are not variations on their own side's base models rather than variations on the enemy's.

I have found some cool combinations, such a Elsa Frost (Precision buff) and Jager Konig (Range buff). Put those two into a grid with infantry or an MG and you really have a surprise for the enemy. (Of course you will draw severe artillery fire for doing it too!) Although Don played the Rocketeer first, and wasn't impressed, I think he might be useful in a few specific missions. (His primary ability is to move three squares, leaping over enemy and obstacles with ease. He has a weak attack, however. And because he is not an infantry hero, he cannot take objectives.) In fact, the one area I really have not touched upon is all the new heroes. That is simply because there are way too many, and I have not played even 1/10th of them.

So, what are we going to do with all of this? Don and I have agreed that the best approach is to discipline ourselves and focus on maybe 2-3 new units or heroes to add to the base units each game. Once we get a feel for them, try something else. Pure and simple, all the new choices lead to Information Overload and Analysis Paralysis. (Never mind having to find the correct miniatures in the growing pile!)

As for air units, I can see allowing them every game, but not really spending as many points on them as I have in the past. They really slow the game down as it divides the combat and movement phases into two sub-phases each and breaks the flow of the game. I can see adding scenario rules that allows a air unit to score victory points by attacking the enemy bunkers – a variation on the factory bombing scenario included with The Battle of Brighton– as it would increase the roles of air units, yet not overpower the basic role of the infantry to win the game.

All in all I am very pleased with my purchase of Wave 2. We have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of this game and I can see it being one of the staples of gaming for some time to come. Very easy to teach. Generally very quick games (as long as you don't go crazy with the deployment points and victory conditions).

Some time ago a gaming buddy of mine got into the board game BattleLore (version 1). Because he was in Ohio and I am in Arizona, we would play it online using Vassal, an outstanding tool for playing board games online. We played the heck out of that game, discussing strategy for it endlessly. When the first online tournament for it came about, he and I joined and came in 1 and 2, respectively (I bragged about it here).

Now this guy is a naval nut, so at some point he visited and I bought him a starter pack for Axis & Allies Naval Miniatures: War at Sea. He went nuts for that (I reviewed the game here) and got the idea that we should play this on Vassal. After much coding and grinding, he abandoned the project because he could not reliably get images for all of the ships and cards.

Skip forward a year and a half and we come to my discovery of Leviathan: Warships. Now, this is not a new game, by any stretch of the imagination. Also, let me point out right now, for those that do not want to read about such stuff and would like to stop while they are ahead: this is a computer game. That said, it scratches an itch for me about how a computer can sometimes produce a superior wargame.

The backstory is that my buddy wanted to play a naval computer game – something player versus player – and was looking about for something. One of the things that I have noticed of late are games originally written for the PC that not only migrate to the Mac, but also make it to the mobile platforms like iOS and Android tablets. Not just games, but multiplayer online games. That means the ability to play against other people across the internet on the platform of your choice. Some games even let you start games on one platform and finish on another, if you have copies for the platforms. So as I was scrolling through the Steam store looking for cross-platform, multiplayer, online games which support the Mac, I find Leviathan: Warships. Hmmm, let's see: turn-based, fog of war, steampunk, customize ships, build your own fleets, asynchronous gameplay, email notification, saved replays; what's not to like? I then check the App Store and sure enough, there is an iOS version that is fully compatible with the other platforms.

Turn-Based

A lot of games are turn-based, especially in the board game and miniatures arena. In computer games it means much the same thing: the game is broken up into a series of turns, representing some interval of time in which you can do a limited set of actions. In Leviathan: Warships each turn represents 10 seconds. As you move a little counter shows you how many seconds have gone by to get to that point. Weapon systems show you when they are ready, or if they are reloading, how many seconds remain before they can fire again. Critical hits often show how many seconds remain with the effect before it is repaired.

Fog of War

Ships have a certain visual range, within which they will see the enemy. This game gives you a reason to buy scout ships, as they have a longer range for detecting the enemy. Like real life, you need to send your scouts out so you can find and fix the enemy, then start raining steel down on the enemy with your big guns, which are stationed in the rear, out of sight of their ships.

Steampunk

Although the game is ostensibly set in the 1870s to 1930s it also includes some weaponry not found in our time: railguns, rocket batteries, beam guns, energy shields, cloaking devices, and monster guns. Yes, you can call up the Kraken from the dead and have it munch on the enemy's warships. (Or you can have a gentleman's agreement not to include such gear in your games.)

Customize Ships

As shown in the image to the right (you can click to enlarge), a ship is divided into compartments, each of which can contain one or more weapon systems. The colors indicate what types of systems can go there (offensive, defensive, or hybrid), the number of squares indicate the size of the weapon system. A railgun, for example, requires a 3x3 yellow or green grid, while a Kauser automatic cannon only requires a 1x1 yellow or green square.

Ships do have a limit on the total number of systems it can have – in this case the Dreadnought pictured can only carry 12 systems total – so you are not going to fill up all of those boxes.

Each of the ship designs can be saved so you can quickly and easily reuse your custom designs for other battles.

Build Your Own Fleets

Each game tends to be either a 3,000 point, 6,000 point, or 8,000 point battle, with no more than eight ships in each fleet. Using standard built ships, or ones that you have customized yourself, you build fleets to take into battle. It is easy to build a fleet around a theme due to the impressive number of systems available. (Note that there is generally only one variation of each system, but a goodly variety of systems.) Again, these fleets can be saved for easy access when a game is offered, making it quick and easy to start playing.

Asynchronous Gameplay

And now we come to the Holy Grail of gaming: simultaneous turns. Although both players plan out their turns, seeing where their enemies are at the end of the last turn, both players' turns play out simultaneously. So this really is a game of guessing where people are going to end up (in the next 10 seconds) and trying to exploit where you think their position will be.

Games can be customized where each player has 1 minute, 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day, or 1 week to plan out their moves. Once both players "commit" their turn, the computer plays out the turn, judging movement and combat based on their orders. Boy, if only face-to-face simultaneous movement gaming were so easy!

Why the long periods of time to plan out games? For one thing, like a chess game played online, this allows you to play out your turns in leisure, at your own pace, on your own schedule. It makes it much easier to play out a game with someone in another timezone, like my naval nut friend.

This also allows you to play multiple games simultaneously. If you are doing one turn a day, it might be very easy to handle a dozen games at once. (Of course, you have to have a mind for keeping all of that sorted. I don't.)

Note, not all games are drawn out. The 1 minute turn variant is like speed chess. You are not meant to play more than one game at a time if you are on that speed. But, you could.

Email Notification

For those games in which you do not stay in the software waiting for your opponent to make their next move, you can have the game notify via email when the next turn is ready. I have found that even though I might have a game set for daily moves, I might get two or three turns in on a night if my opponent happens to be online when I commit mine. But if not, being notified by email not only reminds me that I can play out a turn, but that I have a time limit coming up.

Saved Replays

Every game you play actually sends a small message to the developer's servers, which then routes the information to your client, letting you know what happened. Given that you may not be in the game client at the time the opponent's move is received, the server automatically stores the move until your client contacts it asking if a move is ready. A side effect of all of this is that the developers store all of the moves to your game until the game is complete. At that point it prompts you as to whether you should save the game on their server or not. If you save it, you can go back and replay the game, watching the action blow-by-blow, long after the game has finished.

At this time the developer has not stated how long they will store saved games. As the games are small, they are currently saving all of the games until they decide on a retention policy. There is no cost to the player to save games.

Best of all, you can give anyone else with a copy of the game the name of the server and the game's ID and they can watch your game replay. Many people have posted replay IDs on the forums of their best games. It is a great way to learn. You can pause the game at any point, look at ship damage, look at weapon system, etc. The only thing it does not show you is the ordered movement path and the fog of war. Otherwise, everything is available.

I have started putting up videos on YouTube of some of my computer gaming (I would do it with board and miniatures gaming if I could think of a good way to do it); here is an Introduction to 1v1 Games, and is the first game between my buddy and I. My cloaked Scout gets the jump on his heavy, allowing my ships with rocket batteries to pound him into the sandbar.

Feel free to subscribe to my channel. I am starting to focus on iOS games, but I also do some Minecraft multiplayer with friends, which are usually funny (to us) because we are so bad at it!

The Bad

Unfortunately, there is always some bad these days. With Leviathan: Warships the bad is that this game is not all that popular anymore. If you are looking for games with strangers (the matchmaking function that is available), you are not going to find many people waiting for games. In fact, you might not find any on weeknights. As I approached this as a means of playing with specific people, like with Vassal, this is not a primary concern; I generally only game with people I know.

The second half of that is that new content is not likely to come along. Also, there may come a time when the money they gained is playing for the servers of a decreasing number of players. No new players means no new sales of the software, equals no reason to keep the servers going. I don't think we are there yet, but who knows. I look upon it as enjoying it while it lasts. Who knows, maybe the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale will help boost new players coming on-board. (The PC and Mac version of the game is normally $10, but is on sale for $2.50. The iOS version of the game is $5.)

I hope you liked this review. Please let me know in the comments whether you care to see any computer wargame reviews (don't worry, I will not deluge the blog with them) or not. Any feedback is appreciated.

Also, if you do try this and you want a game, send a Friend Request (in the game) to "AdmiralBob", my Leviathan: Warships alter ego. See you on the High Seas!

I have shown several people my 6mm figures that I have painted and the comment I always get, which is often similar to what I read on the forums (like The Miniatures Page), is: "Oh, I could never do that! They are so small. My eyes are not strong enough to paint something so tiny." Well, my eyes are pretty bad before correction, so that is really not the problem.

What it takes to paint (anything) is a steady hand. Until you get your "hand", where it stops trembling and shaking because you are holding it out in an uncommon position, you are not going to be very decent in painting a 28mm figure or a portrait either. But, this article is not about how to steady your hand (only practice can do that), this is about how easy painting a 6mm figure really is.

First, a few notes. Most of the pictures that follow are magnified. The detail you can see much more than the naked eye can really discern. I point that out because painting "defects" look really bad in magnified pictures; the defects are, well, magnified!

I paint under a magnifier lamp, such as these on Amazon. Don't misunderstand: I do not do this because they are 6mm figures; I do not for all figure painting, including my 42mm troops. It is just easier on the eyes because it lights the subject and makes the details pop.

























Above you can see the unit before flocking (below, after flocking) at a distance where you would be looking at the table. You can discern the blues and the whites just pop. You can see the two halves of the helmet, and thus their "eyes" can be imagined. Any mistakes you made in the edging on the shoulder guards is just not discernable, but the detail absolutely pops off of the table and makes the figure. The heavy weapons team, with its red helmets and designator on their backpack, make them easy to pick out from the crowd. (The single figure is the Sergeant.)


In case you are wondering what rules I am using the answer is: I am not sure yet! The good thing about 6mm figures are that they are cheap enough, and quick enough to paint, that if you are not trying to get crazy with building huge armies for every game it is very doable to actually have figures painted and based for multiple systems. For example, I have these figures also painted and based singly, for 6mm skirmishing (see my battle report for In the Emperor's Name). That is going to be, maybe, 12 figures, per force type, per side. So, unless you have really extensive choices that is maybe 50-75 figures, which equates to about $20. Singly-based figures would also be usable for a Command & Colors type game where four single figures represents a unit.

These figures are to test out three company-level rules sets – Poor Bloody Infantry, Crossfire, and Five Core's Company Command – the first two of which I have had for quite some time and have wanted to play. Each stand can represent a portion of a squad (Poor Bloody Infantry) or the squad itself (Crossfire and Company Command). For Poor Bloody Infantry I would need about double or triple that to play a very basic game, while this represents the starter game for Crossfire and Company Command. (Guess which one will probably get played last?) So this basing scheme would probably require 36 figures per side for a starter force. Quadruple that to have some choices and you are looking at a $50 expenditure.

One of the reasons people look towards 6mm is reduce the space required for playing a game. I can understand that sentiment, given that I once lived full-time in an RV for more than three years. When I tell you that space was tight, I am not kidding. My typical gaming space was a standard 30" x 40" foam core board – an example of which can be seen here in one of my old 15mm DBAWI battle reports– so 6mm figures seem ideal for this. That said, I am one of those people that like to see figures a little more realistic to the ground scale. To be honest, that is one of factors that turned me off about Flames of War. The figure density on the table was just too high. It was not the number of units bought, but rather the number of figures on the small base sizes they used. I think that if I had played Flames of War with 6mm figures on 15mm base sizes I would have been much happier. (Tanks would have to be put on bases too, in order to ensure that they don't go tread-to-tread in an even smaller area, of course.) For me, now, that is why I keep coming back to 6mm: I use 15mm basing sizes and I find the figure density more aesthetically pleasing, at least for the modern era. Plus it is cheaper and I can paint the figures to an acceptable standard faster. That, and I can have figures based for multiple systems and not really fret over "wasting" figures.

