"Collected reviews of BBB - Bloody Big Battles rules" Topic

To mark two years since publication of BBB, I have collected links to many of the positive reviews the rules have received and put them in a post on the BBB Blog:
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Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!
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Chris, Why just the positive ones? Don't mean to start a negative discussion but it would seem that both sides of the story should be told. Many times negative reviews point out things with which I disagree making my purchase of something more probable. Hiding the negative makes it less likely I will consider a set of rules.

A good set of rules. Thank you Chris for making them, and thank you for helping me add scenarios to them.

If you want some criticisms Allen57 here are some

1) For many people the scale of the game, grand tactical, and the way units are presented may be off-putting. Some previous commentators had a hard time capturing the logic of the game because it was hard to capture the scale.

2) Scenarios are very demanding on terrain. BBB is a system that strives to represent the battlefields with high fidelity. And because specific and complex terrain elements have an impact on scenario balance (As it should IMHO) it is not easy to simplify. Without question terrain will take the most time for players to collect.

3) If you are used to the Black Powder command system, were multiple units can be activated with one roll, the need to roll for every unit in BBB can be a bit tedious. I am not willing to tinker with the system to fix it, but could see how this could turn off some players.

4) As a grand-tactical game, the granularity of some tactical decisions is lost.There are only two types of combat formations for infantry. Player's used to columns etc, have been turned off for that reason.

5) Compared to other Grand Tactical Games (Altar of Freedom, Blucher) the command and control segment of the game might be a bit less richer. It speeds up game, but does lose some of that part of generalship.

6) This is not a game for pick-up games. While there have been attempts at points systems, IMHO it is not very useful. This is game for playing historical battles. If one of the 50+ scenarios works for you great. Otherwise you have to write the scenario. Now one could create a campaign etc, but they would have to fix orders of battle before, and use some kind of Blucher-like system for terrain. Also they would have to come up with some campaign rules.

That is as far as I am willing to criticize my favorite, and imho one of the best, rules out there for the 1815-1914 period.

Allen,

Thanks for making this good point. I apologise for expressing myself poorly. I should have said, "I have collected links to all the reviews I am aware of, and I am pleased to say they have been overwhelmingly positive". Individual reviews expressed some reservations/ limitations, of the kind Konstantinos has indicated above (thanks, Konstantinos), but I have not excluded any reviews from the list.

I'm happy to let people read all the reviews and decide for themselves which to pay attention to. Also happy to discuss any of the points Konstantinos has raised, or any other aspects of the game people care to ask about.

Chris

I agree with Konstantinos, BBB is one of my favorite sets of rules. Is it perfect? Nope, there are a few things I am not crazy about but it works for what it sets out to do – portray large battles in a reasonable period of time.

Our group has played 20+ battles and we all enjoy them (some battles we played more than once so actually 20+ games).

Agree with above. It has become my group's favorite rules. Perfect? No, but damn good.

Where can you get the rules from, if I may ask?

Cheers,
Aaron

Maybe they will produce an equally fast play variant for medium/smaller size battles. As someone who does Boer war in 1/300, I'd be interested!

Thank you for your comments Chris and Konstantinos. As I have said some negatives point out the positives for me. For instance the comments about terrain which some feel are a negative in the rules actually brings me closer to an understanding of the rules and to what I am looking for in a game. I have struggled with simplifying terrain for many games but find the exercise very interesting. If the terrain comments in the rules are what I believe from these comments then I am interested.

Aaron from any of these guys according to the BBB blog.

Brigade Games; On Military Matters; Caliver Books; North Star Figures.

Allen57 if you join the BBB Yahoo Group their are many free scenarios that can give a feel for the game.

Durban there are already some smaller actions in the free-rules section, including a 2nd Boer war Battle.Considering the game already is fast play for a grand tactical (most battles are 2-4 hours) smaller battles become faster. However after moving from the operational to the tactical level you might find it harder to accept the abstractions of the rules. In my opinion this is not a system well suited for very small engagements (under 5,000-10.000 total participants) but there are people who use it for that. Again take a look at the free scenarios on the Yahoo Group.

North Star have run out, I got mine from Caliver the other day.

Gents, thanks very much for all your interest in and support for BBB.

In the time since publication, there have been some developments that to some degree address the limitations Konstantinos listed.

Re 6) "not a game for pick-up games": there is indeed a points system that can be found in the Yahoo group files. The group that developed it seems to be having enjoyable games with it. There is also a group fighting a well thought-out and intriguing alternative history campaign:
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Re 2) "scenarios are very demanding on terrain": not all of them are. There are now about 60+ scenarios available, mostly free in the group files. A number of these are smaller battles with less complex terrain, created deliberately with two particular purposes in mind: to provide small simple 'training scenarios' for learning the rules, and to give games that can be set up and played in less time and space than the standard 6'x4', 4-hour slot. While these battles of a couple of divisions or less aren't what I was primarily aiming to do when we created BBB, they have actually turned out to generate some really excellent games. I routinely recommend Montebello and Langensalza as terrific little tactical puzzles, and there are others too.

If joining the Yahoo group is too much trouble for you, there are lots of scenario maps, some full scenarios, and many photos of games in progress in my Flickr albums:
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Boer War: the Colenso scenario in the files gave a great game. In due course I'm sure we'll add more.

Chris

Thanks OB and Reactionary for the info.

Cheers,
Aaron

Colenso is a good scenario, played it twice, using my 10mm Great War mid-east stuff.