"Which SYW ruleset to choose" Topic

Hello folks,

I'm very fond of the 18th century warfare, just can't resist the muskets and tricornes ^^. I have already tried Muskets & Tomahawks and I believe it's an awesome skirmish game.

I'd like to move on to the bigger scale battles of the Seven Years War. However, the problem is that there are dozens and dozens of rules for that, plenty of them very good ones, and I'm having a hard time deciding which one would suit me best.

I'm looking for a ruleset :
– which is playable with 10-12mm miniatures ;
– easy to learn, simple rules allowing for fun and strategic games, not so much about realism yet still retaining the battle feeling of the era ;
– which is still easily available today (sadly some old classics have become kind of impossible to find) ;
– which preferably doesn't use the classic alternate player turn system (which I find always leaves one player passive).

I was particularly interested by Warfare in the Age of Reason (which is still findable), but I've red the rules could be better and I didn't really find a review to understand how the game exactly works. The simultaneous actions system of Final Arguments of Kings also caught my eye, but it looks a little complicated and it cannot be found anymore.

So, any suggestions from your experience ?
Thanks in advance !

I use Twilight of the Sun King. It's inexpensive, available, has deceptively simple mechanics and scales well to different size battles and command levels.

Might & Reason. Just started with it. Figurescale neutral (author uses 25 I'm using 6mm).

Simple mechanics but complex decisions. Lots of scenarios available too. Buy the pdf at sammustafa.com

The combat system in Might & Reason is good but there are some really broken game mechanics most notably, the points system.

All points systems are broken.

I've been using 'Rank & File' for some time. Reasonably easy to use, lots of optional rules that can be slotted in as you like them and it can be scaled in almost any direction as far as battle size is concerned. It also progresses through time to 1900, so different eras use the same base rules but add / subtract for the technology (no plug bayonets in the Boer war) and tactical changes. Written with inch measurements, you can scale it down for small tables or use as is for the 8' x 6' monster tables I'm still lusting over.

Might and Reason.

A simple, but elegant, system that seems to produce credible outcomes.

We have only ever done historical battles (WSS, WAS and SYW), so the points system was irrelevant.

Regards

King of the Battlefield allows you to fight historical battles in an evening. Clean, elegant system.

Advocate, interesting and good to know people are still using this system which deserves to be more widely known.

I like Warfare in the Age of Reason but lately have been playing Black Powder – which does use an alternate player system

Black Powder works well for SYW with the Last Argument of Kings supplement

My choice, which will come as no surprise, is Volley and Bayonet. Its playable with any size miniature and is design to allow full battles to be fought to conclusion in 2-4 hours.

Send me your snail mail postal delivery address at sigurd@eclipse.net and I'll send you my own, "Oh! God! Anything but a six!" It's designed for the 18th century at an army level so should be good for the small minis. It's only 12 pages single spaced, 12 point font, Times Roman Bold, all rules, illustrations, charts and tables in the 12 pages. Using it for 25 years, played battles of from 80 to 1000+ minis and it runs about four to five hours. Always a clear cut decision. No arguments.

black powder, Kriegskunst, Age of Reason give all good games

King of the Battlefield allows you to fight historical battles in an evening. Clean, elegant system.

Twilight of the Sun King

Similar games. The former is designed specifically for 7YW while the latter is designed for the WSS. Both are good games.

I will also second Rank and File. It plays similar to other old school systems. I hit you save sort of game.

While I have not played yet, Otto Schmidt's game (already listed above by the author) looks like a hoot! Simple and mostly card driven game.

You could try using Muskets & Mohawks from 2HW. While it is primarily written for larger scale F&IW battles there is no reason why it wouldn't work for two conventional armies.

Another option would be the "Shot, Stone & Steel" rules included in Henry Hyde's excellent "The Wargaming Compendium". All distances and ranges are in base widths so it is pretty much independent of scale. The rest of the book is a cracking read as well.

Dear Who asked.

The game is not card driven like things like Maurice or others are. The cards are merely chance cards like Monopoly. No one builds hands and plays the game through the cards. The miniatures are always front and center.