Another aspect of 6mm aesthetics is proportionality. Most wargamer's pre-modern armies have their width to depth all wrong. Many rules acknowledge that by setting a unit's frontage to match a ground scale – for example saying that a battalion's real-world frontage is about 125 yards and setting the ground scale to 6" equals 125 yard, thus making the battalion's bases come out to a width of 6"– but the rules rarely reconcile that the unit's depth will be far greater in miniature than it real life. In the example scale, each inch would be about 21 yards, which would make a battalion about 1/2" in depth. Given than many pre-modern rules want double-ranked figures for aesthetic purposes, there is no way for them to fit, unless you are using the smaller scales.

Of course, another reason for 6mm is to get a "mass effect" by using large numbers of figures. I won't speak to that because: 1) I have never seen it implemented, so I have not been bitten by that bug; and 2) it sort of flies in the face all of my reasons above. Although I have 6mm for the Napoleonic and Franco-Prussian War periods, I do not feel that I have been really successful in using them in those periods. Maybe that is because I still have not settled on rules that I like, so I keep re-basing them?

Well, my goal was not to "sell" you on 6mm, but to address some of the common objections that I have personally heard and read online regarding this scale. It may not be the be-all, end-all scale for me, but certainly it serves its purpose. I believe it looks better than paper, top-down counters (like with board games), and when the figure counts are low and the ground scale large (such as with Memoir '44 and the like). Larger figures with very small buildings just don't look right ...

If you were thinking about 6mm, especially regarding painting them, I hope this helped. If you have a painting hand at all, the scale really won't matter. Just get a magnifier lamp (you should have one anyway), smaller brushes, and paint with good flow (I use Liquitex Flow Aid to thin acrylic paints) and give it a try. If you like Science Fiction, Onslaught Miniatures has a really nice line of figures where the details are cast on and these techniques work well. Sometimes you can find the old GW Epic figures on eBay pretty cheaply too. I have a ton of them still, which is why I turn to them to playtest out new modern game systems.

The next post I hope to show my other interest – also a holdover from my RV days – paper miniatures. I think LitkoAero may have finally come up with a sensible paper figure base that is far better than their previous paper counter stand. More on that when the bases arrive.

The miniature rules No Stars in Sight – Hard Sci-Fi Platoon Level Warfare is a set of rules based on the FiveCore game system, found in other titles by Ivan Sorensen of Nordic Weasel, such as: Five Men in Normandy, No End in Sight, and Company Commander. (I also have the last two titles.) The first set I bought was No End in Sight, which is platoon-level warfare for the modern period, but as I did not really have any figures, I did not play them. In fact, I was pondering how I might convert them so I could use either my Games Workshop Warhammer 40,000 figures (28mm) or my Epic-scale (6mm) figures representing the same genre, when I noticed these rules during Wargame Vault's Christmas sale.

What is it all about?

No Stars in Sight is a tactical, miniatures game using the following guiding (design) principles:

• A platoon battle will come down to a series of heroic actions by small groups of soldiers.
• Small arms fire primarily results in the enemy being pinned down. Casualties are much less common than normally assumed in games.
• A vigorous fire fight can result in one side being pushed back without having suffered significant losses.
• Wounded and dead will significantly impact a squad's ability to operate effectively.
• Irregular militia and insurgent troops should operate differently from regular trained forces.
• Tabletop scale should be treated realistically. Your typical gaming table represents the "tip of the spear" in most cases, engaging the enemy at very close ranges.
• Games should be playable on a relatively small table and without spending a fortune on figures.
• Large open spaces in sight of the enemy are very difficult to cross. Try to avoid having fire lanes that are 5+ inches wide and running the length of the table.
• For your first game especially, set the forces pretty close to each other – 2 feet apart – on a table with fairly dense terrain.

No Stars in Sight are not science fantasy rules, but "hard science". What that means is:

• Projectile weapons are still the dominant infantry weapon.
• Resource scarcity has made the seizure and control of vital resources of top importance. This has led to an increased importance for small, well trained infantry units.
• The basic rebel with an automatic rifle doesn't look terribly different than they did 200 years ago.
• Advances in computers have produced highly autonomous computer systems that can operate with minimal human input. True human level artificial intelligence is still not viable but autonomous systems can operate to the level of a well trained animal.
• State of the art infantry can outfight a force far larger, however, the cost of deploying such units makes them prohibitive. Local mercenaries with a more modest technological base are often employed in their stead.
• Ground based vehicles are still dominant but gravity suspension systems have begun to see deployment. Such vehicles will supplant the role of helicopters.
• Great advances in genetics have improved the health of the populations in rich countries, as well as opened the possibility for genetic “optimization” programs and cybernetic enhancements.

So, although these rules may not be "ideal" for converting 40K straight over, I like the basic principles, so I thought I would give it a go.

Stress

The core concept – or at least one of them, I assume there are five – is that players keep track of each leader's stress level, both temporary and permanent, in order to determine how effective they are with command and control. The easiest way to explain this is by way of example.

Each turn each leader attempts to "activate" in order to get his unit to perform actions. He gets a total of 1D6 activation points, minus his current stress level. Each time the leader succeeds in activating he temporarily adds one point to his stress. So a simple example, at the start of the first turn of the game Leader 1 has 0 stress. He rolls 1D6 and scores a '4', so he has four activation points to spend having his unit perform actions. After he is done, he adds one temporary point to his stress. He decides to try and activate again so he rolls 1D6 and subtracts 1 (for his current stress level) and rolls a '2'. He has 1 activation point to spend and after all activations are complete, increases his stress to 2 temporary points. He decides to try and activate once again, rolling 1D6 and subtracting 2, getting a '2', resulting in 0 activation points. This indicates that he is "exhausted" and can no longer attempt activations for the remainder of the turn. Play moves on to the next unexhausted leader. (Note that you are not required to use one leader until exhaustion before using another.)

At the end of the turn, all figures that have stress (typically only leaders and vehicles, but sometimes individual soldiers that can operate solo) subtract up to three temporary stress each. Any remaining stress becomes permanent. So, if you really try and push your luck and activate four or more times a turn, that excess stress stays with the leader.

I found this mechanism pretty easy to handle. I try and reduce the number of markers on the table, and definitely do not like it when I have to use multiple markers for a single figure, so I kept an index card on the side with each unit listed. As I would accumulate stress I put a tick mark. When a stress point became permanent I used a '0' to indicate its permanency. Pretty simple and effective.

Activation

What can you do with an activation point? The most common use is either to remove pinning from a single figure or activate one figure so it can move and fire.

Because you are rolling 1D6 for the number of activation points command and control can be pretty haphazard. When you are using very small squads, say 5-6 men, it is very easy for everyone to be able to do something every activation, until you start pushing your luck. For larger squads, however, you have to start alternating who gets activated or start using group orders.

There are two group orders: group movement and suppression fire. Group movement is just that, a group of 2 to 3 figures close together moving together to the same area. It costs only a single point, but at the expense of none of the figures being able to fire. Suppression fire allows a group of 2 to 3 figures close together to fire at a target for a single point. The tradeoff, however, is that none of the fire can kill or wound and none of the figures can move.

Shooting

Shooting is easy ... and difficult all at the same time. When you activate a figure you can choose to either fire before or after the move. I believe you are also expected to fire as a group, if firing at the same target(s), although this is not strictly necessary.

I say it is "easy" because the method for figuring out combat results is relatively simple. Each figure generates so many firepower, based on their training, with some weapons generating additional firepower. Each firepower point generates 1 "shock" die and 1/2 a "kill" die. Shock dice cause pins and kill dice cause hits (wounds and kills). The numbers to hit are fixed, so no list of modifiers to deal with.

The "hard" part is the flexibility of being able to shoot before or after, with or without support from others. There is no Movement phase and then Shooting phase. Nor is there a requirement to finish one figure's activation completely before starting another. (You do have to finish a unit's activation before starting another, however.) You can shoot some of your figures, then move others who then shoot afterwards, and finally end by moving the figures that shot initially. It is this flexibility that will probably cause most players to limit the number of figures under their command, or at least in each unit. More testing will tell.

Morale

Morale is built into a number of small rules and are largely reflected by figures being pinned or retreating. There are no morale "breaks". You will find that a unit simply becomes so ineffective due to casualties and pinning that they cannot do anything. The negative modifier to the activation point roll will get such that you, the player, will stop attacking, start pulling back, tending to the wounded, and trying to get as many soldiers in close groups (defined as figures within 1" of each other) so you can perform group moves and suppression fire to get the most effect for the few activation points you receive. I like this effect. It not only feels right, but it sounds like accounts I have read about others huddling together when things get bad and people dealing with the wounded rather than being on the firing line. As this models basic psychology I think it can apply to many other periods.

Many rules use a high casualty rate for combat and state that a casualty represents men "rendered ineffective", "wounded", and "killed" without ever bothering to specify what percentage are in each category. This makes it particularly difficult for translating effects for a campaign game. Although breaking each category out in a game may sound like it might be more complex to play out, my playtest game shows otherwise. The main thing is that there is a bookkeeping component to this game – using markers, a roster, or both – so you can see exactly how a unit's effectiveness degrades.

Game Ratings

So, using the review system from before, here are the game ratings for No Stars in Sight (NSIS).

Drama– do the rules create tension during play?

The use of a die roll to determine the number of activation points a unit receives can cause swings from an entire unit being able to act to one figure to none, exhausting the leader from giving any more orders that turn. There are quite a number of random rolls, in fact, such as variable movement while rushing across open ground, reaction fire/opportunity fire/overwatch, chance to pin, hit, wound, or kill, assault, morale, and so on. All of these contribute to the drama as the rolls usually lead to direct consequences, like being pinned in the open.

I would not say that the game can "turn on a dime", but I would say that a player's expectations of how well he is doing goes up and down throughout the game. If that does not describe drama, I am using the wrong term.

NSIS rates 4 out of 5 in Drama.

Uncertainty– are there enough elements that introduce uncertainty into the game?

The rules have a number of chance elements, as indicated above. What is nice about it is that the rolls are relatively easy to remember in not only the number needed for success, but the number of dice to be rolled. There are very few modifiers to rolls. I think the number of rolls have been reduced down to just the necessary elements.

NSIS rates 4 out of 5 in Uncertainty.

Engaging– do the rules allow the player to make meaningful decisions that lead to consequences?

The player makes a number of meaningful decisions in the game, from who gets the limited resource of activation points, to what order you perform actions. For example, during my playtest I came upon many instances where I forgot to fire before moving, where there was a possibility to pin the enemy on overwatch. Trust me, the consequences were often that I ended up getting people pinned or wounded out in the open!

I think the lack of strict structure to the turn sequence increases the player's engagement.

NSIS rates 5 out of 5 in Engaging.

Unobtrusiveness– do the rules get in the way?

As stated previously, most of the numbers needed for success are easy to remember, as is the number of dice to roll. There is one chart, which is the chance of being wounded or killed, by armor type. Given that there are four armor types for infantry (not counting Powered Armor, which is a totally different beast), a chart is probably easier to remember than a set of rules.

Where the rules do get in the way, and it is probably something that applies more to NSIS than to the other FiveCore titles, is that rather than using die roll modifiers there are a number of exceptions to rules. A good example is the use of Exo-Suits in Assault. Rather than using the standard to hit roll then determining the whether the figure is wounded or killed (by armor type), Exo-Suits change the chance to hit, but if hit are automatically killed. Until you play the rules enough this will be something that forces you to refer to the rules, and not just the QRS. Speaking of which, because of these exceptions, the QRS is not so useful unless you don't use things that cause exceptions. That is why I lowered the rating by 1 point.

Speaking of modifiers though, I should not come across that there are no die roll modifiers. There are a few. But because the norm is constant hit number with some exceptional cases, I consider those rules that modify the die roll to be yet another exceptional case.

NSIS rates 3 out of 5 in Unobtrusiveness.

Heads Up– are the rules playable without frequent reference to a quick reference sheet?

As indicated above in the Unobtrusiveness rating, the numbers are easy to remember, so a QRS is not really necessary. Also because there is little structure to the turn you don't need the Turn Sequence printed out as a reminder of what the next step is. As stated before, rule exceptions can be a problem if you use quirky gear and the QRS gives no indication of these exceptions.

