Children, schmildren! The wooden soldiers are for me! Seriously, I love making them (although making MASSES of them can be tedious). Just like some people find painting relaxing, so do I with cutting, sanding, and gluing.
I think we have come to expect certain 'components' in our rules and when certain components are not there, it is like when we think a part is missing from the Ikea box we just opened. "Where are the flank attack rules? Where are the forming square rules? Where are the rules for wheeling a formation?" If we don't see what we see in every other set of rules, it frankly confuses us, or at least me.
Having played some, and read all, of Neil Thomas' books I am starting to understand that we are now going through a phase where some rules are radically simplifying. The special case rules are simply not in there.
I did not find any confusing translations – at least nothing on the order that I found with About Bonaparte – but I did get confused at times because I had the expectation that certain concepts would have associated rules. When I did not find those rules I figured I was missing something. If the rules say you can move one square in any direction is it missing a rule when you are looking for the rule on how the unit moves backwards?
That is my take at least. Maybe I am used to reading translated texts.
The Portable Wargame is a good set of rules and largely covers the same basic concepts: one unit per square, simple combat resolution, easy movement rules.
I am working on the final part and I will be going deeper into the rules because the game ended shortly after where I left off. Once the CiC dies …