"Carnage & Glory II Pros and Cons" Topic

Your thoughts?

We play a lot of C&G in several periods. Pros are lack of table clutter, fog of war because you can't look at opponent's units to see their current strength, once you enter your figures into a roster it's relatively easy to move things around to fit whatever organization you want for your engagement, all the calculations and rolls done for you.

The only con that I find is that in cases of widely disparate army skill levels, for example SYW early war Prussians vs just about anybody else, I struggle to show the qualitative difference to the level that I personally feel it should be. Now that might just be my preconceptions and not reality but it is what it is.

Been playing C&G at the conventions. Fog of war is a a high mark. Ease of play is another due to all those mechanics being taken off the player.

There's definitely a lot of Fog of War. I played it a couple times and I wasn't very impressed to be honest. The first was the Siege of Louisbourg, a friend of mine and I had some French artillery and militia in redoubts. Turn after turn, we fired our cannons at approaching British lines. The moderator confirmed an "effective bombardment" but we knew nothing else. The British still marched forward. Finally, after hours of "effective bombardment", the British hit the ramparts and the militia melted away. The artillery was overrun. Game over.

The second game of C&G was a refight of the battle of Trenton. The Hessians became alerted and were ready for the fight. It didn't matter. The militia poured volley after volley into the Hessians who didn't have mush success with the musket exchanges. Finally the militia charged and broke the Hessian garrison. Game over.

It's a small sample size but I didn't really enjoy either game. Maybe they were exceptions in how results play out. There are other rulesets that I do enjoy so I haven't given C&G much more of my time since then.

C&G is our Go-To on ACW, ECW, Marlborough and Napoleonics locally. Been that way well over a decade, including running it every year at MillCon.

Once you understand what C&G is trying to do, and the role it is putting the player into, it is really outstanding.

The designer continuously updates and improves the system, and is very responsive to player comments and questions.

I am a fan and one of those who hosts C&G games at HMGS conventions, so this isn't an un-biased answer, but here goes.

Pros: In my experience, a player can control a larger number units than in many games, 10-12 or more, versus 5-7, because the computer does so much of the calculating for you. No "+1, +2, -1, oh, forgot to look at that". Start again +1, +3. -1…"

Still broadly supported by a number of GMs at HMGS cons and timely support from the author on .IO and facebook. Not many rules that were being hosted in 2010 are still being run in the same quantities as C&G.

Fog of war is better than most games, though hard to work around the 100' general.

Fatigue is tracked and keeps units from being supermen throughout a whole game.

Same general turn sequence and system are available for everything from late Medieval (WotR) to FPW. Different modules, but similar in play structure.

Cons: Takes a significant amount of prep work to put on a new scenario. Building Army lists, Orders of Battle and labeling the units can be time consuming. Once you get that accomplished, you can run a game on short notice, but without it, you have little chance.

Played several games of it at this past H-Con for the first time and liked it a lot. So much so that I am contemplating buying the software and a dedicated laptop.

+1 to John Snead's positive comments above.

My experience with the rules is as a long-time C&G player and occasional GM.

FYI, there are usually 20-40+ C&G II games at all HMGS (East) conventions covering a variety of historical periods.

Finally, the C&G GMs and players have their own C&G II gaming weekend.

If the rules generate enough interest to support their own mini-con, they must be doing something right.

Enjoy the games.