NSIS rates 4 out of 5 in Heads Up.

Appropriately Flavored – do the rules 'feel' like they represent the period or genre being played?

As it stands, the genre being represented is today, with some moderately advanced gear. The basic design philosophy, unlike say Warhammer 40,000 is that it is the man, not the gear, that determines how effective he is in combat. If you agree with that, then it is appropriately flavored.

Note that there are a lot of rules that I have not used, as I wanted to start simple and not get wrapped around the axle with too many quirky items. (See the AAR that follows.) There are a number of aliens and weapons defined. There are droids, system hacking, vehicles, and so on. Again, the rules tend towards "hard" (i.e. believable) science fiction rather than science fantasy ("Anoint your bolters brothers!"), so if you don't mind using your Space Marines as something other than super-soldiers that walk over everything, you will probably like the flavor.

NSIS rates 4 out of 5 in Appropriately Flavored.

Scalable – can the rules be scaled up or down – in terms of figures or number of units played – from a 'normal' game?

Right now the game is aimed at a platoon per side. Can it scale up? Yes, sort of. There are suggestions to use more figures per base, but play each figure straight (i.e. as if it were one man), call each base a fire team and each unit a platoon and voila, you are at company level. To me that is not really "scaling the game up".

The limiting factor is largely the bookkeeping aspect of tracking stress on each unit leader. How many leaders a single player can control is pretty finite. Increasing the unit count increases the bookkeeping, so complexity increases linearly.

Increasing the number of figures in a unit only means that more people will be standing around doing nothing each activation because the game mechanic is that you only get 1D6 activation points per unit, regardless of the number of men in the unit. There is no scaling factor based on the number of men in the unit.

NSIS rates 3 out of 5 in Scalable.

Lacks Fiddly Geometry – do the rules require fiddly measurements or angles?

This is a game of line of sight, shots through gaps, and shooting while the enemy rushes from one piece of cover to the next. Because rushes to cover compares the distance to move to a D6 roll to determine success, being a fraction of an inch farther away means you have -16% less chance of success. This is the sort of factor that can lead to disagreements. Nudging or bumping figures a small amount can change distances and line of sight, also causing problems.

What the game generally does not require are measurements for range; most weapons shoot the entire length of the board. But, given that the author recommends lots of line of sight blocking terrain, this might well be a game in which you break out the laser pointer.

NSIS rates 2 out of 5 in Fiddly Geometry.

Tournament Tight™ Rules – are the rules clear and comprehensive, or do the players need to 'fill in the blanks'?

Let me start by saying that my preference is towards tighter rules, where everything is spelled out clearly by the author, not looser rules where the author leaves certain mechanics up to the individual players, gentlemen's agreements, and a roll of the die where agreements cannot be found. So a high value means 'tight' and a low value means 'loose'. If you like looser rules, subtract my rating from '6' and that would probably be your rating!

These rules are not intended for tournament play. Although the author never states it, I think it is expected that the players "own" the rules and come up with their own interpretations where there are gaps. The biggest gray area is in the sequence of actions and exactly how much latitude you have. Also, some terms are used and it is not quite clear what is meant by them. Some rules are subtle and it is not clear whether that is intentional or poor wording on the part of the author. (Hopefully I will remember to point to all of these areas in the AAR.) All of these contribute to players adopting local variations that the author might not do himself, but is probably okay with.

NSIS rates 2 out of 5 in Tournament Tight™ Rules.

Solo Suitability – do the rules have elements conducive to solo play?

There are no hidden elements to the game, at least that I have read as of yet, so that alone grants the rules high solitaire suitability. In fact, some of the other negative factors – interpretation of ambiguous areas, player interpreted line of sight, short movement distances, movement into cover controlled by D6 roll – all fall by the wayside when you are gaming solo.

In addition, the author has provided some ideas on campaigns and gaming solo, so I am not really sure if this should not be considered the primary way of playing them! Unless my gaming buddies show some interest after reading this review, I will probably simply use them for a solo campaign.

NSIS rates 5 out of 5 in Solo Suitability.

Component Quality – are the components provided made with quality?

This is a new rating, meant primarily for board games, which addresses the quality of the physical components. As I bought the rules as a PDF the rating is not really applicable. Note that the PDF is featureless, however. A page linked table of contents would have been nice, but as with most publishers these days, it appears to have been produced by "Print to PDF", which is acceptable.

As a side note, publishers should consider what Ganesha Games has done, which is to include two versions of the rules: a normal, full-color PDF and an ink-saving version for printing out.

NSIS rates Not Applicable in Component Quality.

Test Game of No Stars in Sight

Well, this review is getting long, so expect the AAR for the test game next time. Just a hint: in my mind, the game swung back and forth a bit, probably because I was not used to how non-lethal combat can be (if you do things right). This back and forth is what makes me think the game will be one that I play a bit more often, although as I shared in the review, I will probably stick to these for solo efforts only.

Summary

It produces a fun game with "realistic" results, if you agree with the author's premise (which I do). A few fiddly bits, but eminently tweakable. Recommended.

You can find my review of the miniatures rules No Stars in Sight (NSIS) here.

I decided to blow the dust off of my Games Workshop, Epic scale (6mm), Warhammer 40,000 (40K) troops and try out another set of rules. (I hope to try other sets of rules soon using the same figures, One Page 40K and Hammer Wars, but that is an aside.)

I played the rules straight – or as straight as I could honestly get them – with no changes other than giving the Chaos Beastmen a special morale boost. That does not mean I always played the rules correctly, or even remembered all of the rules all of the way through. More importantly, I did not change the measurements at all, keeping the distances as they are written in the rules. I did that for two reasons: it is simpler; and I think the 6mm scale generally works better with 15mm measurements in almost every game as the figure is more in scale with the perceived ground scale.

First off, NSIS is "hard science" and 40K is "space fantasy", so there needs to be a bit of conversion.

The Forces

Space Marines: one Sergeant and five Troopers. The Sergeant is armed with a Power Fist and Bolt Pistol, one Trooper is armed with a Heavy Bolter, with the remaining Troopers carrying Bolt Rifles.

• Bolt Rifle: nothing more than a standard assault rifle. No special rules.
• Heavy Bolter: in these rules a SAW as he was not carrying any special ammunition.
• Bolt Pistol: 12" range, 1 Firepower (even when wielded by Professional troops), +1D in assault
• Power Fist: +1D in assault, ignores armor.

The Space Marines are considered Professional troops, genetically modified, and equipped with full communications gear, Assault Armor, and Exo-Suits. What does all that mean?

• Professional troops generate 2 firepower when shooting, rather than the normal 1.
• Genetically modified allows the troops to offset the negative modifiers for moving while using Assault Armor.
• Full communications gear allows the members of the unit to operate anywhere on the board without regard to the location of the leader. Note that I am not referring to "comms networks", which is an upgrade of sorts.
• Assault Armor cuts the chance of dying from a hit in half, cuts the chance of being wounded by 25%, and has a chance of reducing a hit to a pin. (That may sound complex, but it is not. I do not want to reveal the math behind the game, as that is a key part of the author's intellectual property. If you want to know it, buy the game. It is worth it.)
• Exo-Suits allow a trooper to carry a heavier load, but provide no protection. Think of the Assault Armor/Exo-Suit combination as 40K powered armour (i.e. 3+ save). Only one problem: it doesn't work the way I think it did (or should), so I will not take this in the future.

Chaos Space Marines: one Champion and four Troopers. All are armed with Bolt Pistols and Chainswords.

• Chainsword: +1D in assault.

The Chaos Space Marines (CSM) are considered Professional troops, genetically modified, and equipped with full communications gear, Assault Armor, and Exo-Suits.

Chaos Beastmen: seven Minotaurs. All are armed with a two-handed axe.

• Two-Handed Axe: +2D in assault due to the size of the weapon and the strength of the Minotaur.

The Chaos Beastmen (CB) are considered Trained troops, mutated, but equipped with no communications gear or armor.

• I wimped out by using Trained for the CB, I admit it. I did not want to deal with all of the negative exception rules for Irregular troops. Maybe next time.
• Mutated is the same as genetically modified. Note that for them, as they have no Assault Armor to overcome, it actually gives them a benefit in rushing into cover (gray area ¹), which is good when you have come to a gunfight armed only with an axe!

I added one more ability for the CB, Bloodthirsty: the ability to ignore their wounded. Their nature allows them to ignore the negative modifier against their morale of having fellow Minotaurs who are wounded. So they are less likely to retreat from combat. In hindsight I probably should have made it to not count pinned troops also. In all cases I still wanted them to take a morale check when receiving incoming fire.

The Scenario

So, the Space Marines are badly outnumbered (12 to 6), but are much better equipped and defending in hard cover although they have been caught napping. (I have no idea how it comes out in points, but that is the great thing about gaming solo: no one feels like they got the short end of the stick!)



With that sorted out, I allow the Chaos forces, as the attacker, to take the first turn.

The CB start moving towards the East side of town, but not without one of the Minotaurs catching fire from the Space Marine guarding the road. Fortunately, it only pinned him down momentarily, but it was enough to stall the advance a little.

A figure may either move and shoot or be unpinned in one activation round. As the CB had more troops that generally meant that there were fewer opportunities to move figures individually. A pinned trooper cannot participate in a group move, and if enough get pinned in an activation round, it may result in no one moving. As you can see in the photo below, the previously pinned trooper had to use an activation point to catch up with his group so he could take advantage of group movement in future rounds. As the leader only rolled one activation point, the advance stalled.

Meanwhile, the CSM started moving in on the North side of the town. One Trooper moves down the road in order to take the Space Marine guard from behind and hears the Space Marine in the small courtyard. He signals his fellow Troopers of the danger, and one brave CSM jumps in to assault.

Note that this move required the CSM move into the open, potentially allowing the enemy a reaction shot. Reaction fire, or even overwatch, is not guaranteed in this game. Essentially the enemy has to rush from one point to another, ending in cover. If he makes it, and the chance of success is directly proportional to the distance you are trying to cross in the open, there is no reaction fire. The enemy has essentially popped up and crossed the space before you could draw a bead on him. You may have fired, but such fire is assumed to have been automatically ineffective.

The CSM having caught the Trooper unawares, fires into the courtyard (with no result) and then assaults.

Assaults occur whenever two figures are within 6" and in sight of one another. Assaults are much more deadly than shooting and represents everything from intense, short-ranged firefights, to grenade throwing, to (abstractly) moving into hand-to-hand. Note however, that the author does make the distinction between assaults and actual hand-to-hand combat (where the figures are physically in contact with one another). The former is deadly and calculating while the latter is a crap shoot. Despite having assault troops, I never wanted to enter hand-to-hand with the Chaos forces. (Maybe I read the rules wrong. ²)

Assaults are also unlike most other games. The attacker rolls first and inflicts damage, with the defender only getting to roll if they survive. Assaults are not simultaneous affairs!

Although the CSM had the distinct advantage in swinging first and having twice as many dice to throw, he failed to hit the Space Marine, who in turn failed to hit the CSM.

When an assault results in enemy remaining on both sides, each checks morale ³ and if both are still within 3" after those checks another round of assault occurs.

The CSM finally got the better of the Space Marine as the extra dice for close combat weapons told. The Space Marine died where he stood, giving first blood to Chaos.

At this point, I have to admit, I felt like I had made a mistake with this scenario. Granted, the Space Marines had not been given a chance to take any actions, but basically the hordes of Chaos were upon  their doorstep and they were already one down! Nonetheless, I decided to press on to see just how big the Chaos victory would be.

As if to confirm my predictions, the Space Marines had a terrible turn. Although the managed to get on Trooper inside the building to the South at the second floor covering the East approach, it only resulted in a single pinned Minotaur.


The CB quickly mount an attack from the East. The Marines at the windows only muster enough firepower to pin one additional Minotaur.

I started using movement arrows to highlight where the action is occurring. It serves no function in the game, although it does help you remember how many activation points you have spent that round. They are there purely for photography. The green markers, however, show figures that are pinned, while red markers show the wounded. I use no markers to track stress; that is kept on paper.

The CB succeed in getting an unusual number of activation points each round, and succeed in getting three activation rounds. This allows two Minotaurs to breach the main building and charge upstairs. The Sergeant slaughters them both in assault with his Power Fist! The dying bellows of the Minotaurs have a telling effect on the others, and they start to withdraw ⁴.

