"Polemos Compared with Horse Foot and Guns" Topic

I'm looking at getting into a new period, and I wondered how these two rulesets compared.

I like the high level abstraction of DBM/DBR and tight gameplay so would be looking for something similar, though I hate the barkerese his rulesets gain a lot of acceptance here. But I heard HFG is a bit bland.

I'm thinking of playing 6mm or 20mm plastic as I'm going to have to get two armies to start out. I've always liked 6mm but it isn't popular where I live, and there is so much available in plastic now.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

I'd also be interested in more about Polemos - I have a basic idea, but more info is always better. I have a friend who's VERY intrigued by the Baccus ECW figures and the Polemos rules, and that's probably all it'll take to push me over the edge.

Does anybody know if Polemos will be sold at Historicon?

I think Steve from Heritage Studios will be at Hcon, if not here is his link. He is a pretty good guy and I have bought a ton of Baccus from him. He has special ordered a bunch of cmd strips for me, so he does go way out of his way to make sure you get what you need. I think he is working on a ECW project at this time. Either way, go take a look...

Brent

link

Well, it doesn't say on his site that he's going to be there, but I'll take your word for it. In any case, he DOES carry Polemos, and Baccus minis, too. Good deal.

nazrat,
I have not yet recieved my confirmation for HMGS-East, so I am not sure if I will be attending as a dealer. I will post something on TMP stating the situation, so I can work out some logistics for people that would like to atleast pick up items there.

thanks for the interest,
Steve

Goof,
I have played HFG before. I really didnt like it. Spent alot of time waiting to do something, then waited some more, moved a few figures..... waited...... then I realised at the pace the game moved it would take me another 8 hours before I even hit the fornt line to get into the battle. Granted this was my own personal experience with the rules and maybe it was due to game size or inexperience with the rules, but I never palyed it again.

As far as Polemos: ECW goes, it moves very well, with alot of ebb and flow of battle. It is geared to get you into the battle and resolve the situation fairly quickly. I wont go into my own feelings though. have a look at this link, and pay particular attention to Dave's comments:

TMP link

It does sum up my own feelings but I feel it is better said by someone who doesnt have a "financial" interest in the rules. Also I was on the playtest team so I am biased.

Steve

I played HFG for American Civil War and wasn't keen on it at all. Way too slow. Volley and Bayonet is more elegant. I have the Baccus Polemos ECW rules, but haven't tried them yet.

Yep, that link to the recent thread was indeed helpful. If Steve is able to set up his booth at H'Con I will most certainly be perusing the Polemos book in preparation for purchase... (Is that good alliteration or WHAT?!)

The two sets are very different in approach and scale of action. A lot depends on what you are looking for. The only current area of overlap is GNW, althoguh WSS are approaching release and work is advanced on two other periods.

HFG uses brigade bases and is very abstracted. You can play large battles with a relatively small number of units. The problem arises with this approach that some actions can be too small for HFG to handle in a satisfactory manner.

PGNW works at a lower level with one base equivalent to a battalion. The rules are still abstracted, but to a lesser detail than HFG.

Both sets place an emphasis on limited command options, but the mechanics differ radically from each other.

Completely biased as I am, I think you'll find PGNW (and the Polemos series as a whole) will give a much better period 'flavour' as each set is tailored for the specific conflict.

And to continue the bias thread, go with 6mm. The army and booster packs are specifically tailored for the rules so you don't end up getting figures you don't need ir having to make annoying small purchases to bring units up to strength. The costs are very reasonable and the armies will paint up quickly and easily. Turn up with a couple of smartly painted and based 6mm armies at the local club and you'll be amazed at how many others will soon be joining you!

Cheers

Peter Berry
Baccus 6mm
baccus6mm.com

I bought my rules here in the US from onmilitarymatters.com. Very speedy service.
I guess I need to play these rules. I've read them and was not impressed.
Jaye
BTW I love Baccus figs!

The release of WSS may well be enough to push me over the edge into baccus6mm. I am looking forward to it.

Thanks Peter, and the couple of others that replied on topic.

I'm a bit of a DBM fan so I think i'd learn HFG quickly, but I think it might be even too abstract for me, closer to DBA.

When is WSS due? How are WSS and GNW so different to justify different rulesets.

6mm is my preference but around here people are moving from 15mm to 28mm, I think they must have too much disposable time and income or something, beats me.

The WSS set is due out in August - if all goes to plan...

We decided to split the two periods because we found that elements of the GNW were just too quirky and would have cluttered up the WSS set. There are also differences in the scale of actions and the relative size of armies.

