"What do you hate about TSATF?" Topic

What are the "bad points" about this rules system and its spin-offs?

My friend supplies the rules, terrain, and both sides miniatures (even if it 25+mm) and we all provide the camaraderie. So, despite my disinterest/grumble with the broken melee rules/generic "feel" with the the rules, I have a good time.

I don't hate anything about it. But I don't track wounds on natives – a condition of my Euro-centrism no doubt.

Someone wounded enough to not be able to move seems to me is less interested in hobbling passerbys.

The card activated system breaks down in multi player games. I have played in multiple convention games in which you spent 45 mins to an hour doing absolutely nothing while waiting for your card to come up. You do your five minute bit, then wait another 45 minutes to go again. Rinse and repeat. Every TSATF convention game I have played in has been a horrible experience.

Nothing.

That is one of the reasons we have cut down on the number of cards. 4 per faction. Color code the units. It still can be slow but not bad. No 45 minutes wait for you turn to arrive.

The card activated system breaks down in multi player games. I have played in multiple convention games in which you spent 45 mins to an hour doing absolutely nothing while waiting for your card to come up. You do your five minute bit, then wait another 45 minutes to go again. Rinse and repeat. Every TSATF convention game I have played in has been a horrible experience.

Ditto. Which is too bad, because TSATF convention games are like a craps game with figures – huge, busy, full of figures, nice looking, and exciting.

FWIW, I think the card activation system can be fixed or replaced, but I've never seen anyone do it. It's not my period, so I never do it myself.

- Ix

79th PA, I have solved that problem by assigning commands to players. When a card is turned up the player moves a command of more than one unit, rather than a single unit. Native commands are usually a tribe of 2-3 units. Western commands are usually 2 units. A friend of mine rolls a d-6 and decides number of units to move based on the die roll. From 1 to 3 units depending on the roll. I prefer the commands.

Nothing

It's funny how often I hear of its "broken melee system". I guess I understand how some might consider it a little clunky (which to me is part of its old fashioned charm), but I've always found the melees in TSATF great fun, and sometimes they can be real nail-biters!

I've always loved the rules.

Not a thing.

Did you ever see 8 guys intently watching and cheering the melees, and the shrinking forces?
I still remember when Lt Ian Hamilton won the VC.

When you are running a game with 6-8 players on a side, each commanding 6 units, I am not surprised if things bog down. Name me any set of rules where that does not happen. TSATF was not designed for that. But it can be fixed.

I used to put on Cecil B deMille productions like that. Had to reshuffle the deck a lot too. It was a ton of fun, although we never got to finish those games.

Now our usual turnout is 3 players per side , and at most 3 units per player. If you have 3, it's because your troops suck.
It's amazing how much more valuable each unit becomes and how your usual tactics change.

I looked at it many years ago. Then both British and Zulus both used units of 20 figures. Since I find that ridiculous (everyone remembers: "What's that, Sergeant-Major ?" "Zulus, Sar, thasens of 'em". I have never looked again. Colonial rules that give both sides the same number of figures are not for me.

Individual basing (can be done differently but it suits individual basing)
Slow play
Clunky implausible combat
No sense of scale
No period feel

All in all I think the most annoying feature is just that there's nothing in them that hasn't been done better in one or other better set of rules (like driving a bad car from yesteryear … why would you, when you can get one that drives better, looks better, feels better and actually gets you where you want to go in good time?*) …

Phil
*the answer is, of course, you would if you were driving a great classic (like my MG) or a car that summed up an era for you etc. etc. Sadly TSATF is nothing of those)

NOTHING!

Nothing!!

Melee can slow things down
Card Activation can bog down a big game

Another benefit of not tracking wounds on Mass formation infantry is you can base them in ways that makes moving units and forces much quicker and easier:

More here: link

Porthos,

You may want to look again. The norm in games is 1 British unit against 3 Zulu units.

Vince

I hate nothing about the game. One of the greatest games ever written. It's been around for decades.

When you have 12 players on a side, each one having five or six units movement can get bogged down with card draw. The game was not intended for such a big mob, but if you got a lot of figures you have to put them on the table.

So you draw cards with players names on them, when the name comes up the player moves all of his units.. With littler games, you daw card and that side rolls DBA style pip dice to see how many of its units it can move.

In the 1980s and 90s the heliograph magazine devoted to TS ATF had many articles on the topic of speeding up movement. It would be a great project to put all those great issues on a disk or online somehow.

