I can see that how some people can enjoy how the rules play but personally I found that the removal of all overt tactical options beyond commit/don't commit, for all troops in all time periods, both bothered and bored me and led to games that I was hard pressed to make last 20 minutes.įor some troops, eg Greek hoplites, it seems fair enough and where other troops used varying tactics historically one can argue that different tactics can be assumed to be happening without being shown explicitly.įor example, an indecisive long range firefight could be represented by stopping your attacking unit just outside shooting range thus being a threat without bothering with the mechanics of rolling dice with little effect and you could say that firing at maximum range on the wargame table could represent an 18thC British style approach to marching up to pointblank range before firing or a bayonet charge for that matter without bothering to move the figures as that level of tactics is below the player's control as general and can be assumed to happen etc.Īnyway, thank you for the review and thanks to Thomas for the collection of scenarios which I play regularly with other simple rules even though I also play many of the larger original ones that he has drawn inspiration from, when I have time and energy, and for the food for thought.
However, those are just words and insults to me and I can overlook them, I was also a little peeved at his insistence that the way I have wargamed for 40 years is Not Practical even though I have played on kitchen tables as well as big ones and continued to wargame even when pennyless. I confess that I was annoyed that the army lists do not allow any 'army' to have all arms present, not ever, even if it was not unusual for say a Napoleonic force to have horse, foot, guns and skirmishers but that was easily amended for those who desire that as an option (eg for 6 units one can roll twice on the 3 unit list instead etc etc). I don't really disagree with anything you have written and have found the stripped down scenarios very useful to get interesting games going when time and/or energy was short. I had also resolved to (finally) actually try the OHW rules and I felt that playing the scenario would help me get a feel for it, so why not use the rules that were intended for it? Two birds with one stone, and all that.Īn interesting review. Grant took a broader approach and thus had to keep his programming at a strategic level.) I liked the scenarios in OHW, so it made sense to use one of them, hence my last blog post's project of creating a gameboard for scenario #8. I am still working through the idea, but the core of the solution was to try and scope to programmed opponent to a specific side or a specific scenario using a specific set of rules. You can read about my thoughts and experiments on that idea in the links below. It was while I was skimming over my library that I saw an old title by Charles Stewart Grant entitled Programmed Wargames Scenarios that I decided to revive an old project: trying to develop a programmed opponent that I could write down, send to another player, and they could use that program to game solo. So I passed judgment without actually playing the rules, skipped to the back and read the scenarios, and consoled myself that at least that provided enough value for money. I mean, I understand Neil Thomas' passion for stripping down rules, getting rid of complexity, and emphasizing the need to get to a decision in a reasonable amount of time, but this seemed like a bit much. I have to admit, when I first read the rules, that was my thought.
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