"These rules won't work" Topic

Today was never going to be a 'proper wargame' & it wasn't. We'd trialled the 'Victory without Quarter' ECW rules last year twice with small armies. Today, was going to be bigger – about 18 units a side.

My pal lined up his splendid Parliamentarian army opposite my Royalists & we largely experimented with the mechanisms.
I've had some doubts over the rules – particularly as a Big Game set. And it was awkward. Unworkable for our 2024 Show game, I think.

The rules use a card deck for activation. The show deck would have cards for 40+ units as well as the speciality cards. About 75+ cards in total.This is far too cumbersome. EG. your unit is attacked & fired upon. Your response must wait till your unit's card came up – next card? 20 cards later? Or even longer – especially if the Turnover card sends your unit card to the bottom of the deck.

The solution may be simply no unit cards. Each army has cards only for a Commander & Brigadier cards (5-6 per army). When your specific brigadier card is drawn, you can give separate orders (from the order menu) to each of the units in his brigade. NB Commander cards allow an order to any brigade where the brigadier is within 18" command radius of the army commander.

The speciality Cards should also be kept within bounds – 1, maybe 2 event cards, 2 reload cards (1 for each entire side), ditto artillery cards, 1 or 2 Turnover cards.We'll need to experiment to get the numbers right but 'less is more'. So a Show card deck of less than 35 cards.
Feel free to comment.

Some of my Royalist English:

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Observation – many game mechanics work very well within the bounds that the designers envisaged and creak massively outside those. I've lost track of the time I've seen people asking for examples of quick play rules for age of sail fleet actions and observed recommendations for the most complex set that are great for individual ship games but would take days for a fleet battle.

Second observation – lovely figures!

I seem to remember on one of the game's discussion forums, recommending the use of Brigade activation rather than unit activation in larger games, and it sounds as if your play test has confirmed that.

I believe I have seen large games played with VWC using that adaptation quite successfuly, so wouldn't dismiss their playability too quickly as the rules have some very attractive qualities, especially if you like friction in your games.

+1 David M.

I have already done likewise, the play deck got too big with unit cards so now I use brigade (and hgher) commander cards nd allow brigade commanders to issue as many commands as they have units left on the field. Seems to work well – but I use Command & Colours mechanisms for combat and morale.

Nice looking forces. 👍 I concur with the previous posts that Brigade activations seems to be the best way forward.

For multi-player games I'm not a fan of card activation. It can mean you spend an awful lot of time standing around. I much prefer more of an IGOUGO style game.

You might take a look at For King & Parliament. Grid based but handles large battles very well, and would be suitable for a convention game.

The next step is to use this brigade activation on a bigger game. I was thinking we could go back to the original unit activation for smaller games but that's an unneeded complication.

EC you are a persistent advocate of grids & I honour you for it. Sadly, I am a persistent dis-liker of grids.

Card activation works best when there is a relatively large number of activation cards for each unit when compared to the size of the deck. One card in a deck of 40+ cards is not going to make a fun game.

I like Commands & Colors for card activation as each card allows for the activation of multiple units.

For ECW large battles brigade cards seem good.

I don't know about the rules but your minis are lovely!