Friday, July 9, 2010

Thoughts on rules, part 3

Settling in on a set of rules for this project seems to be a real problem for me. Just when I thought I had it sorted out with Fantasy Rules!, little pieces of the puzzle appear to not fit as well as I had hoped. As I continue to search, I am realizing that there is an important underlying factor. Units in the Half-Continent seem to be based primarily on our own 18th century history, which was a time of linear formations in combat. Thus, the main appearance of units in my version of H-C battles should be linear. Now, scale limitations preclude an accurate depiction of units - they are much much more wide than deep - one should have a semblance of a linear formation.

Fantasy Rules! is primarily a 'fantasy' game, partially based on early medieval formations in my estimation, where units were deeper than the lines of the 18th century. Bases for the units in Fantasy Rules! are squares, 1 base for each unit. Here are some close approximations:



These are some Ottoman Turk Janissaries - my first completed 15mm unit (more pics here) - waiting patiently on my desk. The width shown, 60mm, is what I had been planning to use for my FR! units, although I would have only used 3 ranks instead of the 4 shown. The unit is not very linear in appearance.

Now, compare the above to this:



Twice as wide and half as deep - much more linear in appearance. I think that this would be more appealing on the tabletop than the squares of FR!. Please do not get me wrong - FR! is a fine set of rules, very flexible in their composition and easy to use, but a bit too deep for this project. I do intend to imitate many ideas from them to supply the next rules set with special rules, especially for the characters that might appear in a Half-Continent battle

6 comments:

BaronVonJ said...

I'm telling ya, those units look perfect for Might and Reason....
-J

El Grego said...

Just downloaded the MR pdf - looks interesting so far...

abdul666 said...

Perfect 'look' for 'western European' 18th C. battles.
Do you know the WRG 1685-1835 set? Old and probably out of print, but simple and with the 'feeling' of 'Old School' rules such as Grant's 'The War Game'; only drawback is that minis are small and one single rank: when trying my hand at it I doubled the ranks and basically the number of 'to hit' dice /'fighting element'.

El Grego said...

Is that WRG set available as a PDF? I know that the ancients rules are available...

abdul666 said...

Timurilank uses a 'local adaptation' of the WRG set, 'pruned' of all non-mid 18th C. elements and adapted to 2 ranks units.
Years ago a specially devoted Yahoo group had their amended version of the set in their 'files' -probably unauthorized, as I believe it was removed?

Bluebear Jeff said...

Again I will suggest a look at HOTT (Hordes of the Things).


-- Jeff