"A problem with Black Powder" Topic

During a Black Powder game last week, my opponent commented that BP was not a set of rules but more a set of mechanisms. Reflecting on this and thinking about the very open non dogmatic way they set themselves out it does strike me that they present very much a "toolkit" approach to wargaming.

While this is refreshing, it does actually throw a lot of responsibility on the gamer in terms of defining troop statistics to get things right for any particular conflict. The scenarios in the book give some guidance over and beyond the basic template types offered in Appendix 3, however much depends also on the "Special Rules" distinctions one can add to specific units.

To some extent this undermines a lot of claims I've seen made for the rules suggesting they are an easy set to get into. Yes, you might be able to pick up game play easily but to get it right needs both a relatively high degree of understanding of the nuances of the periods played and the way the rules can be anticipated to work in a known scenario situation.

I note that so far little seems to be emerging to offer further guidance in either the Warlord BP forum or the BP Yahoo Group besides an FPW listing on the latter.

I've started a thread in the "Duke of Marborough Orangery" of the Gentlemen's Wargames Parlour link for colleagues to share any stats they might have determined on and to discuss their rationale.

Visitors welcome. Anyone wishing to enrol as a Gentleman is equally so.

I totally agree. We found them very much a starting point rather than an finished product.

I suspect that they will retain a following, but it looked to us like another case of the Emperor's new clothes.

I should add that they are very pretty though.

And a great deal of fun.

I dont really see this as a problem, it does make for a rather open discussion before the game as each player goes through the armies and decide on a scenario.

It can lead, I spose to the 40kers problem where "everything must have a special rule and be Uber!" though but this is rare.

We use it for Naps, and basically agreed to use the conventions laid out in the back of the book: everything is a regular of its type unless its not! Even if it is thought to be better or worse than regular we never make it much different. The Brits get 1st fire, the French get Reliable Columns, light cav get Maurauders….thats about it for the special rules, oh, except Must Form Square for everyone!

I personally would leave the majority of them alone unless the period calls for it: they are best applied to regiments that were a known quantity on a certain day if playing a historical refight, or as a reward earned in an ongoing campaign to represent experience etc.

I was actually just wandering how to rate the Loyal Lusitanian Legion for Bp, the 1st battalion seems to have been quite steady, so Ive put a couple of suggestions on our club website, and whatever evidence I can find to support it, and tonight we'll see what the group thinks…

Having had one attempt at a Marlburian game with them I will not be repeating the process. The rules gave a quick game and we definitely got a result but the overall feel of the game did not reflect to me Marlburian warfare although I did think they worked much better for all the AWI games we fought. I can just imagine the arguements if these rules were ever used in a competion game.

I shudder to think – but I am fairly sure there was never any intention on the part of the designer for them to be used for Competition games, or for 'Fair' games or for 'Serious' games – they are just fun.

I am painting up both sides for the Sudan – Fairness be damned, I expect the games that result will be pleasurable, nothing more or less – and that will be fine.

Pat

Defo not a set for competition gamers….In fact I think its designed to keep them as far away as possible!

I enjoy them as a game, but I do wonder if they reflect any period of warfare at all.

We played Samurai with a Black Powder variant, last week and enjoyed myself immensely. But then I know nothing about Samurai warfare.

Gleaming Katanas by Rick Jones is available from the Black Powder Yahoo Group.

I was reading the rules and

OH LOOK PRETTY PICTURES!

It's a nice game of toy soldiers. Sometimes, I like that. Those seeking something nearer a simulation must look elsewhere.

I think they hang together pretty well. They're "a set of mechanisms," sure, but all the mechanisms and their possible additions and modifications have been thought-through with obvious care.

Call me a cynic, but I think the whole "It's a toolbox" approach is just a marketing ploy. It's an (intelligent) attempt to head-off the inevitable wargamer complaints and criticisms that the rules don't account for Special Hobbyhorses X, Y, and Z, and Why Not!? and Hey, That's Not Historical!!