One thing I have seen to deal with the bogging down in large multiplayer games is instead of shuffling cards that represent units, shuffle A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (or however many you need for the players) and give each one a card at the start of the round. Usually in big games, one player only interacts with one or two others. The cards establish the order for your area of the battlefield. "I got the three and you got the five, so I go first, you second while the peeps with A, 2, 4, and 6 do their thing over there…"

Battles by Gaslight Initiative system could replace the cards. It is a great concept. You can also use the same rules melee system. That solves what I see as things that detract from playing large games.

The rules may not be a great representation of Colonial warfare other than in the movies. But that's ok. I love Gunga Din and that's what TSATF feels like to me.

Thanks,

John

Lol, love this game. Everything people have complained about above, I have found a fix for. Pretty easy to run monster games of this at conventions if you know how to speed things up. If anyone wants hints on how to run this at conventions and still be done in 3 hours, just ask.

Yesthatphil said:

"All in all I think the most annoying feature is just that there's nothing in them that hasn't been done better in one or other better set of rules (like driving a bad car from yesteryear … why would you, when you can get one that drives better, looks better, feels better and actually gets you where you want to go in good time?*) …"

I'll have to disagree here. Among other things, when TSATF was first published in 1979, it introduced the wargaming public to Random Movement. The rest, as they say, is history.

I won't bother with saying anything else except that after 36 years, TSATF is still a very popular (and enjoyable) set of rules. There aren't that many that can say the same……….

Hate about the game ? Not a thing, 'cept I don't get to
play it enough !

I hate the close combat system, it looks silly, takes forever and is clunky.

Change that and the game is great. And it is easy to change.

I'll have to disagree here. Among other things, when TSATF was first published in 1979, it introduced the wargaming public to Random Movement.

I know that … (date and 'innovation') – just I think it shows its age (self-evidently) much more than you do.

I'm only answering, candidly and helpfully, a question somebody else (the editor) asked.

Of course the thread (as with all TSATF) is dominated by the nothing at all sayers (which, TMP being TMP, will undoubtedly win the eventual poll – or never played it will): but I made a little list as it will help generate a meaningful poll.

Phil

Sorry – the melee system. We've got bored with charging our Dervishes at our Egyptians and having to go through the inteminable business over and over again and still get back where we started.

A fine game that moves along at a good clip. If I had to say something bad about it, it would be that I find the subject matter a bit distasteful with the big bad Europeans beating up on the poor and less fortunate native population. Fortunately, the game is easily adaptable to other eras.

As for the melee system, it may not be the best in the world but it is fun, gamey and decisive!

I "hate" nothing about the game, and it's fun, suspenseful, and full of color (despite a remarkable complaint, above).

In fact, it is these very qualities that can work against it as players want to add more and more troops to the table, resulting in games of sizes it was never meant for.

Yes, there are any number of ways, fortunately, to speed play by allowing a given card draw to activate more than one unit, so that's at least a partial solution. But when used, these can work so well that players continue to heap more and more lead on the table!

Of course, use of the Battalion level variant, "800 Fighting Englishmen" is a major simplification of game mechanics that makes games with large unit numbers far more practical, but not everyone uses this readily available rules variant from the Publisher.

Part of the problem is an inherent charm of Colonial War Games--the sheer variety of unit types/uniforms.

For example, if I place 20 Redcoats as a Platoon of 24th Foot, they have to face off some 60 Zulus for play balance. This is fine, works well for just two players, and is pretty much what the game was designed to handle.

But if I want to add 20 Highland Light Infantry, I have to add another 60 Zulus, and likely at least one other player.

Indeed, just to have an interesting Anglo-Colonial force of those two units, plus some Natal Native Contingent, Mounted Police, Artillery or Gatlings, I've got to field something on the order of 240 or so Zulus just for traditional play balance. Put the Brits in cover a la Rourke's Drift, and the Zulus could easily go up by 50%.

In short, the addition of even one more Brit unit can double the number of enemies to fight, filling the table in no time, whichever Native Army is being fielded.

So between the players wanting more units/variety, and the necessity of at least recognizing the established play balance, it's pretty much inevitable that the table is going to fill from edge to edge in no time.

Whether this is a fault of the rules or of the players can be said to be a moot question, but it has never halted the perennial growth of arguably the most successful war game rules ever published.