Six dice and the Minotaurs whiffed with them all. The Sergeant killed one in the first round of combat, causing the Status Check, resulting in the retreat of the CB. As that only drove the remaining Minotaur down the stairs I allowed the assault to continue. The remaining Minotaur whiffed with his three dice before meeting his fate. I left the last Minotaur in the shot (on the roof) and forgot to remove him for a number of turns.

The CSM had incredibly bad luck as they were able to move only a single man into cover before their Champion became exhausted, ending the Chaos turn. Suddenly, the pressure is easing for the Space Marines.

The Space Marines get a good set of activations moving the Heavy Bolter up the stairs to the window facing West. Now the CSM will start coming under fire. The remaining two Troopers in the courtyard burst out of the gate and mow down the CB leader. This puts them within assault range of a pinned Minotaur and they take him down for good measure. Two Minotaurs are now dead and three are wounded, including the leader. However, their thirst for blood allows the CB to keep on fighting.

At this point I made some really stupid moves with the CSM. I could not let go of the idea that there was a strict turn sequence, with all movement before shooting. Thus, rather than shooting first, laying down some covering fire in an attempt to suppress the MACHINE GUN IN THE WINDOW, they bravely (but stupidly) tested the rules for crossing open ground under fire. They worked. Here they are after getting pinned, unpinning, and getting shot up again.

The one shining moment was when one CSM finally worked his way around the flank, entered the Southern house being guarded by a single Marine, and took him out in assault! That makes two Space Marines killed.⁵ And they were just starting to win!


Although the Space Marines had a short turn, it was an effective one. The Heavy Bolter continued to slams rounds into the CSM caught in the open ground, wounding the first CSM and causing the others to retreat. Further, fire from the Marines at the gate pinned the CSM that had taken the South building, and the morale break caused him to retreat away from the window and down the stairs.


The remaining two Minotaurs muster their courage for a final charge into the town. With so many dead, and having replaced the leader, this unit is rapidly becoming ineffective.

The basic idea behind degrading unit ineffectiveness is controlled through stress, which you may remember from the rules review is subtracted from your die roll for the number of activation points you receive that round. So for each casualty⁶ you receive over a given threshold you earn you one permanent stress on the leader. And if your leader is wounded, a new leader automatically takes over, but they start with one additional permanent stress for suddenly being stuck with command. So normally the CB would be at six permanent stress, if not for their Bloodthirsty ability. So let's see, that is 1D6 - 6 activation points per turn for the unit. That comes to ... oh! But with the Bloodthirsty rule the CB only have a "mere" three permanent stress!

The CSM try to get out of the killing zone, but in the process the Champion becomes wounded. The CSM to the South launches a surprise attack on the Marines at the gate killing one and pinning the other. (Yeah, he rolled one kill die and one shock die, both scoring hits, and the hit rolled a kill on the armor save! With a friggin' Bolt Pistol!) That is three Space Marines down and the Sergeant now concerned about the situation.


Making a quick decision, the Sergeant orders everyone out of the farm and to exfiltrate to the South. He charges up his Power Fist and heads down the street straight into the Minotaurs.


They did not stand a chance. Not only does the Sergeant kill one in assault and wound the other (making all in the CB unit either dead or wounded), but a Trooper forces the CSM to the South to retreat, forcing an even wider gap for the Space Marines to escape through.

Although there is an additional action, the exhaustion of the Chaos side is quickly making it obvious they cannot stop the Space Marines escape. The capper comes when the Heavy Bolter shoots at a retreating CSM in the woods, wounding him, and causing another CSM to retreat off of the board (at the top of the photo below) leaving only one unwounded CSM on the board of the original 12 soldiers. The Space Marines have won a bloody victory!


Summary

Wow! Not the way I expected it to play out! Very fun game with a lot of nail biting tosses of the dice. Unlike a game of, say Warhammer 40,000 you do not toss buckets of dice. That means that luck plays a higher factor because the rolls are less likely to even out over the course of a single game. That said, it does not feel like a heavily luck dependent game.

The Chaos forces lost because I simply did not follow good tactical doctrine of laying down a base of fire before trying to cross open ground under fire. (What do you expect from Khorne Berserkers and bloodthirsty Minotaurs?!?)

Tracking the stress was actually much easier than I figured it would be, what temporary stress, permanent stress, recovering stress, adding stress due to casualties, etc.

As stated in the rules review, the main issue was remembering to impose rule exceptions (that will get easier over time with more games) and coming to grips with some of the gray areas of the rules (see below).

Again, recommended, and a very enjoyable game!

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Gray Areas of the Rules

¹ Rushing requires you roll a die to determine your chance of success in crossing an open area into cover. Genetically modified or mutated troops gain a die roll modifier, increasing the chance of success. But technically, that means their rolls are from 2 through 7 (1D6 + 1), so does that also mean that they can rush up to 7" rather than 6"? The rules imply that they cannot, but I wonder ...

² As it turns out, I did read the rules wrong. Melee weapons affect hand-to-hand combat, not assault. Whoops! So maybe it is a lot less of a crap shoot after all. I found that out while writing this report. I think I will change the Bolt Pistol to +1D for both assault and hand-to-hand combat, but keep the Chainsword as only +1D in hand-to-hand combat, as the author intended for melee weapons.

³ The rules says "test morale for both sides", but there are several types of morale tests. I was looking for one related to assaults, or just morale in general. I figured that the closest was to take a Status Check, although that is specifically listed as being taken for incoming fire, and affects the entire unit, not just the figures in the assault.

⁴ It is not clear to me how exactly the mechanics of retreats are supposed to work, specifically what direction troops are supposed to retreat to. Especially when the retreating troops don't have a baseline like the Space Marines in this scenario. For this game I determined what the closest source of antagonism was for each retreating figure and moved them directly away from that source. For figures grouped together I let them retreat together in a common direction.

⁵ The source of these deaths are not unlucky armor rolls, but one of those exceptional rules, that states: "Exo-suit figures are hit only on a 6 in assaults but are eliminated on any such hit." Um, guys, time to shed the Exo-Suits!

⁶ Here was where I had a bit of trouble with seemingly shifting terminology (or my bad assumptions, one of the two). In the section on Casualties and Stress the term "casualty" seems to refer to the number of dead. But in the Status Check section the term seems to refer to dead an untreated wounded (but not the wounded that are treated). I reasoned that as wounded can be treated later, changing their status from morale-draining casualty to – what, non-casualty? – then the wounded could not be a casualty for purposes of Stress, as you could not add a permanent stress and then remove it when the wounded became treated, could you? I ruled that only the dead caused permanent stress, but I can see that if you expand the definition of "casualty" to include wounded, unit degradation will occur even faster.

Last weekend I played the first miniatures game in a long time. Too bad the rules ... sucked. But it did help reinvigorate me to get back into miniatures gaming. I have started painting and crafting again, and of course, obsessing over rebasing my 6mm Napoleonic troops. Part of the problem is deciding over which rules to use, all of which seem to have different basing requirements. More on that another time.

I have been using a set of rules for a while that I have never reviewed before. Not sure why I have not reviewed them. Maybe because they are pretty obscure and are relatively hard to get. Maybe because they will not be everyone's cup of tea. I think they have some interesting ideas, which is why I decided to finally review them.

What is it all about?

Chris Engle of Engle Matrix Games and Hamster Press has been around the gaming world for awhile. If you have ever heard of matrix games, you were probably reading about one of Chris Engle's games. But these rules are not matrix games. Rather, they are the rules that Chris used to fight out the battles that resulted from playing his military campaigns run as matrix games. Here is the history from Chris:

Starting in the late 1980's I began running military campaign games at conventions using a Matrix Game. This allowed players to run whole wars, with a minimum of rules, in under four hours, battles included! Because of this I had to develop miniatures battle rules that would allow players to play a small battle in five minutes and a large battle in fifteen or twenty minutes. A hard standard to meet, but the result is the game presented here.

So, if you are not playing a campaign game, why would you want a set of miniatures battle rules that play the games out in 20 minutes? Well, perhaps one of the reasons why I have not played many campaign games is because the battles themselves take so long to complete that players lose interest well before the campaign completes. In the last two campaigns I played – both using Memoir 44 – it took us at least three gaming sessions of about four hours each to complete each one (and these were published campaigns). There were at least four campaigns in each of the books – so about eight campaigns – and we never even got to the other six because of fatigue.

But that is not why I bought the rules. I saw a copy in some random hobby shop while I was traveling for business somewhere. What caught my eye was the subtitle on the rules: "a diceless battle game for miniatures". The first copy I purchased was Fusilier, which is the third in the Strategic Spectrum Series, and covers the Horse and Musket era. (If you see this title online be careful, as there are several other rules out there with the same name. The odds are great that it is not this game unless it says the author is Chris Engle.)

The first miniatures game I purchased that had diceless combat was The Compleat Brigadier. No one liked them but me. It had you writing order and there was that whole "diceless" thing. Everyone wants to roll dice. There is the physicality of the process and the suspense. But I feel that with some games the rules author clearly weren't paying attention in a couple of their math classes when they were kids. Some of the variations are wild. Some don't roll enough dice in order to try and smooth out the die rolls, resulting in games that are simply die rolling contests. Generally speaking, if you don't roll dice, you pretty much have to have your math correct (or at least, reasonable). So I wanted to check out Chris' ideas and see how he made it work, if at all. Here is some of Chris' rationale for going diceless:

At first I tried to make a game like other miniatures games, with dice and tables. They were not fast enough. It appears that the fastest a dice game can get is thirty minutes, not fast enough. For a long time I could not think of what to do. The it hit me. Why do I need dice? In most games it is pretty obvious who is going to win a fight without rolling a die. I began experimenting and found it works! Not only that but it produces a very fun game that has all of the subtleties of chess while looking pretty as a wargame.

This made sense to me. Why? Because about five years earlier I had come to the same conclusion with role-playing games. Think about it. You are the Game Master and you have built this adventure. You have put in all of these goodies and thought up a story line. Honestly, the last thing you want to have happen is either:

1. The players run into some enemy group (or worse, a random wandering monster) that was only supposed to be a speed bump, but due to a series of unfortunate events ends up trashing the party.
2. The players run into something you don't want them to fight (maybe it is the entrance to the next adventure, which you have not completed yet) and after a series of extremely lucky rolls end up trashing your monsters. They then open the door you did not want them to open yet and say "Okay, what next?"

I knew what encounters were fillers, or supposed to provide an item they needed for the next segment of an adventure. I knew when I wanted the players to win and when I wanted them to lose. I knew that Game Masters would, when seeing their design start to go up in smoke, pull out that extra Fireball spell or that potion and suddenly start rolling dice behind the screen and come up with critical hits. Game Masters always had the option to "smooth out" a weird string of dice rolls, so if they could (and would) do that, why bother with the dice? I found a set of rules called Amber (a diceless role-playing game) and used the principles set out there and ran a couple of very successful campaigns using no dice for combat at all. It was actually pretty fun because you essentially had to create a narrative for the combat. But back on point, many situations were simply "pre-determined", so why let dice mess that up?

When it comes to warfare, Chess follows the same mantra. If you can maneuver a piece to a specific position, you automatically take the opposing piece. The combat is a foregone conclusion, so why dice for it?

Fusilier, et al essentially provides a set of conditions that define when an attacking unit forces the defending unit to retreat. Units are destroyed when they retreat into a "killing ground", which is essentially into a friendly or enemy unit or into new terrain. The battle is one of maneuvering units to make conclusive attacks that drive the enemy into killing grounds, destroying them. When enough units are destroyed, the army breaks.

In Fusilier, et al each army is 10 bases strong and has three ratings: Movement, Attack, and Break Point. The Movement rating determines the number of units or groups that may move in a single turn. The Attack rating determines the number of attacks, on single enemy units, that the army may make in a single turn. Finally, the Break Point is the number of units that the army may lose before it breaks in morale. A typical army has a Movement of 2, Attack of 2, and Break Point of 2 (i.e. 20% losses). These numbers may seem really low, but it actually forces the player to focus on only those attacks where they can win, and win strongly.

As a note, the Attack and Break Point ratings are defined as:

1. Bad troops, poorly led, trained, or equipped.
2. Average troops, neither inspired nor cowardly.
3. Good troops, we armed, trained, and led.
4. Inspired troops, exceptionally led and trained.
5. God-like troops who are destined by God to win an empire.

For the Movement rating, cavalry armies tend to have at least a 3 with great cavalry armies having a 4. Infantry armies have a rating of 2, with particularly sluggish armies (like Early Greek Hoplite) having a 1.

