"SYW Rules for 6mm Sugestions" Topic

Gentlemen,
I'm considering starting in the Seven Tears War with 6MM figures. Looking for rules suggestions. Any thoughts and why you like those rules?

Do you have any idea at what level you want to play, such as Volley and Bayonet in which a large stand equal a regiment or a brigade, or DBx in which a small stand equals a battalion, or a rule set in which multiple stands equals a battalion?

Might and Reason is almost perfect for that scale. With some tweaks, Twilight of the Sun King would also be good. (The Yahoo site for those rules has SYW variant rules.) 6mm can do a really nice job visually with the linear formations of the time.

I'm thinking that a base = a brigade most likely.

King of the Battlefield or Maurice would be my choices, though if a brigade is a base, then Maurice is more flexible for that. Might and Reason is pretty good too.

Maurice or Volley and Bayonet, IMO.

I'll second Might & Reason but Black Powder/Last Argument of Kings might work as well.

Single stand as a brigade, Volley & Bayonet

I think Black Powder would be good too – but you would need a few more stands!

I love Might & Reason for my 6mm games.

So what is the difference between Maurice and Might & Reason?

Maurice is a battalion level game with a role-playing feel. Might and Reason is a game where each pair if stands is a brigade.

Volley and Bayonet. Look at some refight here:

torgauproject.blogspot.it

Scale is flexible in Maurice. I have played a unit as representing a battalion or a brigade depending on the size of battle and it seems to work fine at either extreme. Purists might gripe about how weapon range and ground scale is abstracted under such circumstances but I'm much more interested in the fog of war, ebb and flow of army fatigue, and command priorities, all of which Maurice does well. Each unit is made up of four "squarish" stands, allowing lines, columns and massed formations to be represented.

If you want to do big battles, I would go with Might and Reason, rather than Maurice. Maurice just doesn't work for bigger games and, in any event, I think that Might and Reason is a much better set of rules (none of the cards nonsense that ruins Maurice).

For WSS in 6mm, I use two 60mm x 30mm bases to represent a brigade. For SYW in 15mm, I use one 80mm x 40mm base for a brigade. While Might and Reason requires two bases for a brigade, you only need the two bases if you are going to represent marching columns. On the rare occasions that a SYW brigade goes into column, we just turn the base on its side and stick a marker at one end to show that it is in column. Not very elegant, but it works for us. It would, however, be easier to have two 40mm x 40mm bases.

Thank you for the clarification guys.

Now, now, Andy. That "cards nonsense" makes (not ruins) Maurice for some of us out there!

I accept your point that Might and Reason is a fine game, but we will have to agree to disagree on which is the "better" set of rules.

I don't want to know all the probabilities that things will occur in a battle, a luxury no commander in history ever enjoyed but the wargamer, when play hinges on dice throws. I like systems which force a player to engage their brain and second guess, rather than switch off and be carried along by chance, which is why I'm a fan of games like Longstreet and Saga (completely unrelated but they both use innovative mechanisms other than just dice).

"We see therefore how from the commencement, the absolute, the mathematical as it is called, no where finds any sure basis in the calculations in the art of war; and that from the outset there is a play of possibilities, probabilities, good and bad luck, which spreads about with all the coarse and fine threads of its web, and makes war of all branches of human activity the most like a game of cards."
- Carl von Clausewitz