TVAG

VCarter, thank you for your comment. I have obviously not been clear: a unit of British for instance is the company. A "unit" of Zulus however is the regiment (the year group). IIRC umCijo had about 2.500 warriors, iNgobamakoshi even 4.000 ! Although the Zulus knew something like companies, they differed very much in numbers and were not used like the British did. If you arrive at about 100 soldiers for a British company (unit) represented by 20 figures, the Zulus should at least be 100 or 200 figures, a factor 5 to 10, not 3…

Sorry, for my misunderstanding.

I believe the card system used for random movement was designed for games smaller than many you see at conventions. We usually run bigger games using more figures than was intended for TSATF so we usually have a native unit AND an Imperial unit move each turn. Sometimes, we move commands (battalions or impis or 'flags') composed of multiple units at a time. I've seen a variety of modifications to speed up play but the essential element of randomness is always retained.

Our group also doesn't play with the wounded rules. We don't like the turning over of cards to identify casualties in our usually larger games; it's one way to speed things up. In our smaller games we retain the wounded rules as written.

The 20-figure sized basic units are great. We enable the Imperial player to subdivide a company into two 10-figure platoons but don't allow the native player the same flexibility.

All in all, without the inspiration provided by Mr. Brom's TSATF I might never have discovered what has become my favorite war gaming period and favorite historical period to study.

With respect to Larry Brom (and his children) it was a good (the melee system prevents me from calling it great) game when it appeared and I owned multiple versions from day one. That said, I sold it off, found rules I think do a better job, and won't lie just to sound "cool" to some.

If "800 Fighting Englishmen" is a better set of colonial war rules then would buy it but I have not had a chance to play them.

Seems one of those games that polarizes a lot

Hmmm. "Hate" is too strong a word. The 20th anniversary edition and errata cleaned up much of the confusion and lack of clarity in the original rules. But they still leave something to be desired in terms of ease of use and could do with a new edition with a very careful copy editing to incorporate all the errata cleanly and resolve remaining problem areas. (Hey, I'm available, 30 years experience as a legal and academic editor plus 40 years gaming experience including professional stints with TSR, Metagaming, Coleco. Call me, Lori!)

My own copy of the rules is heavily annotated to address errata changes and my own house fixes to the things that bother me or that I find get in the way of player enjoyment. Nick Pasha (above) and I use similar fixes for large games, to speed up movement (but this doesn't work well for firing). I also compel players to pick a C in C for each side and that person makes the call on who moves or fires when cards are turned up; that saves a lot of time wasted in indecision or arguing.

The melee system is kinda buggy or breaks down under unusual circumstances or with multiple units involved and is hard for even experienced players to adjudicate and I'd like to see this addressed better, maybe an optional alternative system to speed up things as well.

"Target area" and firing priorities needs to be cleaned up or better defined.

I use an "Overrun" rule that permits much larger units to roll over the tiny remnant units that the table fills up with in a big, long game, and ends those ridiculous suicide charges of two men against 20.

Apart from these issues, I ignore some rules that seem too stagey (wounded natives being able to bite opponents), I have modified the rules for Europeans abandoning wounded to a simple system that penalizes by one step for each turn this occurs rather than one time only for the entire game (this results in Imperial armies immediately dropping all wounded after the first one is captured), and I have long diced off among all eligible targets to determine Leader casualties rather than employ the "magic bullet" rule in TS&TF that causes the highest ranking Leader to always be the one struck.

But yeah, these are popular for a reason. Handled well, TS&TF is fun and flexible and a terrific "gateway" set to introduce newbies to miniatures gaming. And they lend themselves well to modification for other periods, as the numerous official and unofficial spinoffs will testify (I have already done so myself for the Jacobite rebellion conflicts).

Nothing

I love these rules. The local guy who uses them, lives for the melees. He just loves the melee system. If you don't have the 20th Anniversary Edition you should get it.

Things I would like to see tweaked.

1. The rules need to be organized a little better.

2. A really good index would be a plus for any set of rules.

3. IMO the arc of fire for small arms needs to be widen. I get really frustrated with that 20 degree arc of fire.

4. Casualties: Just keep track of them on paper for the 50% rule. Nothing on the table and not worry about carrying wounded and dead. Just remove the casualties from the table.

Why does a simple question

What are the "bad points" about this rules system and its spin-offs?

turn into a "I must convert/refute you" debate?

NOTHING. I add some stuff, never drop any of the core mechanics. Best game EVER!

My American units that somehow end up in Africa scenarios shoot a LOT better, and always get +1 melee plus all other modifiers. Trying to keep it real, you know?

hate just this bizarre optional rule like "Cavalry phased move" and the possiblity to struck from behind, tanks to bad card drawing, a standing unit without any reaction from it