By announcing up-front that the game is open-ended, you can hopefully redirect a lot of that angst toward more constructive ends.

The whole approach of BP seems to have been carefully calculated to frustrate the usual predictable criticisms of Anoraks and Grognards. The authors instead proclaim that the game isn't meant to be taken too seriously, and Hey, let's have fun, and if you're not happy, then change it….

That's smart.

The Anoraks aren't going to write new house rules for "The Toolbox." They're going to walk away, which is the whole point.

Verweile Doch wrote:

The Anoraks aren't going to write new house rules for "The Toolbox." They're going to walk away, which is the whole point.

Or use it for periods that they're less anoraky about and where all they really want is a fun, quick game.

That's what I do anyway.

I haven't tried this yet, but plan on doing so. If I understand correctly, the rules leave what the units are made up as to the player? IE Veteran/Green/Etc? I actually prefer these types of rules, as it makes me research the period.

Sounds kind of reminescent of EVER VICTORIOUS ARMIES (which I own, never played)so I doubt I'll invest. More likely to adapt LotOW for C19th toy soldier games…

Indeed, BP is open and up front about the "rules". If BP were a pair of blue jeans, the lable would say "relaxed fit".

However, the comment about BP being a set of mechanisms rather than rules had me scratching my head. After all, what is a set of rules if it's not a set of mechanisms. I think I know what Jeremy is saying though. I think he means that BP's relaxed tone and style are intended to foster creativity and experimentation with the game(or "mechanisms", if you prefer). At least that's the feeling that I got when I read them.

I wish you guys had had this discussion 4 months ago.
The discussions I had seen led me to believe these were very different rules than they are. Very new and different.
I felt ripped off when I finally got them and read them.
There is nothing new in them.
If I had read this discussion first I would have skipped them.
So, good discussion.

I like them. I've tried a number of Napoleonic rules that feel 'overly mechanistic' ie concentrate too much on the mechanisms being accurate at every step, on the assumption the result is correct – Think Challenger 2 for Muskets.

That's how I used to write rules. Now I 'Black Box' it – the player doesn't need to know. This approach was demonstrated on an Air board a year or two ago. If Plane A effectively has a 40% chance to hit, then a 50% chance to kill an enemy, you could go through every mechanism, or you could just say '9+ on a d10'. (Not a precise quote, but what the poster was getting at). Interestingly he noted that his players felt the combat results 'less realistic'!

Wargamers can get too bogged down in detail – no doubt somewhere there is a gamer who dismisses any refight of Waterloo without riolling for each and every musket as 'not a proper wargame, just playing with toy soldiers'!

Invariably the gamer sits at 2 levels up – eg BP Divisional level, moving Bns, TW&T Platoon Leader moving sections. When I give an order to my Brigadiers "Get the men there" I don't CARE how he does it, just that he does.

After a WSS battle Sunjester and I felt that it reflected our understanding of the period.

(Is this the only place on the internet where you can still say "I like BP"?)

I must say I have not paid any attention to the rules but after some postings on what guys are playing I see a lot of BP responses. Does anyone have links to reviews postings?
VR
James Mattes

From all the discussions here before they came out, when they came out, game AARs, etc., and now finally owning the rules, it confirmed what I thought all along. It's a set of rules which gives you the excuse to put as many figs as possible on the tabletop and get the game over in around three hours. If you want to make it more historical(varying unit sizes, stats, etc.) then you need to do the work yourself. Nothing wrong with it and BP is a beautiful rulebook, but not my cup of tea.

I bought the rules, and read them through -- although I have not yet had the opportunity to play them. I thought they were OK, with a vaguely "old school" approach. My major issue is about "period feel," whatever that means. I would be curious to play a couple of games, to dispel this feeling: but I received the impression that you could play Marlburian, Napoleonic, Colonial and ACW without any adjustment. In other words, it would all look and work the same, but for the miniatures on the table. This goes against my intuition that, yes, there should be some difference between Blenheim and Manassas, between Austerlitz and Omdurman.
Again: I look forward to the opportunity to play a game, and to be proven wrong in my first initial take.

