August was dominated by heatwaves here in Sussex, in the south of England. This made going up to my studio over the garage an uninviting prospect. On top of that the wooden staircase up to it is deteriorating, leading to some spousal pressure about the dangers of using it. You have be especially careful descending; the banisters aren’t safe and wouldn’t stop you if you tripped. So no painting in August. But I did get a game and I spent quite a bit of time on rules design. This included a first look at the new ACW rules.
Back to Carolus Rex
The game was at the club (Tunbridge Wells). I was hosting the game as usual, and I wanted to ring the changes from my Napoleonic French and Prussians, using Général d’Armée 2, so I thought it was time to bring out my 6mm Great Northern War Swedes and Russians. I have devised my own rules for this (published in this website), which I have named Carolus Rex. I last used them in a multi-player game – and concluded that the activation system (divisions moved in a sequence determined by a card draw) worked less well in that context. But this time there would only be Hugh and Rod – so that wouldn’t be a problem. I also had a scenario in my mind – very loosely based on Holowczyn (pronounced hoh-wof-chin) in 1708.
In this scenario the Swedes under Charles XII are attacking a Russian division over a river. This division is separated from two divisions of reinforcements – while not all the Swedish forces are there at the start either. In solo play this proved a tense game with all manner of grand tactical options for the players.
The game went pretty well. The players liked the way that there was plenty of space on the table for manoeuvre – and a scenario where that made use of this. They also liked the card-driven activation system, which spiced things up. The Russians were in the event able to concentrate their forces faster than I expected. This wasn’t enough though – they needed some good dice-throwing to beat the better-quality and better-led Swedes, and didn’t get it.
I inevitably reflected on the rules. They are too loaded in favour of the better-quality Swedes, whose forces were still nearly intact at the end – the rules don’t really do gradual attrition. They are also a bit cumbersome and the processes could do with a bit of streamlining. So I have now drafted a Version 2, ready for a play test. I am leaving the card activation system in, though. In multiplayer games it has been suggested that we deal the whole sequence at the start of the turn, freeing gamers to move in parallel in different parts of the field. The scenario also needs more work – it has a lot of potential.
ACW rules
Another source of hobby interest, apart from my diversion into Great Northern War, was that my friend from South London Warlords days, Des Darkin, has published a set of rules for the American Civil War – called ACW. It is the first set of rules he has published, and they are a treat.
Des is part of a group of friends who play regularly at the Warlords in Dulwich, and also at Des’s “Shed o’ War”, and include Iain Fuller whose ideas on GDA2 I have discussed here. They care deeply about historicity, and getting play mechanisms that correctly reflect the pressures of command. These rules are packed with ideas culled from different rule systems, with a few that are doubtless their own invention (like Iain’s Command Clock – which I have used in one of my GDA2 games). That’s the same as most wargames rules (including all the ones I have written) – but these have been integrated into a properly thought-through and properly tested whole.
The result is what I would call a “serious” system – one with quite a bit of detail and nuance in the rules. The rules themselves take up 45 pages, including a number of pictures, examples and explanations. This is still half the length of GDA2, another serious system. This is partly because the Napoleonic era is more complicated, partly because ACW is written more compactly – but also because the system itself is better engineered (or so it looks without having actually played them).This contrasts with slimline systems where the focus is more on playability – these include Lasalle 2 and Valour & Fortitude in the Napoleonic context. These can be written in a dozen pages or less. Much less in the case of V+F; the Lasalle system covers 90 pages for the basic game, but these are smaller pages, and Sam Mustafa spends much more text explaining the rules and ironing potential misunderstandings. Of course these slimline systems are pretty serious in their own way – and are easily the best option if you are putting on big games, especially involving people not familiar with the rules. But the experiences between these approaches is different.
The turn system closely follows that for GDA2, as does the scale and scope. It even uses “staff officers” instead of “ADCs” as the name for its command points (though you need counters rather than models to represent them), with “assignments” instead of “taskings”. The number of hits required to knock a unit out is similar too (11 for a regular unit). Thereafter the differences grow. It feels like what you would get if you started with a GDA-like system (Picket’s Charge perhaps) and kept changing the bits that you found irritating, until you ended up with something that is very different.
These rules will take a bit of getting into – but Des is producing explanatory videos and deals with queries on his Facebook page. ACW is not my period, though, so at the moment these rules are mainly a source of inspiration. I think I will try them out once I have enough Bismarck-era Austrians and Italians on hand. A setting in the 1859 Second Italian War of Independence would be a good place to start – this is the European war that most closely resembles the ACW. The 1866 war is more complicated, because of Austrian Stosstaktik , which will need some special rules. ACW looks to be a highly absorbing game, strongly grounded in history. IYou can order a copy from the website.
Command & Discipline
All of which has inspired me to return to my slimline Napoleonic rules, Command & Discipline. The first version proved unsatisfactory in a number of ways. I need a radically different command and sequence system. I will borrow some ideas from ACW, although given the slimline scope, the opportunities will be limited.
September will not be a big hobby month. I am away on holiday for a large chunk of it. I am unlikely to get a game.