Movement

The rules Jabberywocky, Ritter, and Fusilier all use free, measured movement; Ein Ritter Spiel was written with a square grid in mind. All use essentially the same system: each unit is a single base and all bases are a standard width. Any grids are one base width in size. Infantry move one base width and cavalry moves two base widths. When units retreat light infantry retreat two base widths, heavy infantry one, and cavalry two. Special units (elephants, monsters in Jabberwocky, heroes, etc.) use some variation of the infantry and cavalry rules.

Maneuvering is where a lot of the differences are in the units. Light Infantry units are the most maneuverable, by far, with everyone else fairly limited to how they can move. Given that this is a game of maneuver, this is the section of the rules that players have to place the most attention. Once you get into a bad position, it is very hard to maneuver out of it.

The Movement rating of the army indicates the number of units or groups that can move. This is very similar to movement in De Bellis Antiquitatus (DBA). If units are grouped together (bases touching and all facing the same direction) then moving that group only uses one Movement point (like a Command PIP in DBA). So grouping units together is very important and as time and the effects of combat and terrain come into play, your forces will fragment into smaller groups, therefore limiting how many units can move each turn.

Terrain has little effect on movement. No "1/2 movement" or -3" type stuff here. You can either move through it or you cannot. I can see adding some extra rules, however, like woods and towns breaking formation, but currently the rules have none.

Combat

Combat is conducted by indicating a unit that is attacking and the units supporting the attack, and the unit being attacked. The players then go down a list of combat results, finding the situation that matches the condition of the attack, and read the combat results (which are almost always "are defeated"). Now I cannot give you the whole combat results lists – that is the intellectual property of Chris Engle and why you buy the game after all – but I can give you a sense of it.

• Missile unit with two unopposed supporting missile units defeat everyone.

To count as "supporting" a unit must be be able to attack the same target. So if it is melee, they have to be adjacent and facing the target unit; if missile combat they have to be in range, line of fire, and line of sight.

In order to count as "unopposed" the supporting unit cannot be adjacent to an enemy unit other than the target. I had (incorrectly) taken it to mean that a unit would also be opposed if opposite an unengaged enemy missile when using missile combat, and quite liked it that way.

The list of combat results is in a specific order, ranking from most likely to least. For example:

• All troops defeat troops attacked in the rear or flank.
• ...
• All troops defeat civilians.

If a unit of Peasants (civilians) attack a unit of Knights from the rear it wins the combat because the rule "All troops defeat troops attacked in the rear or flank" has higher precedence than the rule "All troops defeat civilians". If the Peasants were attacking from the front it would be a disastrous attack, resulting in their defeat. (Not much of a reason to make that attack then!)

All of the combat results lists are pretty much the same from rule set to rule set; each just provide variations based on the period and genre reflected by the rules. For example, Jabberwocky is a high medieval fantasy rule set so it has to have rules for Monsters, Heroes, Wizards, magic, and flying creatures. Those sorts of rules, however, would not be in Fusilier, which is set in the Horse and Musket era. Those rules, however, would have rules about arquebuses, musketeers (with and without bayonets), and artillery, which Ritter, set in the ancient and medieval times, would not.

All in all the combat works pretty well and you get the hang of the order in the list, so often you don't even need to reference it except in special circumstances. Generally speaking, if your attack has support you will defeat the enemy; if not, it is sort of a rock-paper-scissors drill as to which unit types defeat which enemy under what circumstances.

There are also a number of optional rules, including those who cannot do without their dice. (Throw 2D6 and a '12' means the loser of the combat becomes the winner, a '2' means the combat was a draw, anything else means the results as indicated stand.)

Break Point

Game Ratings

So, using the review system from before, here are the game ratings for Fusilier, et al.

Drama – do the rules create tension during play?

Not rolling dice does remove some of the drama. Nonetheless, the lack of dice does not remove drama entirely. Chess games can be exciting as they go back and forth. Where the drama comes into play is when your opponent carries out unexpected moves, especially ones that you did not see coming.

These rules rate 3 out of 5 in Drama.

Uncertainty – are there enough elements that introduce uncertainty into the game?

The one thing about deterministic combat is that it squeezes uncertainty out of the game. Uncertainty largely comes from your opponent, and how he uses his army, rather than from dice or other elements of chance. That said, two games exactly the same will not play out exactly the same way because each player's decisions are meaningful. Games with these rules does lower the noise of combats that play no significant role, it discounts them completely. These rules cut to the heart of the action. It is up to the players to find out where that heart is.

These rules rate 2 out of 5 in Uncertainty.

Engaging – do the rules allow the player to make meaningful decisions that lead to consequences?

The very elements that lowers the uncertainty in these rules are what makes them engaging. Just like in DBA which elements you use determines where the fight will be and who has the advantage. Moving units that never make it into the fight are essentially a waste of precious resources. Attacks that don't lead to units being driven into killing grounds are usually also a waste although sometimes it spoils your opponent's attack. But is that a good use? Those sort of decisions – how to use scarce resources (Movement and Attack points) – is what determines who wins.

These rules rate 5 out of 5 in Engaging.

Unobtrusiveness – do the rules get in the way?

The rules are very simple; not even a dozen half-size pages. Most of the information consists of diagrams so that you understand the terms used in the combat results list, like "support", "unopposed", "solid line", "flank", and "rear". Also, there are a number of pages of advanced and optional rules, along with a number of army lists for the period that the rule book covers. All of this is pretty simple to remember as there are very few exceptions to rules.

These rules rate 5 out of 5 in Unobtrusiveness.

Heads Up – are the rules playable without frequent reference to a quick reference sheet?

The quick reference consists of one thing: the combat results list. Most games will use only a few unit types. For example, Napoleonic armies will largely consist of Heavy Infantry, Light Infantry, Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry, and Artillery. So you can ignore the rules on arquebuses, pikes, non-bayonet armed muskets, bows, elephants, warbands, etc. What I often do is produce a shortened combat results list that contains only those results that apply to the unit types I am using that game.

Memorization of the basic combat results list is thus pretty easy. After that you will only need to reference it for odd situations, like attacking defensive works or units in terrain, and perhaps some cavalry battles. But pretty rarely. If you attack in force (2:1 or especially 3:1 odds) there is little reason to refer to the card.

The only reason it does not score a 5 is that some maneuvers are not allowed to certain unit types, so unless you play with them a lot, remembering whether a Knight unit can turn in place or must wheel, etc. can require looking up at least once a game.

These rules rate 4 out of 5 in Heads Up.

Appropriately Flavored – do the rules 'feel' like they represent the period or genre being played?

Each book represents a specific period or genre. Jabberwocky covers high medieval fantasy, Ritter covers ancients through medieval, Fusilier covers from the Renaissance through percussion muskets, and Ein Ritter Spiel covers all the other rules except Jabberwocky, but in less detail. The differences in each book represents the flavor of that period or genre. Given that the rules are on the simpler side, they naturally are not going to get deep into that period's feel, but they do a pretty good job nonetheless.

Differences are largely defining different unit types and specifying their maneuver and fighting capabilities. Jabberwocky goes further by defining magic spells for the wizards to cast,  for example. In all cases the primary flavor is contained in the army lists. These lists define what unit types and proportions make up each army, plus the army's stats for Movement, Attacks, and Break Point.

These rules rate 3 out of 5 in Appropriately Flavored.

Scalable – can the rules be scaled up or down – in terms of figures or number of units played – from a 'normal' game?

Jabberwocky and Ritter have optional rules for five and twenty unit games, but curiously Fusilier and Ein Ritter Spiel dropped them. All the rules have a points system. So the concept of larger and smaller games is there, but the rules are pretty basic. Then again, the same was true with DBA, yet Big Battle DBA and Giant DBA are very successful, so there is no reason why this cannot scale up and down.

Further, my next test is going to be using a Command & Colors: Napoleonics scenario (Auerstadt 1806) to try out a Fusilier/Ein Ritter Spiel fusion. I will use the units indicated in the scenario one-for-one and figure out if I should adjust the Movement, Attack, and Break Point any.

Given that the Movement, Attack, and Break Point values are bound to the size of the army, as is its composition, I give the Scalability rating an average score.

These rules rate 3 out of 5 in Scalable.

Lacks Fiddly Geometry – do the rules require fiddly measurements or angles?

One base width tends to be a small distance. Small distances tend to lead to fiddliness. The angles are either 45º or 180º, so that is not too bad. The problem lies with units contacting terrain or units during retreat. I could see that being a fraction of an inch away could lead to some discussions. Grids get rid of all those problems, so Ein Ritter Spiel gets a bonus. All of the rules state that rules lawyers and people who care too much about winning probably should not be playing these rules. Fiddly geometry is one of the reasons why.

These rules rate 3 out of 5 in Fiddly Geometry. Ein Ritter Spiel rates 4 out of 5.

Tournament Tight™ Rules – are the rules clear and comprehensive, or do the players need to 'fill in the blanks'?

Let me start by saying that my preference is towards tighter rules, where everything is spelled out clearly by the author, not looser rules where the author leaves certain mechanics up to the individual players, gentlemen's agreements, and a roll of the die where agreements cannot be found. So a high value means 'tight' and a low value means 'loose'. If you like looser rules, subtract my rating from '6' and that would probably be your rating!

The earlier rule sets clearly suffer from less clear diagrams and structure. Ein Ritter Spiel clearly shows that questions and clarifications over the years have made their way into this set. Because these rules were meant to be used for working out the battles of campaign games quickly, they were never intended to be used for tournament play. That said, Ein Ritter Spiel specifically mentions using those rules for tournament play, so certainly some thought was put into the possibility. As cited in the rules, they are good for tournaments because decisive conclusions are reached pretty quickly, so a player can play several games in a round, rather than just a single game. This allows more player game time even if they are knocked out of the earlier rounds.

These rules rate 2 out of 5 in Tournament Tight™ Rules. Ein Ritter Spiel rates 3 out of 5.

Solo Suitability – do the rules have elements conducive to solo play?

There are no hidden elements to the game so that alone usually grants the rules high solitaire suitability. However, just as with Chess, these rules depend more upon the player planning several moves in advance. Unless you come up with a system for "programming" one or both of the sides, enemy plans will be easily "discovered" as soon as the player switches sides!

These rules rate 2 out of 5 in Solo Suitability.

Component Quality – are the components provided made with quality?

This is a new rating, meant primarily for board games, which addresses the quality of the physical components.

These rules only come printed. My copy of Jabberwocky looks as if it were copied on a copier set at 25% reduction, so the margins are wide and the print is very small. You cannot read it in a very poor light. The printing on Ritter is nice and clear with no issues. My copy of Fusilier includes a cardstock quick reference chart, listing the combat results. The print is bolder, but smaller than Ritter. Still very acceptable. Ein Ritter Spiel, which the author sent me for free (thank you Chris!), has not quick reference card, but has clear and clean print. It does not have a cardstock cover like all of the others. (If I recall correctly he stated that these were new and he wanted me to test them out, so they may not have been production copies.) All acceptable, if a little old school. Feels very much like the rules from the 1980's and 1990's. (Other than Ein Ritter Spiel they were all printed in the late 1990's.)

These rules rate 2 out of 5 in Component Quality. (Ein Ritter Spiel rates 3 out of 5.)

Summary

Although the author does not think they are particularly "realistic", I rather like the game they produce. They are very tweakable, especially in terms of when the game ends. Don't like a Break Point of 20%? Fine, double it. Want to differentiate French Napoleonic Guards a little better? Fine, let them maneuver as Light Infantry but still fight as Heavy Infantry. (Light Infantry has much better maneuverability, but fights worse. To reflect the better training of the French Guard, maneuvering as Lights and fighting as Heavies work well. Obviously other Guards would also benefit from this rule, like the British Guards.)

Recommended.

In the last blog post I provided a review for a set of rules by Chris Engle that cover a number of periods and genres. The rules were Jabberwocky, Ritter, Fusilier, and Ein Ritter Spiel. I decided to play a game using a modified version of Ein Ritter Spiel (my game used a hex grid rather than the square grid specified by the rules), with a few additions from Fusilier due to the period being Napoleonics (I added in a troop type to represent the Cuirassiers, which never came into play).

