"Blood & Steel" Topic

Is anyone familiar with Firelock Games' Blood & Steel: Victorian Combat 1837–1901?

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I know that it is a skirmish game based on Firelock's popular Blood & Plunder pirates game. But I have only found a few reviews online and they are rather general.

Does anyone have experience with its gameplay, how it compares to other colonial rulesets, etc.?

I'm familiar with how the B&S plays, but not versus Victorian colonial rules. If you are looking for a detailed historical game, this is not it. It is meant to be a quick play skirmish game using mechanisms from Blood & Plunder, primarily from the supplement Blood & Valor (WWI skirmish combat). And it is largely meant for 1 on 1 play, but rules are provided to handle multiple players per side. And it is not primarily a colonial oriented game.

The specific conflicts covered are the Second Seminole War, the Mexican-American War, the ACW, the Second Taranaki War (Maori), the Anglo-Zulu War (1879), and the Spanish-American War.

Forces consist of units of 2-16 figures with 6-8 being a normal sized unit. Typically a point total is set and units are purchased to fill the points. So an elite unit with breech loading rifles will cost way more than a militia unit with smoothbore muskets and will likely be no more than 4-6 figures as it may eat up a large portion of your point total. A figure in a unit must stay within 6" of all other figure from the same unit. So a large unit will be more bunched up than a small unit.

Each unit may act upon activation. The activation phase is different from most games and from Blood & Plunder's card system. A number of D10's equal to the total number of units in a force are rolled and the resulted arranged so the opponent can see them. Each player then secretly selects one of the D10s and the players reveal their selections. The higher result goes first in activating a unit. How to resolve ties is addressed. A die roll result of 1-3 permits a single unit 1 action upon activation. A 4+ permits a single unit 2 actions upon activation.

The rest of the game is fairly straightforward with several types of actions being defined, shooting, and melee following the Blood & Plunder mechanisms, and so on. The goal of the game is to deplete the other sides units and to force a specific test with a success meaning the force stays another turn and a failure ending the game as the force is withdrawn.

Six types of missions are provided to form a game scenario. Each side picks a mission card (or uses a hidden D6 result) to define their mission for the scenario and this is kept hidden from the opposing side. After 3 or 4 turns it's usually pretty obvious what the other side's mission is.

This just givens a snapshot of the game play and assumes one is familiar with how Blood & Plunder plays.

Thank you, Gamertom, for the overview; it's very helpful. While I wasn't familiar with Blood & Plunder or with any of the Blood & —- games until coming across Blood & Steel two days ago, there is certainly a whole lot more on the web about Blood & Plunder than there is about Blood & Steel. So, using that abundant material online, I've been able to familiarize myself with Blood & Plunder so that I could make sense of your comments above.

It doesn't seem like Blood & Steel will replace my thirty-plus-years love affair with The Sword and the Flame. However, both Blood & Plunder and Blood & Steel seem fascinating and I'll have to give them both a try.

Blood and Plunder is fast and fun and is in the same category as Lion Rampant or Commands and Colors.

Thanks, Mark. The comparison to Lion Rampant puts in familiar territory for me.

Gamertom, thank you for the great synopsis and Extra Crispy for the general level of play.

One further question: In addition to the Blood & Steel core rule book, I have found three accessories for sale: a Fatigue Dice set, a B&S Token set and a B&S Initiative Wheel. The three together are one and a half times the cost of the core rulebook. How helpful are they and are they worth the cost?

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@The Silver Fox, the tokens are very helpful and can also be quite fun. You can use homemade tokens for far less cost, however tokens are a must in all the Blood & …. rules systems in order

to note what your unit's current status is. How much fatigue your troops have, reloading, moved, special abilities, etc. I do really like the original B&P rules and have even played with a Firelock rep. I've recently gotten hooked on Blood & Crowns when I tried it at a local Florida HMGS-South con. I will surely try Blood & Steel, but like you it will not change my 40 year love affair with The Sword & The Flame!

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Silver Fox, I feel duty-bound to report that a fellow gamer of great renown and high esteem -- known to both SgtGuiness and myself -- has recently embraced "Blood & Steel" for use as his go-to colonial rules set. This move on his part has sent ripples disturbance through the ranks of his fellow colonialists, and it remains to be seen how long it will last. Will it turn out to be a permanent paradigm shift, such as the end of the Empire and dawn of the Commonwealth… or more like a case of dengue fever, that burns red-hot for a span, but then breaks, enabling the subject to recover their wits and good humor (in the Medieval medical sense).

Only time -- and ongoing reports of his tabletop doings -- will tell!

A pic of one of his B&S games in action:

I've played it with ACW armies and Brits vs. Afghans (list on the Facebook Page). It plays very well, and the flavor of each era of the games was very different from that of the other because of the weapons and armies involved. It felt right. My club plays many of The Sword and the Flame, with 3 or 4 players per side. Blood and Steel works very well for 1-2 players per side. I plan on painting up Spanish American War armies.

Here are links to episodes of the podcast "Anything But a One," which deals with the game; one has an interview with
the authors.

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