Black Powder does exactly what I wanted it to do. It provides a nice baseline to work with when my playmates and I find ourselves want to do a throw down with a black powder period without having to remember (and enjoy) specific rules. I also wanted it because most of my playgroup is prone to liking fast and fun games, rather than simulations.

That said, I find myself dissatisfied. It isn't a fault of the rules but rather, I'm dissatisfied with what i thought I had wanted.

I'm going to get my hands on Republic to Empire and then, hopefulyl with the same basing, I'll have rule sets that I can flip flop between depending on what my players and I are in the mood for.

Black Powder provides what it claims to provide. That may not be what one wants.

We played the central portion of Waterloo a couple of weekends ago using BP and it was a good thing.

Since BP is basically Warmaster and in some ways the Commander series as well (Blitzkreig Commander, et al), aren't the criticisms valid for all games in the family?

No. Warmaster is very strict in its army lists, point values, and rules. There isn't any rule in Warmaster that is written like 'this is how we do it, but you can do anything you like…'

it is rules rather than guidelines.

"Since BP is basically Warmaster"

Well, except for stand removal, the moral procedure, the melee rules, firing, sequence of play (in the X-commander case), and how you determine movement, yes. They all have rulers, "buckets of" dice, and uncertainty in move distance.

Warmaster has army list books to fill the detail, the x-Commander series provides army lists for its (narrowly focused) periods in the back of the books. Black Powder assumes rather more knowledge about the period (although I have read that they plan splat-books to remedy that).

I like toy soldiers.

the anorak brigade have been keeping me away from Naps for a while. Which is too bad, the era is just too pretty to ignore.

If you want an extremely pretty game that's fun Black Powder Napoleonics would be just the job. let's face it uniforms just don't get better than Napoleonics.

If you want something that bears any resemblence whatsoever to a Napoleonic battle then you'd better look elsewhere.

DestoFante

That's exactly why people do not like BP. It does not set out to play every period beytween 1700-1900 without some modifications. The scenarios are provided to help you see how the rules have been applied for those periods.

I have already applied the 'useful' rules for 1866 and while I need to make some adjustments it gave the feel for the period I was looking for. Now I am working on Marlburian. Again I am applying the 'useful' rules and some house rules and while I will probably have to do some tweaking, it is not going too badly.

IMHO BP assumes a number of things; first you want a fun game; second you have enough knowledge of the period you want to fight to make use of the 'useful' rules; finally, that having created your period specific rules it gives you the feel of the period as you believe it to be.

It is not to everyone's taste as many recent posts suggest, but that could apply to almost every set of rules ever written.

Personally I wanted a change from the type of rules I had been using for years and that's exactly what BP gave me. At some point in the future I may want to go back to these other rules, but for the moment I am quite content with gaming BP.

Chad

How is black powder extremely pretty?

people use the same figures and terrain for all their rule sets, so how does black powder make it prettier?

What destroys black powder games for me is that battles should not always be a black and white instant (utterly random!) decisive result on contact but involve areas of long slogged out inertia's.

Everything is blitzkreig and nothing is stalingrad.
it is mutually assured destruction, especially with those nonsense brigade morale rules…….does ANYONE actually play them????

Gaps appear before the full lines are engaged and it destroys the visuals of the battle lines with stuff moving like dodgems on ice.

