"Questions for those Playing "Victory without Quarter"" Topic

I've got some questions regarding these rules and am wondering how others handle them:

1. Is there a "Fire" order? Or can a unit move and fire on the same card draw? (I think not, but maybe others see if differently).

2. When an officer card is picked, can he give an order to a unit that's already had its card picked and acted, or is this just to allow a unit to be ordered to make sure it gets to act before the end turn card is drawn?

3. Can more than one unit contact and fight an enemy unit. e.g. unit A's card get's picked. It charges and contacts unit 1 in the front. Unit A wins and pushes unit 1 back, but unit 1 doesn't run away. Next unit B's card is picked. If unit A isn't completely occupying the frontage of unit 1, could unit B contact unit 1 and fight a melee?

4. Infantry formations are specified, but not cavalry. From the photos it looks like cavalry is drawn up with a frontage of one squadron (two stands). If multiple squadrons are acting together as a regiment, the photos seem to show that the line up behind the first.

Could they form up abreast (i.e. 2 squadrons, or 4 stands, wide?)

Thanks for your insight(s)

When I enquired about #1 some time ago, the author told me a unit could both move and fire.

When I enquired about #1 some time ago, the author told me a unit could both move and fire.

Did the author say whether you could fire/move, move/fire, or either?

There's no modifier reducing effectiveness for moving and firing.

While I'm no expert, you'd think that the rate of/effectiveness of fire would be reduced when troops armed with matchlocks moved, if only because it doesn't seem possible to load, etc, while marching.

Anybody use a house rule reducing effectiveness when a unit moves and fires?

Also,

No, we didn't even think about it when we played our two games recently. We were trying to get our arms around the weird cavalry melee process. We ended up adapting the Might of Arms cavalry melee process and it seemed to work.

I'd reduce a dice thrown for units that moved and want to fire.

VwQ is a very fluid set of rules with a lot of issues that need to be fixed. I don't want hijack this thread but has anyone played other than our group? The rules read and looked do-able but they just didn't pass muster in Tejas to date.

We played the officer could issue a direct order. I ended up gaming the system by parking my CIC by my artillery and having them fire twice…once in the Artillery card and once in the CIC's turn.

I built my regiments in four stand units. We split them and it just didn't work. The melee was definitely weird. We ditched saves as a useless roll and found out that didn't work either when the factors were above a 7.

The game is mounumentally slow when playing with multiple players. We ended up going to a card deck and built a roster with duplicate numbers on each. When a card was turned, all players that had a "2" or whatever could take actions. Made it a little faster.

I've not given up on the rules but have switched to a Might of Arms version for our Skirmish 09 Game Day next weekend. I needed a set I knew were easy to teach, learn and played reasonably fast.

Has anyone else had these problems or are we just over the top as a game group?

We were trying to get our arms around the weird cavalry melee process.

I'm not sure I see what the difficulty is with this. The way I understand it if you've got more than one squadron operating together, only the first one fights on the first round of combat. The second fights next round (if it gets to that).

Now this presumes, I think, that when squadrons operate together they're in a formation one behind the other.

Don't ask me what would happen if you had 3 squadrons operating together.

We ditched saves as a useless roll

I don't think this is a good idea. If you get rid of saves, pikes are just musketeers who can't shoot. The way the game represents the effectiveness of pikes is to give a steady foot unit with pikes a 4+ save.

I suppose there are other ways to do it, but just getting rid of the saves without adding something to reprsent the pikes' defensive qualities leaves a gap.

The game is mounumentally slow when playing with multiple players. We ended up going to a card deck and built a roster with duplicate numbers on each. When a card was turned, all players that had a "2" or whatever could take actions. Made it a little faster.

I wouldn't consider that a "flaw" in the game. You'll find that with any card based game if you try to do mulitplayer. Somebody's going sit around and watch for some time.

We fixed the short term issue-I needed to get a rules set down before our annual Skirmish 09 Games Day in Plano, Texas next week. Might of Arms works great for a multi player, quickly learned/taught game. We'll continue to tweak VWQ after our Games Day.

I've played several games, all with a relatively small number of units (three or four foot and similar numbers of cavalry per side) and found them quite fun – although like everyone else we did have a number of questions.
1. Move and fire seems rather generous, especially given that the card-based movement sequence will give the moving unit the possibility of firing first in any case. On the other hand, firing is often ineffective, and the card system means that it may be the only action a unit will get for a while, so you pays your money and takes your choice.
2. We allowed officers to give units an extra action – though not to allow artillery to fire.
3. No reason not to add additional units into the fight; all units would fight in the melee.
4. I don't think there is a prohibition on lining up cavalry squadrons – we would certainly allow it. In general I consider the squadrons to act as independent units, but to act on a single card.

We played therm here in Aberdeen for about a year. They were great rules for a very small number of units though, as others have said, there are a numnber of not very well explained things which either the author later cleared up or we came to an agreement about.

In the past six months we have moved en masse to 'Basic Baroque' the Renaissance expansion of Basic Impetus available free on the Net from Dadie et Piombo. These are excellent rules which give a good game in an evening and come with comprehensive army lists (also free) for both the ECW/Wars of the Three Kingdoms and Europe. We recently won 'Best Demonstration Game' Cup at the Perth Show here in Scotland with multiple ECW games using these rules over a day. Try them – you'll like them.

1ngram…great post! Could you please send a link for both your group's pics and Dadie et Piombo? I've never heard of D&P. Probably because I'm a public school graduate of Texas schools. :)

Thanks again!

Isn't Basic Impetus a "DBA type" rule set? I.e. The army is composed of elements which are not organized into distinct units?

web site for Impetus
link
direct link to Basic Baroque
dadiepiombo.com/bbaroq1.html

Isn't Basic Impetus a "DBA type" rule set? I.e. The army is composed of elements which are not organized into distinct units?

For Baroque, one Unit=1 Brigade (or equivalent)

BI units are about 4 times the size of DBA elements so they look much more like a body of men. Stick 4 DBA elements together in a rectangle two wide and 2 deep and you have your basic BI unit. A 15mm game can be played on a 4 foot by 2 foot table. Unlike DBA they are based on combat attrition not manoeuvre and outflanking as DBA is (to my mind).