The scenario is Auerstadt – 14 October 1806 (7 am to Noon), from GMT Games'Command & Colors: Napoleonics. The background of the scenario is as follows:

Napoleon mistakenly believed that most of the Prussian army face him at Jena, and ordered Bernadotte and Davout to concentrate and attack the Prussians from the rear. On the morning of the battle, the majority of Prussian army was marching away from Jena and towards Davout's advancing III Corps. As Gudin's infantry division advanced in a dense fog, it clashed with the Prussians in the village of Hassenhausen and drove them out. As the fog lifted, Blücher rashly led forward with the Prussian cavalry. Gudin's men formed square and repulsed the assault. Davout could now see he was greatly outnumbered and ordered Friant and Morand to march to his aid immediately. He also sent urgent appeals to Bernadotte and his I Corps to support him. Bernadotte, most likely out of professional jealousy, left Davout to fight alone. Meanwhile Emperor Frederick and Brunswick, the Prussian commanders, were surprised to find French units to their front. Their indecision delayed massing the Prussian infantry and artillery to drive the French from Hassenhausen till 10 am. By that time, Friant, with his division and the corps artillery, arrived to secure the French right and repulse the Prussians. During the attack, Brunswick was killed and Schmettau was wounded, causing more command confusion. A full hour elapsed before the next Prussian attack went in against the weak French left. Davout personally  led the counterattack, reinforced by Morand's division, whose timely arrival preserved the left flank and drove back the Prussians. The Prussian high command remained passive, and did little to bring up fresh troops. Davout on the other hand, wasted no time attacking and driving the Prussians from the field in the afternoon, winning the most signal victory of his career. For many years thereafter, the III Corps retained an aura of invincibility. Napoleon was justifiably furious with Bernadotte and meant to court-martial his, but he never did – a mistake in retrospect.

I made a game board for this scenario some time ago. Why this particular scenario has been lost over time, but the idea was that it would make game setup and teardown much easier. My gaming buddy Don and I have always liked the Memoir 44 printed maps that came with some scenario packs, like Hedgerow Hell. We thought "why don't they do this with all the scenario maps?" I would have certainly bought them. They were convenient. So one day I decided to do the same thing, only with a scenario for Command & Colors: Napoleonics. I think I just wanted to see how it would turn out. I was right. It is handy for quickly setting up a test game.

I pulled out my Baccus 6mm Napoleonic troops that I have been collecting for a while. I have had a hard time settling on which rules to use for them so they are currently in about five different basing schemes. The basing scheme I seem to use the most – 20mm squares – seems the least visually appealing. I think I am going to end up with two schemes – one dioramic with 6" x 4" bases and one with 40mm wide bases – before it is all over. My hope is that I will be able to limit my dioramic basing to the Waterloo campaign troops only with all of the other troops on 40mm wide bases. We will see. For this game I am using either four 20mm infantry bases or two 40mm infantry bases and four 20mm cavalry bases or a single 40mm cavalry base. The artillery units are all 40mm square bases.

My French are the worst when it comes to being on different basing schemes. So I had to improvise with them. I recently bought some painted French and have not been able to rebase them yet. Some are on 2" wide bases, and others on 60mm wide bases. I had to bring in my Spanish in white uniforms and bicornes to fill in as French. It is a mess, but it is all functional. The Prussians look much better. I had to improvise a little bit for the Grenadiers and Guard Grenadiers, but they never really got into the action anyway.

Here are the troops in their starting positions.



You can see the village of Hassenhausen in the center with three Prussian units (top of board) in close proximity to the French. Everything else pretty much starts on their baseline. Note that the village of Hassenhausen is worth 1 Breakpoint to the side holding the majority of the village's hexes. As the Prussians hold one hex at the start and the French hold none, the Prussians have an additional point added to their army Breakpoint.


Fusilier grants the French army with 3 Moves, 3 Attacks, and a Breakpoint of 3 while the Prussian army gets 2 Moves, 2 Attacks, and a Breakpoint of 2. This differential seems appropriate for the scenario, so I keep that as the base. However, if you are using a larger army than standard (10 units) you need to adjust those numbers. The rules indicate that the increase in army capability is not proportional to the increase in units. For every doubling of the army size the army capability only increases 50%.

The French have 23 units so the additional 13 units add (3 * 0.5) * (13 / 10) points or 1.95 (rounded up to 2) points. So the French have 5 Moves, 5 Attacks, and a Breakpoint of 5.

The Prussians have 24 units so add (2 * 0.5) * (14 / 10) points or 1.4 (rounded up to 2) points. So the Prussians have 4 Moves, 4 Attacks, and a Breakpoint of 4. I had thought about not rounding up, but rounding to the nearest, but I am glad I did not. I think only three moves and attacks would have been too hampering.


The French first turn is pretty tame, with no attacks. Although I am starting to surround Hassenhausen, and have taken one of the village hexes thereby denying the Prussians an additional Breakpoint point, I haven't quite figured out how to dislodge the Prussians from the village. Artillery will definitely do it, but they will simply retreat from the village. I need the French infantry in the village to make the attack, so it drives the infantry into the cavalry unit behind it, eliminating it. (Remember, units forced to retreat into friendly or enemy units or into terrain are destroyed. That is how you eliminate units.) Infantry needs a 3:1 ratio in forces to defeat units in towns, however, so the safest bet is to swing the infantry to the left of the village into attack position. Next turn...


The Prussians move off of the baseline, leaving behind some reserves (which also serves to create a sufficient gap for the front line troops to retreat, if necessary). The Prussian light cavalry at Hassenhausen shifts position to threaten the French flank attack on the village. Meanwhile the artillery opens fire, forcing the French infantry on the right of the town to retreat.

Now you may be wondering why I forced the French infantry to retreat. After all, it did not really do anything substantial, like eliminating it. For those of you who play DBA a retreat in that game is typically a recoil – a backwards movement, but still facing the enemy. A retreat in Ein Ritter Spiel is directly away from the enemy causing the retreat and the unit ends its movement facing away from the enemy. Further, its next movement is a Rally, so the unit can only turn about; it can't move in any other way. This has the effect of causing a much more substantial disruption in the enemy formation than in DBA. In both rules, in order to move a group of units with a single point/PIP all units must be touching and facing the same direction to be considered a group formation. Because the retreat in Ein Ritter Spiel changes the unit's facing, the group formation is broken, while in DBA it often isn't, especially if more than one unit recoils.


Another shot into that retreating French unit will force it into a friendly unit, eliminating it. Because it can only turn about, I need a way to block the shot by the Prussian artillery. The French move an infantry to block the shot even though it cannot defeat the artillery in combat. Instead I line up a French light cavalry unit on the right flank so it can charge the artillery from the flank on the following turn. Meanwhile the French move light infantry into the woods to the left of the village and together with the infantry beside it they drive off the Prussian light cavalry.

It is so easy to get tunnel vision in this game, focusing on your next turn's attack and not thinking too deeply about the enemy's potential moves. The French made two mistakes. Can you spot them?


The Prussians moved up their infantry into a position where they could flank the light infantry in the woods. As light infantry retreat two hexes, they ran straight into friendly lines and were destroyed.



On the opposite flank the Prussian artillery unit fires into the flank of the French light cavalry, who have no retreat path. (If I had moved the infantry forward and to the right one hex there would have been an open retreat path, so that was an avoidable error.)


The other Prussian artillery unit fires cannister at the French infantry forcing it to retreat. The area around Hassenhausen is jammed with French troops. This looks bad. This looks like a quick French defeat.


Friant arrives with the corps artillery and drive the Prussian artillery away. (Each artillery unit attacks in turn forcing the retreat of a single hex. By expending two attacks the French were able to destroy the unit, rather than simply force it to retreat.)


On the far right flank Friant's division is in a position to attack next turn.


The rules are pretty minimalist and do not consider topics like zones of control and whether a unit was in a flank position at the start of the turn versus at the time of attack (like many rules do), so the attack on the left flank (Prussian right flank) is perfectly legal. Despite being at melee range at the start of the turn the Prussian infantry advances and turns onto the flank of the French in the woods, which dislodges them. The Prussians pursue, taking the position, and allowing them to drive the French into the windmill (different terrain), thus destroying them.

Meanwhile, the Prussian artillery forces one of the French batteries off of the hill. Things are looking bad for the French. They are two units away from breaking, while the Prussians are still three away.



This is how quickly a game can turn. While the French corps artillery rallies the French take advantage of the five attacks. On the right three infantry units combine to destroy the Prussian infantry in the woods by the village of Speilberg. Note that by attacking with the leftmost unit and having the other two units support the unit is forced to retreat into the Prussian Cuirassiers rather than through the gap. Selecting which unit attacks and which supports is very important.

The battle in the village of Hassenhausen illustrates that idea further. First the French infantry attacked it in the flank from the right. Once the Prussian infantry was dislodged from the village the French infantry on the left fired into it, forcing it to retreat into the Prussian cavalry, destroying it. (Note that I moved a French unit into the woods by the windmill on the left. This was the same position in which the light infantry was previously flanked. Sometimes it is worth making a risky move into such a position.)

The third unit loss came when the French artillery fired into the Prussians twice, forcing them to retreat into their reserves.

With four units lost the Prussian army is in a broken state. This means that units in the army can move no closer to the enemy than any other friendly unit is, but can still attack. (That may be a little hard to explain properly. Individual units can move forward, essentially to counterattack as part of a rearguard action, but they cannot move beyond where the current "front line" is located. In this case I moved the Prussian cavalry forward in an attempt to hold off the French and allow the Prussian infantry to escape. It did not work.)


Prussian artillery pounds the French infantry in the village of Hassenhausen, catching it in a crossfire and destroying it. Unfortunately, the French breakpoint is 6 (5 for the army and 1 for having the majority of the hexes in Hassenhausen), so they are not close to breaking. Had the Prussians broken the French the game would have pretty much ended as neither side could close with the other. Nonetheless artillery can do some damage on a retreating army.


The French artillery destroys two Prussian units, pushing them into other retreating troops, while musketry from French infantry destroys another two units. The Prussians have now lost eight units – double their Breakpoint – so they are now in a Routed state. No Prussian units are allowed to move closer to the enemy or even to attack. It is not "sauve qui peut" for the Prussians. Now the game is simply about how many Prussians will survive the day for purposes of the campaign. (If you are not playing a campaign game you probably would stop here, noting that the French have achieved a major victory.)


The Prussians start moving units off of the board. That is about all they can do. Despite being in a rout state, units still rout in "formation" so trying to maintain groups allows you to move more units per Move point. (Unfortunately it is hard to see which way units are facing in these pictures. Suffice it to say that not all units were facing the rear, so this turn was an attempt to rectify that.)


The French make the last effective attack, forcing the light cavalry covering the retreat into a friendly unit. Again, which unit attacks is critical in determining the direction of the retreat.


After the Prussian turn it was obvious that there was nothing that the French could do to destroy the remaining Prussian units, so the game is called as a Decisive French Victory, pretty much as it was historically.

Points to Ponder

The following events in the rules gave me some pause.

• Artillery can move and attack in the same turn. My first thought was that horse artillery would be able to do that, but that foot artillery could not. But that would make horse artillery a super weapon, which they were not. The idea should be that artillery bombardment should get the high rating it receives in the game and that you cannot bombard if you move.
• Units cannot retreat through friendly units even though they can interpenetrate them during movement. This concept is not unique to these rules, by any stretch. All of Neil Thomas' rules are like this. It is a significant way to destroy units in those rules and a primary way in these. Eleven of the thirteen units destroyed in this game came from retreating into friendly units. Only two unit destructions were due to retreating into terrain features. If you did not destroy units when they retreated into friendly units then this game would take a lot longer to play out.
• Successive, timed attacks are powerful. Having one unit attack, forcing a unit into another hex which in turn makes it vulnerable to attack by a second unit is an exciting part of the game.
• Successive attacks by a single unit, however, feels wrong. This happened twice, once in which infantry flanked the enemy in the woods, pursued, and then attacked again and the second time in which a single artillery unit simply attacked twice. I did not like either case. In the infantry attack I felt like the second attack should not have been allowed for two reasons: 1) infantry should not be allowed to attack a second time, after a pursuit; and 2) no one should be allowed a second attack after pursuing into woods. Infantry should not be allowed to make an attack after pursuit; only cavalry should. In the artillery attack I realized that if I could make as many attacks as I had points, and because artillery in the attack defeats everything simply applying all my attacks to a single artillery piece would ensure the enemy's destruction. The only limitations would range and angle. An artillery unit should only be allowed to make a single attack in a turn. In fact, the only unit that should be allowed to attack more than once in a turn is cavalry in pursuit.
• The lack of zones of control means that units can slide around the flank of units after moving into melee range. (By the way, being in melee but not attacking does not mean that nothing is happening. It simply means that the fighting is not conclusive because neither side is pressing the issue.) I am not sure if I like this or not. This happened twice, once with the infantry in the woods and once with the infantry in the village. Both events might be justified as they both had a 2:1 ratio of troops, so you can say one unit occupied the enemy while the second made a decisive, tactical flanking move. Further, it cost 1 Move and 1 Attack, so it took a substantial number of resources. Where I think I would limit it might be that you must stop as soon as you hit a hex in the enemy's front melee range, i.e. adjacent and to their front. This would stop cavalry from charging from the front of a unit and hitting them in the flank, something we do in Richard Borg games all of the time.

