"Longstreet rules" Topic

Players have had a chance to play now since it has been out for a while now. But is it a good system? How do people feel about this game?

A good place to start, pro and con:
TMP link

Do you like card driven games?

If yes, you'll love them.

If not, you'll not.

Not really suitable for multi-player games.

Speaking of multiplayer suitability, any other views on the matter? So far we have only done 1 vs 1 in our campaign, and will have 2 vs 2 soon. I am not intending to disrespect 138sqRAF's views, just interested in hearing what experiences people have on the mechanics as written in the rules of multiplayer club games.
Cheers,
Aksu

We had our first game last week. A multiplayer affair with three 10 base infantry units one 8 base cavalry unit and a 3 base artillery unit per player. We had 6 players so roughly 100+ bases per side in 28mm. Maybe a bit large for a first game but our group has 13 members with 8 to 9 in regular attendance for a game night.

In the past we have played a lot of Fire and Fury. We tried Black Powder and Regimental Fire and Fury. Black Powder was not to most of our groups liking, Regimental Fire and Fury does not lend itself to large games. It takes too long to play larger games.
My only criticism of Fire and Fury is that the rules encourage charging rather than a fire fight. Seems a little off to me for ACW.

Longstreet:
The basic game, movement, firing, charging etc seems pretty straight forward. Just adapting to how things work. The cards add an interesting twist, however there are cheesy parts to it as well, such as playing a Poor Surveying Card and plunking down a swamp or rocky ground in front of someones charging unit.
I find that artillery is pretty fragile, it dies as easily as everything else, in spite of them being a harder target to hit. Also, one hit, one base.
I do like how it handles infantry trying to charge limbered artillery. The artillery have a pretty good chance of running away.
Longstreet also encourages charging, in particular that the charging unit only takes one base off even if it loses.
Thus the criticism I had of Fire and Fury is present in Longstreet.
I understand that as troops wear down (eager, seasoned, cautious) the rules don't encourage charging, however that attacking one base loss makes it pretty tempting. Especially if you get a good roll and remove a lot of your opponents bases.
The firing line seems to be pretty ineffective; roll to hit, opponent removes hits with cards, roll to kill. The most number of bases we saw removed due to firing was one. Even with 10 or more bases firing.
I also understand that if you use cards to remove hits you use up cards. However both sides will do this. If you run out of cards you lose the game.
In our game we never even had to reshuffle once. Maybe just learning or we just had too big a game, or both.

I feel that the real fun in this rule set is setting up a campaign. Which is what the plan is for the future.

Nappy Buff

First my usual moan – there's card driven games and then there's card driven games, however if you take the TMP link offered above that will explain in this instance.

We have played with three players aside and it works fine. One thing I would suggest is that you ignore the recommendation in the rules that says only the overall commander can play "interrupt" cards.

It gives too much central control. Civil War battles were fought Brigade v Brigade, players on both sides should be free to make their own mistakes and gain there own advantages.

In practical turns it also hacks off players who are beavering away on their own part of the front to have a decision made regarding elsewhere mess things up.

OK in the real world this could happen but the game structure makes this occurrence far too regular. What you have to remember is that with three players a side (for example) you are really playing three separate games of Longstreet with (hopefully) a common goal.

wrmgr1,

Stick around, those firing line casualties will come!

Those cheesy cards, a lot of people ditch the ones they don't like and just retain their moral value.

As for the reshuffle – as you are early in your game experience I suspect you are not being bold enough with card use but one thing I will say is that I have no idea how you lose by running out of cards. We have played since the rules came out and have yet to see it happen!

Great fun set of rules, I like them. JR3 is great for larger brigade/division games.

To add to Trajanus' point, we are now into our second Grand Campaign at our club and have played some multi-player battles using Longstreet.

I cannot recall a player losing a battle by running out of cards, nor ever seeing more than 2 reshuffles in a game. It seems most players are able to spot when their card deck is getting low and restrict their card play accordingly.

Unfortunately this restricts their actions, cuts down the number of favourable modifying cards they can use, and reduces their chances of surviving combat or fire phases without loss, so it generally leads to their force reaching the Shattered Point and losing the game for that reason.

