I would accept the Stonewall Brigade as such, and Richard Taylor's Louisiana Brigade as well (with a special mention for its Special Battalion: the Louisiana Tigers). On the Confederate side, it is hard to single out units or formations for such classification. I'd also be inclined to treat US Regulars, and the Iron Brigade up to 1 July 1863 as elite as well. I have read as how they tended to think of themselves as something special, and were apt to behave according. I think it is not unreasonable to accept ACW Zouave units as elite – especially the ones that kept their uniforms for more than a few months. M'mmm… its looking close to the time for me to expand my war games library. If they do not suit medieval it will be time to start my Guns of Batasi inspired colonial and post colonial imagi-nation.
Two hour wargames free pdg portable#
I favour ease of access as well as ease of understanding so await with the Portable Wargaming rules with anticipation. I'm looking forward to getting things down to a smallish gridded table. I am just off to finish the bases on my second retinue and should be playing tomorrow. Lion Rampart I can understand because there has been plenty of explanation on the internet, and a play tester for the rules was kind enough to give me a game. Silvester's campaign suggestions are what I aspire to achieve as I progress with this hobby. All of a sudden I could understand how solo wargaming could work.
Stuart Asquith's book is clearly and concisely written. I'm not expecting to need Neil Thomas' rules but the scenarios are excellent. Out of all the books and rules that I have bought the four that I have settled on as being most useful to me are the two reviewed here by Bob along with Stuart Asquith's Solo Wargaming, and the Lion Rampart ruleset. It has been very difficult, and expensive, to find books and rulesets that are easy for a beginner to understand. In my quest to be a war gamer I have bought both of these books. Perhaps that is Thomas's 'cunning plan': publish rules so simple that users will soon become dissatisfied because the rules don't match their interpretation of history and wish to adapt them, so they will read more on the period tactics and create their own amendments/house rules – and then they're hooked!īob, you really must publish your own book of Portable Wargames… The virtue of these rules is that they are so simple that a novice could easily follow them, and that it would be easy to tinker with them, by importing the H&M artillery rules into the Pike&Shot rules for ECW or TYW, for example. Artillery of the same period, however, can only shoot four times as far as infantry – though its range is greater than the proposed width of the wargame table! Then, there is his usual disregard of the relationship between unit frontage and weapon range, so a battalion in line, armed with matchlocks or flintlocks, has an effective musketry range at least twice its front. This results in some anomalies: an ECW army cannot have any artillery or dragoons because Thomas has included a 'Swordsmen' category, which is only applicable to much earlier Renaissance armies in the ACW, he has created 'Zouaves' as a sort of elite infantry, which I doubt they really were. I agree with you about the rules in Thmas's OHW, particularly his rigid restriction to exactly four troop types. The scenarios appear to be very useful, and I have already spotted a couple that I might well try out in the not too distant future. The rules in the latter book are simple – possibly too simple for some wargamers’ tastes – but I think that they should prove fun to use, especially if they cover a period that one does not usually wargame. I have read THE SOLO WARGAMING GUIDE and found it very useful, and I am about halfway through ONE-HOUR WARGAMES: PRACTICAL TABLETOP BATTLES FOR THOSE WITH LIMITED TIME AND SPACE. There are also chapters that cover Wargame Campaigns and Solo Wargaming. The second part of the book contains thirty scenarios for small tabletop battles that should take about an hour to set up and fight. The first part gives some basic information and very simple rules for each of the following wargaming periods:
Thomas’s book essentially falls into two parts.