I received my copy of Rough Riders in the mail a few days ago, and finished reading them last night. Here are some first impressions:
1) The book looks nice and is pretty complete. It includes the rules, several scenarios and an interesting terrain generation system for hunting down the Moros (it would work just as well for Vietnam). It also includes several pages of cut-and-paste markers, activation cards, etc.
2) The rules themselves seem pretty straight forward. But there seems to be a lot of calculating (none of it hard) that could have been put in a chart. For example, different unit types have different rough terrain penalties, and each type of terrain has a different multiple. So one unit might have a 1 and another a 3. If a terrain piece has a penalty of 2.5 you multiply that to get the cost (2.5 and 7.5 respectively). Calculating fire dice is done by consulting a large list of DRMs. Basically you add/subtract all the DRMs and then you get one firing die per that many figures. So if your total off the DRMs is 4 you roll one die per four figures.
3) There's quite a bit if tracking that needs to happen. For example, how much fire you are under can affect your units performance. I like this rule but it means keeping track of how many dice were fired at each unit each turn. Likewise the morale rules require tracking a morale level for every unit (morale can go up and down).
4) The scenarios were disappointing. Lots and lots of Americans on one side, a few Spanish in block houses on the other. Accurate to be sure, just not sure who will want to play the Spanish. Ideal for a convention where the GM plays the Spanish…
5) Some interesting game concepts. C-n-C is the usual command radius with a twist. A leader may only command a certain number of troops. So if a leader can only command 12 and his unit has 16, he has to leave 4 behind. BUT another leader can come along and attach them to his unit (if he has the capacity). Morale fluctuates and there's an interesting "Flush with Victory" rule in the morale section.
I'll be adding them to the Rules Directory over the week end:
link
Mark "Extra Crispy" Severin
Owner, Scale Creep Miniatures
ScaleCreep.com
DeepFriedHappyMice.com
