"1:10 in Iberia" Topic

Some in our widely-spread out group of pards commenced gaming in Spain the past couple of years. Our latest effort using 1:10 "Big Battalions" is shown here with briefly captioned photographs.
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Respectfully,
Bill

Gorgeous! Those big battalions really look impressive and inspiring. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Bob

Ah, if only I could afford the time to paint and the money (and actually the storage and gaming space too!) Really, really wonderful and the tables look lovely too by the way. I like the 'old school' with the new school blend of rules mechanics you mention. Many old school games were great; length of game turns and some mechanics not so great. Old school rules are fun though! Tell us more about this blending of old and new school, please :-)

Really the only Old School aspect of these games and rules that we play lie in the "big battalions" of 1:10 ratio units and the fact that there are saving throws for each casualty (hence buckets o' dice). I'm not sure how one would characterize the rest of the rules mechanics in terms of Old, Middle or New School. Let's just call it Fun School.

The game turn is broken down into movement, firing and melee phases with initiative determined by card draw. One side is "Black" and the other side is "Red". If a Joker is drawn from the deck, then the next color of card drawn determines the ownership of the Joker card. Jokers can "trump" any other drawn card. Thus if you want to fire first during the firing phase, but the other side draws the first initiative for firing, you can play your Joker and trump the other side's card – you get to fire first instead.

The games seem to flow fairly fast and smoothly, considering that a typical game might involve 500 to 700 figures per side. We usually reach a definitive conclusion with 5 to 6 hours of gaming for our larger games.

To speed things up, movement distances are generous (infantry in line moves 16" IIRC and cavalry moves 20") allowing the players to "get at it" rather quickly. Also, initiative cards are drawn for the entire army early in the game, so you don't have to wait for each player to draw a card prior to moving or firing. Once the battle lines get into small arms range, we then divide the table into "zones" and draw separate initiative cards for each zone.

The casualty rates can be very high, but this is partially offset by saving throws for each casualty. This actually moves quickly. No morale checks unless your unit has passed the 50% casualty mark or if you are in a melee. This also speeds up the game, eliminating a number of morale checks.

Hopefully, this gives you some flavor into how the rules work.

I'm totally blaming you guys for inspiring me to jump into the northwest frontier at ~1:5(!)… 15mm, though. I'm not about to paint up thousands of 28mm figures, and I have neither the storage space nor the gaming space for 28mm figures either.

Now, more brandy, gentlemen? It's been a smashing tale from General Pettygree!

Old School rules moved, aligned, fired and meleed each miniature individually. It's charming fun and perhaps bonds the player to each casting in some interesting way. It also detrimentally consumes an enormous amount of time. Some people have the time for this. Others don't.
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Increase the size of infantry units to perhaps 48ish so they look more formidable than much smaller units. Yes, Lion in the Stars, using 15mms is an outstanding way to do this. Well said too.

Moving larger units changes the way we perform and think about wheels and passing by or through cover. It also allows less abstraction for formation changes. What I mean is, we don't say it takes a whole turn to form line to column. We actually march sub-groups into theses formations. We have an easy to read drill manual for this.

One example is close order cavalry backing up. Not at this scale – for us. Instead, the commander will do a right about or left about by 2s, 3s, 4s, troop, etc. No backing up like a truck with an alarm sounding beep, beep, beep. A cavalry player really needs to think and plan ahead. This item alone can be a tricky, fun and satisfying tactical problem. No shuffling (side-stepping cavalry either.

Here's another example with infantry:
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Base individually and magnetize casting to underlying movement trays. We still keep artillery crews based and moved individually for the interesting visual effect.

Let's say 48 castings are placed on four underlying movement trays, each is moved plus aligned every turn and the game lasts seven turns. You have essentially 4x7 = 28 things to move.

By contrast a 48 man infantry unit moved individually without suffering losses will be handled 48x7 = 336 times. This is just one unit. Imagine if you did this for half a dozen.
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Fire and melee by groups.

This is game of several brigades per side. How many? 2,3,4,5, and perhaps more if you ahve a lot of friends joining in with their own collections. It is not a grand tactical game of multiple corps.
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As an aside I have collections with 16-20 casting battalions which fight grand tactically and where formation changes and maneuver is necessarily more abstract. I have no problem with this.
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Rules: Batailles de l'Ancien Régime 1740-1763 (BAR) adapted for Napoleonics (Napoleonic version nor currently available – still testing it) However, there is other interesting and useful information, theory and more in the booklet. For more information see: oldregimerules.com
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Very respectfully,
Bill