All in all I really enjoyed the game and did not find it being diceless a problem at all. I might employ the optional rule of throwing 2D6 for each combat – with a '2' resulting in an inconclusive result and a '12' resulting in the winner losing – but I did not want to introduce that for this test game. I believe in the concept that you need to apply sufficient force at a point in order to ensure victory and these rules absolutely reflect that. I think too many times we rely on the luck of the dice to carry us through a poorly planned or executed attack. That just does not happen in this game.

The one constant in my gaming is that if Neil Thomas produces a new set of rules, I purchase it. In a way, it is sort of strange because I have not played that many games using his rules. So – other than the obvious answer that I was once a rules junkie – why do I consistently buy his rules?

It seems like there was also some aspect that clicked with me. I am pretty sure that it is because I like getting into the mind of the game designer, and Neil does a very good job of putting his gaming philosophy to paper. His rules are "book first, rules second". Now a lot of authors include some potted history in their rule books. It feels like fluffy filler and it typically is. But with Neil it is more a narrative on my why he finds the subject period different from all of the other periods he has written rules for. Sort of "this is why you should game this period; this is how I think it should feel".

Okay, so he pushed some buttons with me. So why don't I use his rules? Is it that the backstory is good, but the rules are bad? Kind of, but not quite. Maybe my own backstory explains it better.

I started wargaming playing Avalon Hill board games as a kid in the early 1970s. I got tired of playing solo – plus my brother and parents had stopped indulging me after about one game apiece – so I needed opponents. I quickly discovered their magazine The General (it was advertised in every game, after all) and in the back were the gamer "classifieds". As it turned out, there were not only AH board gamers within 25 miles, there was a whole group of them. That group introduced me to more board games beyond Tactics II and Afrika Korps, but also to miniature games and role-playing games.

Now gaming clubs in the 1970s were nothing like what I see today. Back then our society was not nearly as mobile as it is now. Although we had not quite gotten to the point where people were no longer employed for life by a single employer, that stability made for clubs where people might have miniatures not only for a single army, but several members of the club might have to bring their collections in order to fill out the order of battle for our monthly games.

Our monthly Napoleonic games typically had at least 10-15 people playing in a single game. Often we would pre-plan large battles and that might bring out players from North, Central, and South Florida and there would be thousands of miniatures on the table. Our annual Waterloo game (the last one I played) had over 10,000 miniatures on the table.

The rules were Column, Line, and Square, which required players to position each stand (typically representing a company or 1/2 squadron) and write orders for battalions and squadrons, and sometimes even detachments. So your level of control was pretty low. Given that you can really only control less than a dozen maneuver elements comfortably, each player pretty much represented a Brigade Commander. So that was my reference point for a large part of my wargaming childhood. You maneuvered battalions, worried about their formations and the physical placement of companies, and your command level was pretty much that of a Brigadier (or possibly a commander of a weak Division). Naturally, as I look at other rules it will always be compared to Column, Line, and Square. That is just how it is. (Except ancients. That would be compared to WRG's 5th Edition, until I ran into DBA, then all ancients and medieval rules would be compared to that.)

So back to Neil's rules. The first set I bought were his ancient and medieval rules. I liked the articles in Slingshot magazine that referred to his AMW rules, and sought out each of the issues that contained them. But I quickly came to the realization that, although they were similar in scale. i.e. that the player represented the army commander and his forces represented an ancient army, but Neil's rules used four times the number of stands as DBA and thus I could not play them (at least without some serious rule tweaking and fudging). So I set them aside, never to be played despite knowing I liked the ideas behind his rules. (With no PIPs, it seemed less luck-oriented.)

The second rules I bought were his Napoleonic rules. These felt familiar in that each unit represented a battalion of infantry, regiment of cavalry, or a battery of artillery. The problem was that the player represented the equivalent of a Corps commander, but with a command the size of a Brigade commander. What my days wargaming as a kid taught me is that your units can be down two "levels" from the level of command. Anything more means you are probably going to get bogged down in details of the game and the game flow will get mired. What do I mean by "levels". If I represent a Brigade Commander then down two two levels is Brigade → Battalion/Regiment/Battery → Company/Squadron/Gun Section. So if I command a Brigade I should not be worried about the placement or activity of anything less than a Company. Because Neil's smallest autonomous unit is a battalion/regiment/battery, then I can represent two levels up, or Battalion → Brigade → Division. Now Napoleonic Divisions were semi-autonomous; there were a number of smaller battles in which two Divisions fought one another, but they are not going to be the names of battles that you are familiar with.

The problem is that Neil's army lists in Napoleonic Wargaming did not represent the composition of a Division; it was more like a Corps or Army. Look at any order of battle and you will see that any commander a player could represent that would have Guards, Line, and Militia would not be a lowly Division Commander, but at least a Corps Commander. So the army lists did not match the level the player was truly playing at, which is a Division. It may have made the games more interesting by allowing you to have all of these different unit types, but it made it ahistorical, or at least abstract.

Now, you might be thinking "that really bothered you so much you did not play those rules?" Well, yes and no. I just did not use them for Napoleonics. I played them quite a number of times for the American Revolution, however. They played well enough, and as I use hit markers that blend well with the table (and therefore are not too much of a distraction when taking photos), I probably go to them more than I do, say, Black Powder. The rules seem to fit well with the smaller battles of the American Revolution where forces were often several understrength units under command of a single General. (Think more of Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse, Camden, etc. and less of Brandywine, Saratoga, Monmouth, etc.)

The third set of rules I purchased was Introduction to Wargaming. I did not like the American Civil War rules (the retreat and rally rules were simply broken), the WW II rules were abstract skirmish rules that never clicked with me, and I was not interested in the other periods. They seemed like watered down versions of his Ancient and Medieval Wargaming and Napoleonic Wargaming rules. I wrote it off as being his first book of rules and intended as a true introduction to a neophyte. Good reading, but not for me.

Next came his rules Simplicity in Practice, which were published in Battlegames magazine issue 23 (which you can still buy as a PDF on Wargame Vault.) SIP was an interesting version as it changed the unit to a single base, whereas all of his other rules used four bases to a unit (except for artillery). As each unit was a single base, you could no longer represent unit formations, such as column, line, and square, which were a feature of all his other rules too. This was starting to feel like a Horse and Musket version of DBA, but without the PIPs. Like his other rules, however, he still used hits and hit markers to show unit degradation until its removal from the board. (Interestingly, however, units in SIP had 1/4 the hits that it had in other rules.) As I had Napoleonics and American Revolutionary troops based as single element units, I could try these rules out. And I did, several times. But they never really struck me. Something felt like it was missing. Maybe because it was more oriented towards pre-Napoleonic horse and musket armies, and to playing the Tabletop Teasers from Battlegames and older magazines. All of those scenarios really made you feel like you were a Brigadier General of an independent field force fighting on the frontier of the Seven Year's War.

Nonetheless, if you started to think of those battalions as bases within a Brigade unit, and thus you ran the Brigade as a unit (which is the scale that Age of Eagles is at), then all of a sudden you are a Brigade → Division → Corps Commander (two levels up) and those army lists in the Napoleonic Wargaming book makes more sense.

I bought Wargaming 19th Century Europe: 1815-1878 next and basically felt the same as I did with Napoleonic Wargaming. You are still futzing around with (battalion) unit formations, but your force lists were at the Corps and Army level. However, he had some really nice scenarios in the book, which definitely made it worthwhile. But overall, it still felt like DBA set in the Age of the Rifle. Not a bad thing, but you have to get past the abstraction of your command.

Finally, there came One Hour Wargames: Practical Tabletop Battles for those with Limited Time and Space (OHW). These rules were, by far, the simplest yet. They combined the simplicity of unit representation from Simplicity in Practice by having each unit represented by a single base, with a combat system that was the least complex yet: a unit inflicted a single D6 of hits, with modifiers, on the enemy and when 15 hits were reached, the unit was removed. That was basically it. No real discussion about what a unit represented and each period was limited to four unit types.

At first blush they are too simple. My mind cannot comprehend how I could find such a simple game enjoyable, at all. That said, I still have not tried them. Why? Mostly because I want to try a new "basing scheme" that allows me to play OHW, if they work out, along with SIP, and perhaps a DBA variant (all rules that use single element units). The idea is to expand on the idea of having each unit represent a Brigade, rather than a battalion, and that you assume the Brigadier and battalion commanders put their units in the proper formation, without you the player having to explicitly do so. Further, the unit should have a frontage of about 6" so that it is sizeable, easily visible, and be easy to manipulate.

I have decided to revive my old "dioramic bases" idea for 6mm troops – at least for a sufficient number of troops for this experiment – and create six British and British Allied Brigades and six French Brigades, set for the Hundred Days campaign (i.e. Waterloo).


Here is the 1st Brigade (von Butlar's) of the Brunswick Corps. I may add a little more grass and paint the Lieutenant Colonel Butlar a little more, but for the most part this is the effect I am going for. (This started life as an experiment in painting, actually.)


This next unit is sort of the 1st or 2nd Brigade of the 11th French Cavalry (Heavy) Division under Général de Division Lhéritier. I say sort of because the Division was mixed Dragoons (which I have in the rear) and Cuirassiers (which are in the front), not the Brigades. Oh well.

I have also noticed something with these bases when I hold the units out at arm's length: "spots" of grass start to appear. In fact that cavalry looks like it is riding through a field of spots. I need to work on that.

All said, though, I am starting to like the idea of these big bases, and I think somewhere in a combination of Neil's rules – Napoleonic Wargaming (for the Army lists), Wargaming 19th Century Europe (for the scenarios), One Hour Wargames (for the simplicity of movement, and for the scenarios), and Simplicity in Practice (for the combat system) – there will be a game I play.

Until this project is done, though, I will probably continue to use Napoleonic Wargaming rules for my American Revolutionary games.

For complex rules tend to suffer from conceptual flaws. The chief of these is what can be referred to as 'double jeopardy', or to be specific, accounting twice for a contingency that should only be considered once. For example, units which are behind cover frequently enjoy a morale bonus in complex rulesets: however, this fails to account for the fact that the role of cover has already been accounted for, given that the unit within would suffer fewer casualties than its more exposed comrades. If the unit behind cover is still suffering sufficient casualties to endure a morale test, then it is clear that the cover is no longer doing its job – and should not therefore confer any morale bonus. Similarly, there is no reason to give special fighting abilities to elite units and penalties for unenthusiastic levies; these should have already been accounted for in the morale rules, which allow quality troops to carry on fighting for longer than a barely trained rabble (and inevitably inflicting more damage in the process).

The above was probably the most profound design concept I had read from Neil Thomas and upon reflecting upon it, could find numerous examples in rules that I had been playing for years. In that paragraph he highlights two, but I have seen plenty of others:

• Cover: providing a negative modifier to being hit (a smaller area of the target is exposed), while also providing a bonus to saving from the hit. If the positive to the save represents the chance of the shot striking cover, why would you reduce the chance to hit when you have already accounted for the chance a shot will hit cover?
• Concealment: again, providing a negative modifier to being hit, while also providing a bonus to saving from the hit. Some rules blur the lines between cover and concealment. In this case the shot should be harder as you are aiming at a target with less exposure (granting a negative modifier), but because the shot may still strike an unexposed location, no save should be granted.
• Elites and Movement: using a command and control system that confers a greater chance for an elite unit to move than less trained ones while also granting elite units longer moves or faster formation changes than less trained units. The first rules grants more opportunities to maneuver in the first place, so granting bonuses when they do maneuver is applying the bonus twice.

Now some of you may be thinking about a special case, such as trying to fire through the slit of a castle and strike an enemy archer, or some such. Why shouldn't you get a huge negative to hit because you are trying to place an arrow through such a small space? In the end, it doesn't really matter whether you apply a negative to the hit or a positive to the save, the point is not to apply it twice.

How many 'double jeopardy' rules can you find in your current favorite set.

