"Battles for Empire 2?" Topic

Anyone playing these?

What do you think?

How do they differ from Battles for Empire 1?

Anyone know where I can get a copy?

Thank you!

The rules have been greatly expanded and in my opinion, made easier to play. Units now take up to eight hits, so melees go on a little longer. Pretty much everything that could be seen in a colonial game, i.e., gunboats, trains, walled towns, etc., is covered in the new version. We've already played one game of it and are looking forward to playing several more this year. Again, in my opinion, this is the finest set of operational level colonial rules around.

Forgot to add that the rules are available I believe through Hotz as a PDF.

hotzartworks.com/bfe.html
PDF, $15. USD

The favourite set of rules at the Berkeley club

We use them for The Sudan, The Zulu Wars, The French in Mexico, the Russo-Japanese War, Caesar's Invasion of Briton and Upper Egypt 400AD

Excellent for multi-player games

As Shedman says, top rules at BV club.

They are bloodier than v1 in that attrition will wear down the Imperial troops but it makes for a tense game.

@ aegiscg47

Interestingly we find melee quicker since any 'hit' now causes a 'kill' and so units rapidly deteriorate, where as before it took 3 hits to get a kill even though unit now take 8 kills before they are remove as opposed to 4.

Battle reports:
link
link

They are great, our club loves them, Chris Leach did a great job.

I was fascinated to see these used for Romans vs Barbarians games! I've been wanting to get back to my Zulus, and my son just got a pile of Romans for Christmas.

It works really well with Romans vs Barbarians as it is essentially colonial but without the firepower.

We have played several scenarios vs Britons or Blemmye. In the pipeline we have Romans vs Franks and Romano-British vs Saxons

To compensate for the Romans not being able to shoot we allow them Pila at contact requiring 4+ to hit and their opponents get a -1 modifier in combat against steady Legionaries

Against the Blemmye the Romans have won 3 out of 4 games mainly due to the Blemmye going for melee tactics rather than skirmishing

Against the Britons it was far tougher, 2 draws, as the Warbands and Chariots wear the Legionaries down

Cheat sheets and rule amendments are on the BFE Yahoo group

I just started a blog for BFE (II). "BFE2wargames"

Nothing much there now, but I plan on posting images of my figures to demonstrate aspects of the game.

One more vote for BFE2. For our club play test we played a fun Foreign Legion vs. Arab game in under three hours. Simple, elegant mechanics that nevertheless give the feel of maneuvering large bodies of men. IMHO, it's superior in every way to Black Powder for 19th Century colonials.

How would they play Zulu vs Zulu or Dervish vs Abyssinians?

Some players on the BFE Yahoo Group play a variant for Ancient Battles from Egyptians to Rome. So, at least as far as lack of firepower is concerned, the rules should work well.

I just posted some pictures on the blog illustrating my basing scheme. Note that BFE requires no specific number of figures per unit, nor stand size, but there is an expected relationship between close order imperial troops and loose or Massed natives -- basically the stands of natives should be twice the width of imperial stands with units having 4 stands.

Is there an errata section for the BFE II rules? I noticed a few modifiers that are inaccurate in the rules and the charts show them differently (e.g., column/mass -1 as target DRM in rules but in charts it's +1 DRM)

I think we caught this typo now, but please send me any errors. I will compile an errata sheet, but so far we have not had many reported! Whew.

Let me know of other mistakes.

Cheers