Physical layout: Full size (8.5 x 11) book, 29 pages. The back cover is heavy black plastic, front cover is clear plastic covering the title page. It is spiral bound, which I appreciate. I have been known to take rule books to FedEx and have them cut the binding off and spiral bind them. They lay flat on the table. The last page is the QRS. I assume they are not going to get too cranky about reproducing it, despite the lack of formal permission. Included are cards necessary to play the game which must be cut out out. Mine are going in card sleeves, they are pretty light card and will last longer that way. I understand they are contemplating printing actual decks in the future.
The first couple of pages are a table of contents and some general information about their philosophy of game design.
The first section of rules defines units. The regiment is the basic unit. An infantry regiment at full strength is 3 stands each 4 inches wide by 2.5 inches deep with 6 54mm figures in two lines. They keep the same base size for other scales. 25mm figures have 8 figures per stand, 15mm use 20. Guns are a bit confusing to me. Battalion guns and siege guns are listed as 2.5 by 4 inches, and the diagram seems to show the frontage as being the shorter measurement. Field artillery is listed as 4 x 2.5, exactly the opposite. I am assuming this is a typo.
Next is maneuvering. They describe and have a chart for rates of movement. You need to pay attention because cavalry and limbered artillery can move twice during a turn. Infantry apparently cannot do this. They mention interpenetration and retrograde movement by infantry. They do not mention oblique movement and wheeling in this section at all, but there are diagrams 2 pages later showing how its done, so it is apparently allowed.
The next big section is the state of troops. They can be fresh, tired or wavering. They start out fresh, unless specified by the scenario, and go to a lower status by losing shooting or hand to hand combat. The lower your status, the harder it is to hit in combat. This is shown by the first chart, using the terms fresh, tired and wavering. The next chart shows how you change state. The first column showing the state you start in uses the terms fresh, tired and wavering. The second part of the chart uses the terms "yellow" and "red". My assumption is that yellow is tired and red is wavering given the context. I seem to recall reading somewhere that there is a convention of using green dice to roll for fresh, yellow for tired and red for wavering, but its not in the rules and I can't remember where I saw it.
Infantry shoots 12 inches, regular arty can shoot 48 inches at max range.
The combat section is long and well documented with many diagrams. I must say, all the way through the diagrams are very clear and help immensely.
The sequence of play involves the cards. They have a number at the top between 1 and 12. That determines the order of play, I believe. There are (usually) either 1, 2 or 3 infantry figures. This represents the number of brigades you can activate. Some cards have special events that may modify this. It looks like it will provide interesting choices.
Each brigade that you activate can have all of its component units perform actions. The scenarios show usually between 2 and 4 units per brigade. If you fire, and the target can fire back legally, you both roll for effect simultaneously. Whoever gets the most hits wins the firefight and the losing player's unit state goes down one. Charges are handled in a similar manner with both sides rolling for damage and the losing side going down one state and moving back.
There is no stand removal, and no penalty for the winning side.
This is a very stripped down version of the firing rules, there are modifiers for cover, enfilade, etc.
There are resolve and cohesion tests that have to be taken under certain circumstances. Resolve tests affect the unit that tests. Cohesion tests apply when a brigade or the army reaches 50% losses.
They have a section on army building, and a scenario generator. There is a short supplement that covers the French and Indian war.
There are three historical scenarios; Cowpens, Camden and Hubbardton. There are about 3 brigades per side in each battle.
I am interested enough that I plan to paint up 54s to play the game. I will probably do plastic figures and do them toy soldier style. It should go pretty fast.
Without having played them, my sense is that when things start to go wrong, they may go South in a hurry. Its not really an attrition game with figures slowly falling off. When your troop state starts deteriorating, you shoot worse, you fight worse, and if you are wavering you test each time you take casualties either from fire or combat.
I am looking forward to trying them.
