"1870 rules" Topic

Does anyone know anything about them or of any reviews?

If you mean the Bruce Weigle rules then they are a must have for the reference, essays and oobs.

I played a game once with the rules and didn't like them

I'd also recommend his 1859 & 1866 rulesets – again just for the information

Ditto. Except just reading the rules was enough to put me off. I didn't have to try them out. But the support material is excellent.

Bruce puts on a beautiful game, but you need him to play those rules.

Try "died for glory"….simple and fast and still played after 30 years

I have tried these rules and agree with the posters above. A very nice read though with good illustrations.

I have never found the perfect set of rules for the Franco Prussian War and am struggling to write my own.

I am an avid Bloody Big Battles player, but have bought all of the Weigel rules just for the great information in them.

@Broglie: After searching high and low I decided on Neil Thomas' "Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe 1815–1878".

Sorry OP, did not mean to highjack your thread, but I figured with so many negative reviews right out of the chute you might have already gotten an idea what "1870" is good for.

I too bought the rules, decided that I would not ever play them after reading the rules, but also decided I would never sell them as they are a great resource. Now that I am gaming 1866, I am seriously pondering purchasing 1866 as a resource, as the gentlemen above suggest.

The thing that put me off immediately was the odd basing. I realize that it is supposed to represent the accurate unit frontages for each side and unit type, but I instantly knew that if I based for these rules I would end up rebasing if I ever moved to another system.

Thank you everyone for your replies.
I already have they died for glory, and look pretty good, just thrown off by the need for about a thousand figures each side!!!

I can't do bloody big battles, I'm not a fire and fury fan and they are said to be based off thoserules

Can you guys say why you don't like these rules? Besides the simultaneous movement which in case can be easily modded.
That is anything that was not in the previous thread about them.

Too much uncertainty in interpretation. Too fiddly.

I played in a game run by Bruce and enjoyed it. I would play the rules if we had Bruce to run every game.

I do not like Fire and Fury but I really like BBB. It just plays better. scales better, and uses fewer figures and smaller tables than F&F. Not sure what puts you off of F&F but to me BBB is a much different (and better for my tastes) game.

As above, I bought all three sets as reference materials. I am sure the rules are fine but I prefer something a bit faster playing.

The rules are not per se bad. But they are created with a specific style of gaming that is simply not something I can meet. Battles with lots of miniatures played for a whole day or whole weekend. Also even though BBB has demanding terrain, Bruce's scenarios are on a whole other level.

Again they are not bad rules for what they want to give you. What it wants to give me is something I cannot have. But it is irrelevant because his material is a must for 19th century wargaming. Great essays, exceptional annotated bibliographies, OBBs. Let me put it this way. I would still buy them even if the rules were throw beads at each other.

I played 1859 years ago and I enjoyed it vey much. Granted, we did have a referee who knew the rules and pushed the game forward – not sure if he was making up the rules.. But we enjoyed it a lot. And I saw the book, agreed it s awesome

These cover Franco- Prussian war:

wfgamers.org.uk/FUFF.htm

I have played them in 6mm, they are pretty straight forwards and good for loads of troops, early 1870 style!

Tally Ho!

I am part of the Yahoo group and there's news of an updated version called 1871 that's due to be released in a few months.

It is designed to speed up a lot of the fiddly parts to make it easier to play and teach others.

Good rules, but I'm looking forward to the new version!

I too was not a fan of Fire and Fury, but I love Bloody Big Battles, even though they are very similar. I think there are several things that Chris Pringle did to make them work better:

1. Simpler. Seems odd with all the different weapons, but they actually are a lot simpler.
2. More decisive. While the combat and firing are mechanically similar, the result seem more decisive in BBB than in FnF.
3. Clear and Coherent. BBB are some of the best written rules on the market. In nearly every question that comes up from play, Chris is able to cite the page where the rules could be found. Very few entries on the FAQ address actual ambiguity in the rules.
4. Fast Play. All of those factors lead to faster resolution and complete games in a reasonable period of time.

I've transformed from someone who really does not like FnF to a BBB fanatic.

(I have no financial stake in promoting the rules. I just love 'em!)

Rob

The rules themselves take up about half the booklet. The rest is scenarios and background to the rules.

1859,1866 and 1870 contain modifications of the rules mechanisms to account for each conflict.

The rules do allow you to deploy troops in historically correct formations which I find advantage.

Konstantinos does clearly state their disadvantages.

some of the most off-putting rules ever devised, containing some great ideas and as others have stated, indispensable for other purposes.

Great book packed with useful information, glad I bought it – read the rules briefly before thinking no these don't look like fun….

I started with Bruce Weigle's 1859, then purchased 1879 and 1866. Highly recommended for all of the reasons stated above.

I alsolike Bruce's products< simply as a reference, but I have tried running the 1870 rules and have not been satisfied at all. The rules read very easily and always make sense, ey, during the game, the rules become cumbersome, way to many dice rolls and morale checks, for the sized battles I want to run.

I am running multiple corps, so trying to cut down on dice rolling is critical. I am not a fan of simultanious movement, so I have intergrated a You go, I go sequence, but that alone has slowed the game somewhat.

Lou

I second "They Died For Glory" they are a great set of rules.

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I have played 1870 several times since they came out. The rules work fine, but there are lots of modifiers and dice rolls involved. Bruce Weigle streamlined the rules quite a bit for his upcoming release "1871". I have played them as a playtester as well as the streamlined version of 1866. They are awesome and once you played them you do not want to go back to the original versions.

I am also a big fan of Neil Thomas' "19th Century Wargaming" and Chris Pringle's "Bloody Big Battles".

My latest rules discovery is "Tin Soldiers in Action, Fair and square rules from 1680 to 1914" by Rüdiger and Klaus Hofrichter. I have only played two games so far, but it may well become my favorite set of rules.