"Best rules set for 30 years war?" Topic

Looking for some advice, thanks in advance for your help.

I'm looking to start renaissance gaming, with a focus on the 30 Year's War, but the Italian Wars also, and generally the period of 1400-1700. I would like a rules set that allows games from medium to large size armies.

I've heard about the limitations to the Warlord game Pike & Shotte and it's expansions. I also know DBR gets good reviews, but no one plays it anymore.

So, what is appropriate and popular nowadays?

Baroque would work.

Warmaster is probably your best bet, especially for the Italian Wars. It is a fantasy ruleset but works really well for ren historical games. I don't know what scale you are doing, Warmaster works best at the smaller scales as it really allows you to put a massive looking army on the table.

It was free online for a while but GW has taken it down since.

From my experience, I think Pike and Shotte is probably a good starting point.
I've played the period for a long time. There isn't a complete answer I'm afraid. But I would give P&S a go.

I am about to start Baroque, as I think that has a number of improvements over Impetus, and should work well.

DBR – best set of fantasy rules around.

Less different rule sets than say in ancients. Currently Pike and Shotte, Baroque and Field of Glory Renaissance shoud cover most of what is being played. Happy to read otherwise.

Piquet and its subsets of rules? Especially if you doing this as a solo project.

We play Field of Glory Renaissance and find it works well for battles from the Italian Wars right through to the end of the 17th century.

Specifically for the 30 years war I would suggest The Warre Game 1632 by Steve Jones.

Anchor of Faith by Piquet is a very good set for the 17th century. The Band of Brothers supplement (1400-1600) covers the Italian Wars.

You can use WRG basing, or more the Black Powder/P&S style basing conventions, as long as you put together 4-stand units.

I like the DBA-RRR variant, big battle with 24 stands or more for thus period.

Baroque.
By all means.

Liber Militum: Tercios

elkraken.es/released/en/tercios

I agree with Mad Monkey 1 above.

We have been using the shorter free pdf version and have got some good games.

Regards

Tercios does look interesting. I don't see an English version in the drop box and won't be signing up to Scribd. I like the order mechanics. Simple and effective. Looks like a game will have lots of back and forth with no long wait times.

When I click on the link supplied by mad monkey 1 I see everything in English. There is a link to the free ruleset and when I click on that the document is in English as well. Have you scrolled down the document. The title is in Spanish but that is all.

If I wanted it badly enough I'd just sign up to scribd and download it, but I'm pretty anti hassle these days. I scrolled through it a bit, hit "download" for later reading and found out I needed to go through an account creation process and closed the tab instead.

It's no big deal, but the file could have just as easily been stuck in the dropbox link and then people can just download it without having to fill out forms with a touch screen on a tablet. Maybe when I'm near a keyboard I'll make a scribd account, but I probably won't remember.

Certainly looks like it has potential and I can see why mad monkey 1 recommended it.

They just added the expansion "Kingdoms" in English. Tercios covers the TYW for the most part, while Kingdoms covers the ECW, and Eastern Renaissance forces.

The scribed link for those who'd like a looky:
link

If you look on the Wargamorium Blog

link

you will see a direct link to the free version of the rules.

If you like them my gmail address is on the blog and you can contact me and I will send you a copy of the playsheet I made which is, I think, better than the one provided.

Awesome. Finally remembered to go get the rules when I got to a computer with a keyboard and here they are as a direct link. Thanks!

Enjoyed the 2 part report on your blog as well.

Thanks Nathaniel

is 28mm at all reasonable, or is 15mm or less preferable?

The rules provide for bases and there is no casualty removal. They set out base sizes for 28mm as well. I see no reason why they could not be used for 28mm. Go for it.