"Black Powder, War & Peace, plus Herbert Lom" Topic

So, after listening to Tchaikovsky's 1812 on the radio whilst I chopped logs, I went to look for the 1956 War and Peace on Youtube. It's there, in decent quality, so I put it on and set up a 15mm 1812 game to re-aquaint myself with Black Powder.

I'm hoping to catch up with my brother soon, for a few games and beers after lockdown. Blucher is on the list for me but I'll come back to that another time. I'm happy with BP as something we've both played before so don't need advice on other games I should play with him, thanks.

So, some questions for now:

- I have 1st Edition with Albion Triumphant and some house rules I printed off a while ago. Looking at changes for 2nd edition few of them up are fairly simple and covered by the houserules. I know the writing has been cleaned up (which isn't hard), but is it worth picking up 2nd edition at this point, with maybe half a dozen games per year?

- Speaking of which, whether I go with 1st or 2nd, there are a boatload of houserules when I Google. Are there any you'd particularly recommend?

- Is it my imagination, but in War and Peace when the standards are being burnt by the Berezina, does Herbert Lom catch himself and walk off just before he starts warming his hands by the fire?

- Any other recommendations for massed cavalry charge epics (other than Waterloo, obviously), to put on for inspiration whilst I re-base several thousand figures…?

p.s. Nice looking figures here for your own bonfire: link

They are lovely (painted 60 mm), but at those prices I wouldn't suggest tossing them in the Bonfire! :-)

Inspiration. Not to watch, but you might listen to Wellington's Victory--another orchestral piece scored for small arms and cannon.

Excellent suggestion Robert, plus greatclassicrecords has put it with footage from range of sources (all Waterloo-related, ironically).

YouTube link

I notice they've also done the same for Tchaikovsky's 1812.

House rules: We tend to do Fire before movement – think that is fairly common; it stops a unit running up and blasting seven shades of… something…. out of an enemy who cant respond. Either put -1 command or restrict the unit to just one move.

One I wrote and prefer is 3 moves need 3 under the Command AND half or less, so Command 8 needs a roll of 4 to get 3 moves; The rules as written mean you are more likely to roll 1 or 3 moves than 2.

Allow units in Broken Brigades to rally; this gives a chance for a Brigade to 'unbreak' itself if the threshold is only due to disrupted units.

We have used the second edition Black Powder rules with the Clash of Eagles supplement – seems to work very well

Same as Frederick

Watch the charge into the valley of death in the 1968 film The Charge of the Light Brigade.

I see that the British colours are incorrect 'as usual'. Forking out all that money (£65.00) for a colour-bearer with an inaccurate flag? It makes one wonder what other inaccuracies there are?

The Royal Horse Guards (Blue) are definitely wrong.

And as for the 30th, their button spacing was in pairs. I suppose Hamilton-Smith has been used as a reference…bad move!

They are all painted well though…

I think the one rule that I would use is from Last Argument of Kings, you are only allowed to fire if you only move once or not at all in the turn. Works well and keeps the game turn structure as in the rules. The other change that is worth doing is making columns who don't beat their foes in close combat form line disordered for the subsequent rounds. This makes the close combat more balanced and encourages historical behaviour.

Frederick and grecian1959 – thanks for the input. Have you played 1st Edition for comparison? From the reviews of 2nd edition I've found it seems like there are quite a few typos in it with few real changes.

Last Hussar and GarryWills. Thanks for the thoughts on firing. I'd been debating options, bearing in mind traversing and closing fire already exist. Maybe having the option of initiative firing when someone moves within close range. There is the issue then that if you want to randomise initiative options rather than have them as default then you'll need another trait or rely on the brigade commander when it should be down to the unit. Anyway, I'l have a think.

I guess the issue for me is wanting to recreate actual events without them becoming common due to baked in due to unit characteristics, which can be also be complicated to keep track of in a big game. I've been making up custom card decks for other games and getting them professionally printed and working on a 40K 2nd Edition C&C variant to use some old figures.

Maybe that's something to consider. An army deck of cards which you draw a hand from and can usually only be played instead of an order if the commander succeeds. Perhaps some general cards in there as well, to make them distinct and allow some pre/post-battle advantages, particularly in the campaign setting.

Dibble, Charge of the Light Brigade seems to be on an awful lot at the moment although more entertaining is the BBC radio adaptation of Flashman at the Charge I listened to again whilst painting.