Hullo,
It seems I'm the only one on the planet who has managed to lose a game by running out of cards? As a Union 1861 commander playing my first game I was being very active in modifying all my actions and spending a lot of morale cards. I also had the smallest deck possible in the game, and the CS player had the most cards available for making me lose cards. Somehow I managed to burn through my deck, reshuffled a lot and ran out of cards.
Never seen it happen since, and in the later games we tend to reshuffle once.
Cheers,
Aksu

Great and fun game.
Love the campaign.

I wonder why people have probs with the system using cards for activation. It doesn't make it a card game any more than using dice for activation would make a miniature game a dice game…

Also our group tweaked with the cards bit:

To add more uncertainty to the game and to make the appearance of certain annoying hoser cards less sure a thing we first shuffle the deck and then remove 6 random cards from it. These are removed from the game (no peeking).

Then six dummy cards (no numerical value either, can be only used to activate units) are added to the deck and then the deck is reshuffled.

Now you are ready to play.

To my mind there is a world of difference between:

Card-driven game: the cards are necessary to take any action in the game (e.g. Longstreet).

Card-augmented game: cards can modify actions, but otherwise you don't need the cards at all to play (e.g. Dux Britanniarum).

A card-driven game can easily become:

Card-dominated game: the play of your hand and "deck management" dictate your play to a great extent, and the play of individual cards can greatly effect the outcome of the game. I think Longstreet crosses this line – to me that's a negative, but obviously to others its either a net positive or an "eh, whatever" element.

There's no perfect game or way of playing a game, or else we would all be playing that way – and I still remember when people complained about using "funny shaped dice" at local hobby shops …

A card-driven game can easily become:

Card-dominated game: the play of your hand and "deck management" dictate your play to a great extent, and the play of individual cards can greatly effect the outcome of the game. I think Longstreet crosses this line – to me that's a negative, but obviously to others its either a net positive or an "eh, whatever" element.

Well, games can become dice-dominated games too, where die rolls greatly dictate play and results.

I like card-driven board games. The card systems work very well for strategic games. I haven't played any tactical games using them, but I can see the potential problems.

Of course dice can play a dominant role – but we're talking about Longstreet, and dice are actually pretty secondary.

In other rules, while dice are usually used as combat and morale randomizers, they are also commonly used to limit the number of units that can move, or what they can do, etc. – the Warmaster/BKC/Black Powder/etc. school of games uses this, but DBx does so in a simple way, and so on. I don't particularly like those systems either (see the "Grand Tactical Rules" thread) … but I'm just grumpy that way! That being said, the dice effects are usually more binary and less pervasive, in the sense that if you *can* do something, then doing that is usually pretty straightforward and not randomized or affected by the same system again, which "card-dominated" systems do. I think it's the pervasive nature of card influence and effects that bothers me … but then again I'm a) just wool-gathering at this point, and b) repeating myself, never a good sign. ;)

Chris there is another version to the Card Driven game.

Its just happens to be the one I think of when I read/hear the term "Care Driven" so its not exclusive either.

That being the Piquet style (unless I have that wrong) where all activity is card dependent.

So (generalisation of terms here) you want move – you need to hold a card that has MOVE written on it; you want to shoot – you need a card with SHOOT on it, want to change formation – you need a FORMATION CHANGE card etc.

The cards in Longstreet may enhance or restrict an activity but they are not a prerequisite to it happening.

So for me its not a Card Driven game.

It seems I'm the only one on the planet who has managed to lose a game by running out of cards

akselia!

You da man! :o)

Thanks to those who have responded to this thread. Some comments above have been very helpful. The end result is that I have ordered a copy of the rules and one full deck.

If anyone is interested, I can report back what I think after playing a few games.

Congratulations on your sense of historical perspective – although I'm sorry that I appear to have dredged up unpleasant childhood memories. No one should have to deal with rgmh flashbacks before advanced dementia can dull the deep sense of pain.

Just to be clear, however, you're not contributing an opinion on the topics brought up by the OP, which specifically ask that an opinion to be stated ("But is it a good system? How do people feel about this game?"), but instead contributing an opinion on how I should have curtailed my opinion, about a game of which you can have no opinion.

Right?
Right.

It's okay to think "I don't like that post, but I can't contribute anything useful" and be done with it.