All this came to mind because I had already been thinking about Neil Thomas' game design principles when I got a chance to participate in an American Civil War game using the Black Powder rules. Black Powder can be fun, but boy is it the King of Double Jeopardy Rules!

Gettysburg, Day 1 – The Destruction of 1st Division, I Corps

We were deployed along the short edge of an 8' long by 5' wide board. The smaller square represent 1/2 a Brigade, while the larger squares are full Brigades. The Confederates have two infantry Brigades on the board at the start, along with an artillery Battalion (four batteries of four guns) while the Union had two, one of which was the Iron Brigade (and its crap-ton of special rules). The Confederates would get two additional infantry Brigades, but they would not move on until turn 2.

The victory conditions were that the Union had to break three Brigades (50%) while the Confederates only had to break two (100%) ... in seven turns. Six feet of board to cross, check. Half of the Union is Elite, check. Half of the Confederate forces don't come on at the start and when they do come on, they are on the baseline, check. There is really only enough room to deploy three Brigades across the board, so that 2-1 numeric superiority is really more like 3-2. And the Confederates are not Elite. Check! (Oh, by the way, if you have not figured it out already, I was playing Confederates!)

From a terrain perspective there was a lot more than is shown here. Key points are that the road (brown rectangle) is lined on both sides with sawtooth fences. So there is a double obstacle to movement for traversing laterally across the board and shooting across is penalized. Both the wheat field (left yellow rectangle) and the corn field (right yellow rectangle) were surrounded by stone walls, so again a double obstacle to movement and penalty to shooting, plus a cover save! The ridge line and the infamous "cuts" along the railroad tracks (gray rectangle) played no part in the game so don't warrant mention of all of their special rules. Overall, the field had an very "American" feel. It was cluttered with obstacles to armies and we felt pain for every inch traversed.

There were two special rules that came into significant play: "The Charge" and "Fire Fights".

The Charge is a rule that essentially says that units are at a -2 to Command if they are ordered to charge an enemy unit and your unit is in their frontal arc. Basically it is a rule to discourage charges and hand-to-hand combat. One person attempted to charge during the game and it resulted in a failure. Perhaps if the rule applied the -2 for determining success, but a failure did not occur if you still rolled your unmodified  Command value. In essence the failure to charge meant your Brigade was not getting any more orders from that Commander, so you weren't just gambling with that unit moving; you were gambling with your Brigade's remaining orders.

The Fire Fights rule I liked, but it favors the defender, especially one performing a fighting withdrawal as we were doing here. The rule states that if your unit performs two or three orders you cannot fire that turn. Only units performing no or one order can fire. This rule especially hurt the Brigades coming on the board from the baseline (one of which was mine), as you had to make up for lost ground, so you needed as many movement orders as possible, so you were unlikely to be able to fire. In fact, I did not get to fire until turn six and was unable to fire on turn seven.


The Union commander actually made a blunder (no, not the Black Powder kind) by advancing 1/2 of his lesser Brigade (i.e. not the Iron Brigade) into the center where a fire trap formed. Four units from the on-board Brigades, plus the artillery were able to focus fire on the skirmishers, driving them off of the board on turn one. Further, fire from turn two badly hurt the next unit behind, as the Union commander was scrambling to pull his units back out of the trap. A blunder (the Black Powder kind) by a head strong Confederate commander saved him from early destruction, as the infantry on the left pulled back two moves. (Green arrows are moves, red arrows are musketry fire, and yellow arrows are retreats.)

The Union Brigade had incredibly bad luck as only one unit was able to force its way through the woods, while the remainder were bottled up behind the woods.


Eventually the Confederates were able to force the Union back, but without destroying a Brigade. They were never able to fully deploy and use their superior numbers to effect. The turn limit had come up just as the Confederates were starting to drive a wedge between the two halves of the crippled Brigade on their right. The Union Brigade was essentially unscratched. The game was declared a draw despite the Confederate performance being better than what happened historically.

So, where did the Confederates fail? I hang my head in shame as I have to admit: it was my fault. I had Pettigrew's Brigade and it was the largest and potentially the strongest of the Confederate Brigades. It had the highest Command rating (9) and it had a special rule that gave it a greater chance to charge the enemy (-1 instead of -2, so charging on a modified 8 or less). I started moving on the board in line formation, rather than columns, thus denying me the +1 to Command for orders. On two occasions I rolled an '8', which if I had been in column would have granted me two moves rather than one. That extra 24" of movement over the space of turn two and four would have put me into play on turn five with the full brigade, rather than just getting into play on the last turn. Without being able to achieve local firepower superiority in the center, we never cracked open the nut so we could flank the Union Brigade. Without being able to dig them out of their corner, we stood no chance of winning the scenario as we needed to break 100% of the Union command.

My only other regret is that all of my pictures turned out horrible. They were good enough to refresh my memory on unit positions at various turns, but not good enough to post. Also, I forgot to take close-ups of the figures. They were 28mm Perry plastics and very well based. The terrain was professionally made. [sigh]

Final Thoughts

Don't get me wrong, the griping I am about to unleash is in no way indicative of me not having a good time. My friend brought Jonny Cakes and ham and bean soup for period refreshments, there were no arguments, and the conversation was interesting and fun. That said, Black Powder takes a special kind of person to like the rules.

There are special, sometimes unit-specific rules out the kazoo! Each unit has its own profile, which can be quite different from every other unit you have. Line infantry is not line infantry. Some of those stats are pretty basic too, like whether you roll 3 or 4 dice for shooting, whether you save on a 3+ or a 4+, whether you take three hits or four before a break test, etc. These are modifiers of core rule mechanics.

Then there are the 'double jeopardy' rules, the most egregious of which is that cover provide a penalty to be hit and a benefit to morale, and that Elite units hit harder in addition to lasting longer in combat, allowing them to hit harder still over the course of the battle. The very quote from Neil Thomas that I started this post with is the cornerstone of the Black Powder rules.

Is it bad enough to drive me away? Not at all. I have vowed to never again let the desire to win get in the way of spending a pleasant afternoon with other people pushing pretty lead (or plastic) around on a nicely dressed table having interesting conversations about how the rules suck and the scenario is stacked against us! If Black Powder is what people are playing, count me in. Doesn't mean I am going to get caught up in the next Flavor of the Month – I have had enough of the Warhammer 40K, Warmachine, Flames of War, etc. treadmill – but it does mean that I will play and enjoy these types of games when I cannot convince others to try something I might find a bit more reasonable. And when they aren't gaming, I can always game solo with my strange, off-brand, low commercial titles.

I have owned the Dux Bellorum rules for a number of years. In fact I purchased them before I fell away from tabletop gaming for a few years. I recently started thinking about them again and maybe building an army or two¹ to finally try them out. I was talking with Matt, a co-author on my Wooden Warriors blog, about what rules he was going to use with his new armies and the discussion came up about Dux Bellorum. So after explaining to him about what the rules were like, with comparisons to De Bellis Antiquitatus (DBA), I decided to take that and make a post, seeing as I put so much work into the explanation. Mind you, this is not a review – as I have not played a test game with the rules and I don't do rules reviews without test games any more – but rather this is a detailed description of my reading of the rules.

Dux Bellorum seems like it "fixes"DBA in a way some might like, given some complaints about those rules.

First thing is that the army lists gives you the unit types you can have and the numbers of each. Each unit type has a point value and like HOTT, you choose a game of X points. So army sizes will vary. It seems like a standard game is 32 Army Points, so you end up with about eight to ten units per side. You can also buy 'stratagems' with those Army Points.

Units are physically whatever size you want because everything is measured in Base Widths (BW), like the new DBA and Polemos before it (which is where I first saw the term used). You just need to be consistent in everything being the same base width. But, you can even fudge that a bit as he talks about using multiple bases per unit and counting the unit's frontage as a base width rather than a single base. The intent is to use a 40mm wide base for 15mm, so army sizes are small, as would be the gaming table.

The foot unit types are: shieldwall, warriors, bows, and skirmishers. The mounted unit types are: riders and skirmishers. Riders covers everything from the common medium cavalry to Irish chariots to Roman Cataphracts. The Leader's unit are called Companions and they can either for foot or mounted. If foot, they can be either shieldwall or warriors. If mounted they must be riders. Further, a unit can be either Ordinary or Noble. Missiles are either bow (which includes crude crossbows and slings) or javelins. Javelins can fire on the move while bows do not (unless mounted).

Each unit has the following stats:

• Move (how many base widths),
• Bravery (roll 2D6 or less to act),
• Aggression (# of dice rolled when attacking),
• Missiles (same as Aggression, but for ranged combat),
• Protection (the To Hit roll your opponent has to make when attacking you), and
• Cohesion (the number of hits you can take).

The unit is removed when the Cohesion hits '0'. A unit loses no fighting power as Cohesion goes down.

Unit moves are 2, 3, or 4 base widths.

Every Leader has a certain number of Leader Points (LP) per turn. Everyone gets 6 for free, but you can spend Army Points to get more Leader Points per turn. (Remember, Army Points are used to buy units.)

Just like DBA and HOTT, DB allows the use of Group moves, with a group being multiple units that are touching, aligned, and facing the same way. They also have to be of the same unit type, however. (Ordinary and Noble can mix, however, as can Companions.) Skirmishers are never in a group. Groups are only one base deep. Groups are important because they: a) limit the number of Leader Points that can be allocated to them; and b) use the highest Bravery value of the group for everyone.

Each turn both players allocate LPs to units (or groups). Missile fire occurs before movement, followed by close combat, and then finally morale checks are made. Both players complete each phase before moving on to the next phase, so this is not a traditional IGO-UGO.

For each unit lost during the game, you lose 1 LP. During the turn. LPs assigned to your unit/group may be used to: interrupt an opponent's movement to move one of your own units/groups; boost Bravery for a Bravery test; boost Aggression for close combat (but not missiles); cancel 1 Hit² caused during the turn.

Missile fire is pretty simple. Look at the Missiles rating of the unit(s) firing and add up the total. Roll that many dice looking for 5+ (regardless of target). That is the number of hits, unless the opponent spent LP canceling hits. Cohesion is reduced by the number of hits.

Not only is movement staggered by players, but it is staggered by unit type. All aggressor (attacker) skirmishers move first, then all repeller (defender) skirmishers move. Then all aggressor mounted move, then all repeller mounted. Finally all aggressor foot move, then all repeller foot move. Each unit/group attempting to move must pass a Bravery test. Like DBA, DB limits group moves more than units and has restrictions to units' movement when within 1 base width of the enemy's front (basically a Zone of Control). As this is the Dark Ages, Warriors have to test for making uncontrolled charges when they are within charge reach of the enemy. These tests are individual, rather than by group, so your whole battle line may fragment.

Close combat does not require stands to 'square up'; combat can occur at any angle. Essentially Aggression determines how many dice you attack with and the enemy's Protection determines what number you need on the die to hit. Both sides attack and all damage outcomes are simultaneous. Keep track of hits as the loser (lower number of hits inflicted) retreats from combat 1/2 BW. Ties mean they stay in combat.

You check morale when you have lost 50% of your army (excluding skirmishers). You rout when you have lost 75% of your army (excluding skirmishers).

It sounds like the rules might press all the right buttons for some. There is command and control at the unit/group level, replacing PIPs. There is unit quality, making for different army sizes. And there is unit attrition.

The rules are available from Osprey as either ePub or PDF. Amazon sells it in Kindle format too, but if going digital, do PDF so you can print (which you cannot easily do with the Kindle version).

¹ If you read my other blog, Wooden Warriors, then you know that I was making my own, minimalist miniatures for those armies. Funny thing is, while looking for a wood sanding tool I ran across a box of several fully painted Dark Ages armies in 15mm that I had purchased before I stopped gaming and received right when I stopped. I simply shrugged and packed them away to be forgotten. Ah well, guess I will build something else!

² Canceling a hit for 1 LP is the one area that I have heard described as the "fatal flaw" of these rules. When you consider that 1 LP increases your Aggression by 1 – which is equivalent to throwing one more die in combat, which may or may not hit – it is a better deal to cancel 1 hit 100% of the time rather than adding 1 die which may hit 33% (or so) of the time. The best recommendation I have heard, so that players don't simply spend LP canceling enemy hits, dragging the game down, is that 1 LP grants you one save die. If you roll your Protection (which is the same value the enemy rolled against to hit you in the first place) you cancel a hit. This makes the LP spent on Aggression just as valuable as one spent on canceling hits. It is probably the house rule I would use from the beginning.