Brigade Moral Rules? Must have missed that rule…

Anywho…
Im not sure what your on about with black/white/blitzkrieg/stalingrad…IVe just got back from a game at our club and there was no element of Blitzkrieg in it.

despite the potential speed regiments can move the Anglo-Portuguese (and Austrian ;) ) attack on a french held town got bogged down fast, and then it was a long slow battle to beat his units one at a time. Only two French regiments were overrun in this "blitzkrieg" manner: A light infantry battalion was overrun by the 48th in pretty short order, but in fairness it had already been mauled by the 3rd Dragoons, and was still in square. And the "Young Buffs" managed to sort out a battalion in assault column that was twice their size in a single charge, but only becouse they'd spent 3 turns at point blank range firing volleys into it first.

In fact, after 3 hours of very hard fighting the French had lost a mere 2 battalions out of 15, and the Allies only lost 1 out of 14. Quite a few regiments were looking a bit battered though…must take into account though that 5 of the French Battalions had arrived late, and 4 portuguese battalions (and the 13th Light dragoons) ignored almost every order for the entire game!

Anyway my point is that I havnt seen any evidence of every game being black and white (only my 6th game though!) nor have I seen any dodgems on ice, or mutually assured destruction….well no more than Ive seen in every other naps game Ive witnessed.

Oddly Derek, the Napoleonic games I have played I felt resembled Napoleonic Battles.

Everything is blitzkreig and nothing is stalingrad.
it is mutually assured destruction, especially with those nonsense brigade morale rules…….does ANYONE actually play them????

Gaps appear before the full lines are engaged and it destroys the visuals of the battle lines with stuff moving like dodgems on ice

Ho Hum,

I fear we have been round this Maypole before kevanG!

I really would love to know where and when you have played these rules, because your experience of them is nothing like mine and judging by the reactions you get every time you turn up to 'BP bash' on any tread that even half mentions them, is unlike a lot of other people's as well!

BP is configurable and because of that its possible to tune pretty much anything out, or add pretty much anything in.

If you want to disparage them for this and the fact they don't give an out of the box game you find acceptable that's fair enough.

However, you should realize by now that the norm does not apply here. You are not criticizing a single entity but the ultimate set of House Rules! They are, or can be, different for everyone who plays them.

I don't have any of the problems you mention. Why? Because I've taken steps to prevent them happening and I know the period I use them for rather well.

Now before we get off on entirely the wrong foot. I'm not suggesting you don't know as much, or that BP's authors can't be hammered for not making it clear that that the rules aren't going to suit some people who know the period(s) better than others.

However, no author can be held responsible for the historical knowledge (or lack of it)that buyers bring with their purchase.

The rules do not meet your standards but others are happy with them, be they considerably altered, or not at all.

What I fail to understand is your Captain Ahab like pursuit of this particular set of rules, picking on details which a lot of people don't even know are missing and are entirely happy without. When you could have easily used your obvious knowledge to have done something about it, or as you clearly have no intention of playing with the rules again, simply walked away from!

SO…if 50 percent of a brigade are routed and /or shaken, you don't withdraw the brigade from the field?

its page 96 under the obviously misleading title
'brigade morale'

Kevin and I have discussed the Brigade morale rules at our club the SESWC. In all the games at our club we have agreed that we simply dont use them.
Withdrawing brigades when they have 50% of units shaken or broken ends games very quickly. It particular it makes 2 unit cavalry brigades amazingly fragile!

We use brigade morale but adjust it so that two unit brigades are effectively exempt… and likewise avoid fielding two unit brigades. We also allow a brigade to recover if the conditions that made it a broken brigade no longer apply (due to rallies).

Brigade morale rules allow games to end without fighting to the last man.

Field larger brigades and keep a reserve and you'll be fine.

"What I fail to understand is your Captain Ahab like pursuit of this particular set of rules, picking on details which a lot of people don't even know are missing and are entirely happy without. When you could have easily used your obvious knowledge to have done something about it, or as you clearly have no intention of playing with the rules again, simply walked away from!"

Actually, I have tried this, discussed various issues with a lot of people ad nausium, most of who either didn't want to know or understand the issue and I have looked at aspects of the rules to see what to do to fix it, which is why I find them the most difficultly interacted rules mechanisms I have had the misfortune to try to deal with, and I looked at these for long and sundry. Since no one else seemed to bother, I walked away, although one of my gaming groups ditched them before I gave up on them.

