"Small Fife & Drum Rules AAR" Topic

Our Group tried out the Fife & Drum AWI rules. AAR is here: westsoundwarriors.blogspot.com

Nice AAR. We recently played these rules for much the same resons as you and had the same experiance, good set of rules could use a little clarification. We'll play them again.

So Mitch, what did you think. I played them solo once thought they were kind of cool

an excellent AAR with great pictures. Enjoyed it very much. I too like the Fife and Drum rules and have converted them over for War of 1812. Each time I have put in a game it has been fun and fast paced. Great set of rules.

They are very easy to play, but need to be cleaned up a bit. Should be great for convention games. I'm trying to get enough troops together to do Cowpens at Enfilade. I would most likely use these rules.

I'm sure Der Alte Fritz(James Purky)knows exactly what he intended with his one page rules, but for the rest of us, there's a lot of interpretation to be done. Even after reading the Tutorial, I've still got questions. Most gamers should be able to come up with their own interpretations based on their knowledge of the period. It's a good set of rules, but to use them you are going to have to do some work.

I'm thinking of melding F&D with Sharp Practice using SP for activation and the mechanics of F&D for every thing else. (e.g. There's no reloading in F&D and without that,it doesn't fell right for the period). Also the moving and firing rules need to be clarified a bit.

Would like to hear what other players think of F&D and what modifications they have made.

Mitch: nice battle report and good looking pictures.

The rules were designed to have everything crammed onto one side of a sheet of paper for use in convention games. I liked them so much that I now use them for all of my games.

I'm working on a written booklet to accompany the rules and hopefully explain the common game situations, but no timetable on this yet.

The rules are really a framework for making modifications to suit your particular needs. For example, you could easily use a one turn reloading Rule.

I don't use a fire & charge rule for the same unit, but you could add that modification in your games. Or you can add plus 1 or minus 1 to the firing, melee and,morale charts to create different troop types: example Trained Militia versus common run of the mill militia.

Cheers,

Jim

They are certainly a great set of rules and easy to use. I thank you for making them available for free to the wargaming community. As you say, they are a framework for making one's own modifications to reflect what one wants in their game. The trick is to not modify them so much that you loose the simplicity of the original version.

Your Blog gave me inspiration to try the rules out.(Can't wait to hear if Gates somehow survives) I'm sure I'll be posting a future AAR using these rules, perhaps with my own mods.