The move to 28mm is usually caused by people saying that they can't paint 15mm anymore. These same people then spend hours trying to highlight acne spots on 28mm faces.

Most people who won't consider using 6mm have never actually seen them properly in action. Take a couple of painted armies to the group and I think you'll pique their interest. The tell them how much they cost and how quickly you painted them and I think you'll find a few of them wanting to join you. I've seen this scenario played out SO many times over the years.

There is Polemos group on Yahoo. Myself, Nick Dorrel (GNW author) and all the other rules writers and contributors are on there and we are happy to answer questions. You can find it at

link

Cheers

Peter

HFG started out like DBA but is now so complicated it makes DBM look simple.

Give Polemos a go.

Martin

Why two sets:

Well as Peter has said there is the question of the scale of the battles in the two wars - WSS battles are generally larger. But also I feel this was not the only reason. One of the problems with the 18th century generally, I think, is that there is a tendancy to think that it is all the same and even that it is very like the periods before or after.

It used to be very common that rules for SYW were often just Napoleonic rules with a few modifiers for example. Thankfully this is not so common now but surprisingly still happens. The same is true with the WSS/GNW. Often other periods rules are used with a few modifications. Unfortunately there is not yet a similar realisation that this period is very different to the SYW for example.

The GNW often, but it must be said that the situation is improving, gets the worst deal of all. It often suffers from the the assumption that warfare in this period is basically the same as SYW but with a few 'period' modifiers and pikes thrown in. Often this is combined with the idea that the armies were 'backward' in some way.

The truth is that while there are obviously things in common there were also big differences in warfare in the 2 wars (and also betwwen these wars and others before and after). Once we set down to model the different nature of the GNW it increasingly became obvious that a seperate set of rules were need.

I am not sure if you are seriously interested but I would recommend 'The Northern Wars' by R.Frost as an interesting read. It is very good at highlighting the differences between 'Wesern' warfare and 'Eastern' warfare in this period.

Nick

Would it be reasonably straightforward to fight a WSS army versus a GNW army? For example French vs Swedish, Obviously you'd have to decide which ruleset you were going to use.

Played Polemos recently and wasn't impressed. The books need a lot of editing. Some charts in the book are different from the charts on the card (this appears to be simple typos or editing problems, but we weren't sure which to use.) There are tables in the midst of text, without any reference as to what they're for. Many sentences have strange typos that affect the meaning of a rule. Tables aren't well thought-out: a separate column for zero and for one, even though zero and one have exactly the same results, in all cases, etc.

There are very few illustrated examples in the GNW book (the ECW book is a bit better in this regard.) But it's a lot of text, with lots of abbreviations, and not very clear.

Many rules are redundant or needlessly complicated. Roll a die to see if you can do this. Use these columns of modifiers. If you can do it, now both roll again, use different tables of modifiers, compare your scores, go to a third table to see what happens... And it's a waste of time because most shooting is totally without effect.

The heart of the game system, the "Tempo Points," did not seem to do much that a simple IGO-UGO sequence wouldn't have done. (You can "bid" points to win the initiative, but we never had a turn where we didn't have enough TPs to move all our units, on either side, so it seemed like an unnecessary step.) On the last turn we just got rid of the TPs, and the game played exactly the same.

In the GNW book there are all sorts of abbreviations to memorize, which aren't really necessary. Four different "schools" of infantry tactics, when it would have been much simpler to say, "Swedish infantry gets a +1 when doing such-and-such."

Nobody in our game liked it.

Goofaholix: Yes it would. You would need to decide whether to use WSS or GNW as you have guessed. Also remember that many armies fought in both wars.

Gustav: Do you think that you could give some examples of the problems you mention? I must confess that I can not find the ones you mention, these kinds of things can be difficult to spot when you are familar with something. But it would be helpful if they could be corrected. i.e. the editing, tables, differences between card and book tables, typos problems, redundant rules, etc.

I am guessing that with some of your other points that, perhaps because of lack of clarity in the rules, something is not being done as intended. For example it should be very difficult to move all units every turn as you shouldn't have enogh TP's. The same sounds true for shooting, although it must be said that shooting was actually pretty ineffective at this time & in this war.

The problem with the 'Swedes get +1' idea is that this is exactly what other rules do. Unfortunately this doesn't really reflect the combat in the GNW. the reason why there are 4 (I would argue that there are more) types of infantry is because there were 4 (or whatever) types in the war.