"Brother Against Brother Scenarios" Topic

I have been playing 25mm games using the Brother against Brother rules, with some modifications to them. Is there anyone that can suggest a good source for scenarios? I don't have time to sit and plan out a game that will work well, and the ones I have done move slow and the outcome is never that conclusive. I have a 20' x 6' table, and about 3 hundred miniatures. I need help! I will appreciate any suggestions.
John

I keep hearing that scenerio books may be coming out but I never see anything. I would be interested also. I would also be interested in your modifications.

I dislike the playing cards idea. Other than that, I have not played the rules enough to wish to change anything.

What I would suggest is take small portions of battles and do that area. You can take any major battle and pick a small area of it and do BAB. We use BAB for F&I which it is great for. Cav actions works well also. I am working now on using them with 40mm figures for town fights. If you have a lot of buildings as we do you can do downtown G-burg with those rules.

Peter

Rustymusket,

One major modification I made to the rules, was a set movement, instead of rolling dice every time you move. I thought that was way too random. On the other hand, I like the card draw. It adds a real element of chance. But it was a little slow, so I draw 4 cards at once, and still play the order of draw, but more troops are taking actions at a time. Otherwise, I made minor modifications involving terrain. And instead of drawing a morale card when you take a hit, you put a wounded figure in front of your squad, and then when your card for that squad is drawn, you draw a morale card. It gives the game a good look to have wounded figures out there, not to mention all the dead figures I put on the battlefield.

John

Thanks, John, for the ideas. I like them. I will give them a try next time I play.

Craig

BirneyZouave sounds like you play BaB much in the same way Nazrat and I do. We use failing down wounded minis mounted on a Square base ( the regular figures are all mounted on washers)as well as place casualty figs for those members of the unit that were killed. It is one of the things I like about this game system is the visual look. And just like us you have gone way overboard and play with lots of miniatures.

czarsguard had the right of it for senario design. Take an actual battle then downsize it for Brother Against Brother. We've run games of Brother against Brother at "Fall In" were we have done Burnsides Bridge, one of the many Battles for Winchester, and the fight over Snodgrass Hill at Chickamauga. I even saw one guy run an excellent game of BaB with the battel being Pickets Charge. On our gaming nights we have fought any number of possible skirmishes or vignettes from just about any fight that took place during the ACW. Playtesting helps along with doing a bit of reading and deciding what you want to have in your battle. We also have special event cards that can liven things up at times.

We have found that having set objectives for each side and setting a turn limit helps in bringing the game to a conclusion. Regardless with 300+ minis most games of BaB will last 4 or more hours. Lately we have gone to running smaller games with say no more than 30 to 60 figures a side and it is still fun. but I love seeing LOTS of ACW miniatures on a table.

If you would like to see some of our games take a look at this link.

link

John,

There are a couple of scenarios here:
link

whitemanticore, nice photos.

I play BAB a lot down at our local club. A few of the younger GW gamers love the simplicity of it and some of the older ones like that it’s relatively cheap. A scenario book would be great. I also use a casualty marker to nominate a unit which must pull a morale card in their next turn. We also nominate a suit rather than a card to each squad. We only use four or five units each. I might try the set movement next.

Kind Regards,

Barry S

Whitemanticore,
The pics looks great! Very nice terrain. It looks similar to mine. I am into a very realistic and authentic look for all my battlefield gameboards. And I hate markers on the board, so that's why I came up with the wounded figures for morale markers. There had to be some reason to use wounded figures.
I am in the process of putting photos of each unit, with their squad name onto business cards and use them for quick and easy identification of units. I have done this before, and it works great. And of course label the bottom of the stands. Thanks to everyone for all the ideas, links and suggestions. I still wish someone would come up with a good scenario book, but meanwhile I'll start working on my next scenario for BAB.

John

Ivor Janci, the author of BAB, has said many times that he is planning a big book of scenarios for the game. But as with many of us, I believe life and/or business gets in the way and derails the project for him. I have faith that he will eventually get it out, though.

A friend and I were the ones who ran Pickett's Charge using BAB a few years ago. I used the series of Osprey books on Gettysburg that give extremely detailed OB information and maps to help me design the scenario.

One change to the rules we've made are that while we still use cards for movement, we only use 3-5 per side representing one card for each squad in a group/platoon. We move squads within each group at the same time (1st squads within each all at once).

I wrote two scenarios for BAB. You can find them at nirya.be/snv/mscenario.html

The link given by Barry S, refers to a site which used to links to these two scenarios but our website has since moved.

Greetings,

Bart

I've toyed with the idea of writing some Gettysburg BAB scenarios to augment my JR3 larger scale scenarios. There were plenty of actions aroudn Gettysburg that lend themselves nicely to BAB.

Anyone interested in this? If so, perhaps I'll start on this project over the winter.

Scott,

I would definately interested in this. In fact I'd probably buy two, one for home and one for the Club.

Cheers,

Barry

I have a copy of the rules and 35 painted Union and 32 painted Rebs on ebay. My ebay name is Metalgeneral. I can't access the account now from work so I can't give the item number at this time.

Zouave Magazine had some scenarios (not specifically tailored for Brother Against Brother) but smaller unit actions.
One scenario I recall was the Confederate attack at "Devil's Den" during the Battle of Gettysburg. Makes for a real good skirmish fight in those rocky formations.

The address for the ebay BAB stuff is
auction

The Gettysburg BAB project is ON! Ivor Janci will publish the scenarios. I'll spend the winter writing them and getting them ready for playtesting. I will make periodic progress announcements on the BAB YahooGroup message board. There, I have posted a tenative table of contents for the proposed booklet.

In the meantime, I would encourage regimental gamers to pick up my new scenario book, which covers South Mountain, Antietam, and Shepherdstown (Undying Courage: The Antietam Campaign in Miniature) or the previous Gettysburg books, which will shortly be reprinted.

Hey, it only took Scott Mingus 3 years to get the book out! :P

It's a good one though – pick up a copy if you like small-unit games.

HOOHAAH!
Picked up a copy at Cold Wars! It's a keeper!
Cheers,
Joel in Northern VA

Thanks!

Yes, a year to research and write the scenarios, months of playtesting, and then a year or so for the graphics and art design.

Since neither Ivor Janci or I do this full time (we do have real jobs! LOL), it's a part-time effort as time allows.

It's really a labor of love in our spare time.

I've finally decided to order a copy of BAB from eBay to see what I've been missing out on all these years; I shall now have to acquire your secnarios Scott