I would ask you one question.

Would you be happy playing a set of rules that when determining the outcome of the melees gave a unit a +3 for fighting against the imperial guard but + 2 for fighting against average troops and a +1 fighting militia?

Would you bother if the mechanisms made it Look like that wasn't actually how it worked? The majority answer for most people seems to be 'no'

I have learned most people can't see past the +1 per support and they don't bother what it actually means, don't bother about the absence of situational modifiers, don't bother about the huge influence given to 'support' that is ungraded and coarsely applied and then followed by the completely arbitary method for morale based on this distorted method of melee resolution.

If they don't care, then that's fine. But if they are going to blow hot air about how these are 'good rules' then I will express my difference of opinion.

In short , been there…..done that.

Edit: Bill was one of the guys I talked these through with and is the only one who I consider actually tried!

Black Powder looks like fun, to me.

I am studying up on Zuouve now (for a future 1860's Division/Corp level game in 10mm), but i would take a shot at Black Powder

that would depend, is it +3 etc to a good thing or a bad thing?

And no the 4 of us that play BP in our club have completly missed the Brigade morale rules. And we havnt missed it. Though it does explain the meatgrinder nature of our games.

Funnily tonight 3 of us discussed adding in a variation of FOW's company morale checks for the Army, or setting a break point. The brigade morale you suggested doesnt sound very sensible. And we didnt use it anyway!

Im quite happy to modify the Blackpowder rules as I see fit. Weve already changed the Order roll to 7/8=1 move, 5/6= 2 moves, 4 or less =1 move. We found with the books version you got a disproportionate number of triple moves (which may have been intentional!) that made things a bit odd.

I still recon though that blackpowder provides a good set of simple yet effective rules that can be easily adapted to your playing style.

As I have said in this forum several times, BP has enabled me, for the first time to accurately reflect the 'Glory Days' period of 1805-7 when French command and tactics allowed them to rapidly defeat larger and superior coalition armies – difficult to do with any other rules with player hindsight.

Yes you have to do the hard work for a set game before the palyers rock up, rather than over the table during the game. As far as I am concerned, this is a good thing. You can take your time over the prep, and once everybody arrives concentrate on the action and a bit of fun!

Best new set of rules I've come across for a long, long time!

Having started all this, I'm getting to the point of wondering how my point has been missed.

Having said that the "toolkit" aspect required those of us who might like the rules and use them for a variety of periods, situations or whatever I concluded

"I've started a thread in the "Duke of Marborough Orangery" of the Gentlemen's Wargames Parlour link for colleagues to share any stats they might have determined on and to discuss their rationale."

I'm still interested n developing that.

I have been through a dozen quite enjoyable BP games so far in Colonial and Napoleonic periods. There are some things I like less, like the great speeds units are capable of or the turn sequence of moving and shooting alternately. These however are easily fixed and leave me with a fun game.

I like the toolkit aspect because I like tinkering and have never thought of that as a problem. As a matter of fact, the authors state quite clearly that BP IS a toolkit that players should change whenever they think fit.

What amazes me is that nevertheless people complain about the set instead of changing it to suit their tastes.

how do u mean moving and shooting alternatly?

its done in the Igo Ugo system, player a moves and shoots then player b moves and shoots. Are you saying both should move then both should shoot?

Re "What amazes me is that nevertheless people complain about the set instead of changing it to suit their tastes."

What surprises me is the way, looking through this thread, and in other fora where I've posted it, that people seem to think I'm complaining about them.

All I'm trying to do is to share information as to how various people have changed them to suit their tastes.

As I have stated above, this toolkit is a great idea, but when you get to the point where you are unhappy with the command for more reasons than just triples occur too often.
…..arbitary stops unrelated to troop quality is another reason. Should the command level of an army actually make infantry columns able to move faster than cavalry?
Why is command guarenteed when a unit is involved in the front line yet disengaged units are more subject to command failure ? Shouldnt this be the other way round?

