Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Victory without Qauter






The guys at the Goulburn Valiant Stormer’s are throwing around some ideas for the big project next year, a few of us think be 30 years war could be a possible front runner, as the warlord plastics lend themselves nicely to the period (still some discussion and dissention in the ranks as to basing conventions though), so with that thought a number of us have started to play test some rule sets. On Sunday Dave and I (we both normally play Warhammer English Civil War) had a game using the Free “Victory without Quarter” rules.

Using my ECW figs we each had a C in C, one cavalry general , two pike and shot blocks, one trotter and one galloper horse unit, one gun and a clubman for the parliament and highlanders for the Irish Royalists.

The game was played over 4 hours, I really liked the rules as I found they could be a little unpredictable and I liked the different factors for troop types and the card idea, although I think that VWQ will be a little slow for those players wanting to get two games in on a club day. VWQ still gave a satisfactory result and possibly would speed up after a few games; however I don’t think they would handle much more troop wise, two more pike blocks possibly and another regiment of horse each would slow it down even more. My ECW army is a mix of different figures, the Irish Montrose army are mostly Eureka, the pike and shot, horse, a mix of Old Glory, Perry and Eureka Highlanders and a Foundry gun and crew, On the parliment side, all Foundry and Perry except for the clubmen who are Warlord metals.

As the boys want to play a more grand tactical game I think VWQ will not be suitable for what we have in mind, although I would happily use VWQ for ECW. The next rule set we will play test is the Baroque set from the guys who wrote impetus.


Cheers
Matt

4 comments:

Christopher(aka Axebreaker) said...

Really great stuff!

Cheers
Christopher

Bluebear Jeff said...

One idea for VWQ for larger games (presumably with multiple players):

Each Player numbers all of his figures so that when a card is drawn (such as "Royalist 4"), each (Royalist) Player would act with his #4 unit (or 2nd Brigadier, etc.). Since Players normally are on different portions of the table, it keeps things moving without "ganging up" on one opposing Player.

Another thing that I've used for "reinforcements" is to delay adding those cards until certain turns . . . and then only having them arrive on a die roll (5+ is typical) . . . otherwise the card remains in the deck until successful.

We've had fun with these rules, which as you state can be a bit unpredictable (which I like).


-- Jeff

Bluebear Jeff said...

I just noticed that Clarence has answered a bunch of VWQ questions on the "League of Augsburg" website in the "Fighting Talk" section:

http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com/fightingtalk/viewforum.php?f=20

These might further clarify some things for you about the rules.

Have fun, sir!


-- Jeff

Bluewillow said...

thanks Jeff,

cheers
matt