"Hordes of Models, Buckets of Dice" Topic

Two books by Nigel Emsen. Anyone heard about these? Are they worth the read? They are available on Kindle.

OK, I went and bought the book for gunpowder period, 1560 AD – 1885 AD. It is a fast read. I'm not impressed. He has a small number of unit types, foot, cavalry and scouts. There are also staff. Typos: perform is spelled preform throughout the book. There are a few other typos. But that's small beer. On to the rules.

While there are few basic unit types, there are various special attributes that can be assigned. Each unit starts with a base of 6 dice in shooting or close combat. 4+ is a hit, 6 hits removes most units. The number of dice rolled is modified first by common modifiers table, including such things as unit size or morale grade. Then by shooting factors or close combat factors. These tables seem to have more than a few modifiers in each. Perhaps when you've played it a bit the modifiers come easily. But my first reading has me thinking this is a place where the game would slow down. I'm also wary of one set of rules to cover the Italians Wars up through Franco-Prussian and the war in the Sudan.

Finally, reading Neil Thomas' rules make me want to set up a game. This did not. The pages weren't alive and some of the rules need to be better defined. I'm not sure exactly how the turn sequence flows.

On the other hand, I only spent $2.99 USD