One of the upcoming Osprey Wargames series is Seven Years War rules. Not sure of anything more, but from what I gather they are large scale rules, not skirmish.

The game is not card driven like things like Maurice or others are.

Non. No. Certainly not. But if it is the game you handed me at the last Cold Wars, the "damage deck" (not sure what it is called) handles what happens with each hit. Then there is also an event deck right?

Minden Rose

simple to use and free

link

I'll second (or third) "Twilight of the Sun King", which was written for 10/12mm figures and gives tense games that can be concluded in an evening. I bought mine from the Pike & Shot Society, but an earlier version is available here:

link

Then again, for "fun and strategic games" you may wish to take a look at "Maurice":

link

It works with the base width as the distance unit, four squareish bases making one unit which can be a battalion, regiment or brigade depending on what you want to achieve.

Warlords Black Powder, gives a very good game and replicates the tactics very well.

I do like these and I play in 10mm, unit frontage of 120mm for a standard unit, 40mm for guns

I highly recommend Maurice and Piquet's Field of Battle2. Both are a mix of cards and dice and both put a twist on how turns are handled. Plenty of fun surprises in both.

Christopher

Minden Rose and Rank & File fit your requirements fairly well.

Thank you for all the advice, really appreciated !

I have looked into each of your suggestions and I must confess I'm now having a soft spot for Rank & File : semi-simultaneous action (fitting to represent volleys exchanges !), simple rules, plenty of unit formations, no restraining command system… plus it's quite cheap ! In my opinion it only lacks some kind of national traits to add some flavor to the armies. But other than that, it seems to be everything I was looking for !

Koenig Krieg fits into your criteria very well Siphon. We played 10mm Koenig krieg for years. I personally built a British, Prussian, Russian, Piedmont, Bavarian and French army and really enjoyed games in this scale.

Koenig krieg is not a I-Go-U-Go system and allows players to always be in the thick of the action. With the unique initiative system you are always in the game.

Rank and File is the easiest to use. Warfare in the Age of Reason is interestng, if nothing else for the table generation system which saves a lot of hassle.
For those who love command rules, (missing in Rank and File), Die kriegkunst is excellent. It's the most difficult of the 3, but gives a rewarding game. Units not too big either as this offspring of General de Brigade is at 1:40 troop scale rather than the usual 1:20 in this family of rules
Oh yes, I forgot Piquet and it's 18th century rules. Card Driven but the deck is common. It's the most interactive of this bunch

I'm kind of enamoured with die kreigskunst right now. Everything is resolved with the roll 2d6 and see what dies mechanism. Standard units have about 20 figure less for small units like French. Prussians get some small advantages for being good, Russians are stubborn, ect. Simple mechanisms with enough detail for more hard core gamers

I can't say I would recommend warfare in the age of reason. The campaign rules are superb but the game rules are, in the designers notes, designed to be slow and grindy. They seem to have succeeded.

Black powder is a good fun quick game. Probably my second favorite right now.

Maurice is pretty interesting, but it's designed to be very 1v1, 2v2 max. The card effects seem to add an interesting extra layer of things that could happen

My group also plays Rank & File. Well, I should say a heavily modified R&F; for example, the RAW R&F has no C2.

One clarification to what was posted above, R&F does not use saving throws in any way.

Tricorne, of course!

Twilight of the Sun King is a cleverly devised set of rules, streamlining things to the point of simplicity. I think it captures the flavour of early 18th Century grand scale warfare, so you can play really big battles in a manageable timeframe. I liked the basic mechanisms, though you will have to houserule a few things as you play because the rulebook is pretty bare bones.

Maurice is still my favourite game in this period (particularly SYW) and probably my favourite wargame of all time. I got hooked early on and have become somewhat of a groupy for the system. It builds a convincing narrative and is a lot of fun to play. But then, I'm a big fan of card activation to recreate the fog of war, and I can understand that this isn't to everyone's tastes. We typically play Maurice in 10mm but any scale works.

If you're curious, it would be worth downloading the free Lite rules and DIY cards from the Honour website to see if you like it before spending any money. Mind you, the full game adds advanced rules and troop variety, which is better again.