Morale because of it's overemphasis on some aspects then conducts block coverage on others in mechanisms that are actually linked, then has a combat system which suffers from no granularity…..

Oh how the list goes on to the point you want to re-write every section to incorporate some sense of rationale…

It doesnt matter if I have every tool in the box when I need a new engine.

In the overall scheme of things, it doesnt matter a jot…I have much more important and life changing things to do today than consider the failings of black powder.

In the overall scheme of things, it doesnt matter a jot…I have much more important and life changing things to do today than consider the failings of black powder.

Then why continue with this?Byee

AS I stated, I walked away from "tweaking" the 'toolkit'.

and there is always tomorrow……

Should the command level of an army actually make infantry columns able to move faster than cavalry?

Yes. If you don't believe me take a look to the narratives of the war of 1866. At Konniggratz, for instance, due to egregious bundles in the Austrian high command the heavy cavalry divisions didn't move until it was too late to make a difference. Benedek wanted to redeploy them to his right flank, but the orders were so badly written that nobody understood what the hell he wanted to do with them.

Actually, what I like from rulesets like Black Powder is that they get right the most important thing in a battlefield: doesn't matter how good or fast are your troops, if your chain of command is a mess they won't be good nor fast enough to be where they are needed in the moment they are needed. And you will lose the battle.

How far removed is modifying BP from writing your own rules? It appears to me that if you know enough of the period and have years of gaming experience. Then you could just as well write your own house rules.

I have not played BP but from what all I have read about them, they seem similar to rules I read from across the pond years ago, which where written in what I call a conversational tone. Loosely organized and makes suggestions as to what you should do based on the period in question, after I read them I say to myself "that was nice but where are the rules?"

What did I plunk down my money for? I already know the period and I know what issues the rules should cover. But I really would rather not buy a set of rules so I can write the rules myself. Make a few adjustments, sure. But how much are you modifying before you might as well save your money and write your own.

Any number of rules sets can furnish you with a "tool kit"; we modify sets of rules all the time, for specific scenarios and what rules we feel need to be adjusted. I just wonder if writing rules like BP is just an excuse not to do the heavy work involved with researching and play testing. The rules say I can do what I like. I already knew that. Like I said haven't played them but based on what I am hearing they aren't for me.

There's long been a discernible difference between the UK and US approach to wargame rules writing, it seems to me. The former have generally started from the deliberately nebulous position: you can do whatever you want as long as the rules don't disallow it/it seems reasonable/it would have happened in a real war/it's 'gentlemanly', that is, the exclusionary approach. It's very common to read in UK produced sets a cop-out along the lines of: no set of rules can cover every eventuality; if in doubt let the dice decide.

In contrast, many US rules writers come from a discipined game design background, sometimes being also board game designers. They understand that a set of wargames rules is a game, and therefore requires focus and clear design parameters. They appreciate that as the game's creator they have total control of its constituent mechanisms; they decide what is included and what is extraneous to that particular design.

Personally, I wouldn't use BP for a historical subject for which a polished, tightly written, dedicated game (rules set) is available if I was personally running the game. However, I have an interest in a number of obscure 19th century campaigns that will never be thus priveleged. For these, BP is certainly no worse than the other generalist and improvised alternatives, and is one of the reasons I purchased a copy. I'm also happy to use BP if it's the house favourite, and have now been involved in a number of games with a local group by that means.

'Loosely organized and makes suggestions as to what you should do based on the period in question, after I read them I say to myself "that was nice but where are the rules?"'

BP is not like that at all. The rules are clear and they are all there for a perfectly good generic horse and musket game. There is also a Quick Reference Sheet available.

The toolkit aspect is what you can do to adapt the generic rules to any specific period, "flavour" or level of detail that you wish.