Thursday, February 11, 2010

18th Century...The Return!


Sometimes a ruleset will reinvigorate my interest in a period. In this case Rick Priestly's Black Powder rules have got me going again both for my 18th century ImagiNation stuff and for Horse and Musket in general...I'll be posting a more detailed report of the rules but for now, suffice to say that I've been re-reading Charles S. Grant's "The War Game Companion", and his "Raid on St. Michel" campaign in addition to playing through the Black Powder rules using my 6mm Naps, some pictures of the games are shown here.


French massing to the attack...terrain sculpted using "Sculpy" clay...(works great for 6mm)...



Brits and Portugese ready to resist the assault. ( all the figures are Adler 6mm)

I played through a 6mm battle but realized that I was missing some critical elements in the rules, so I set up another game and things worked out much better. It always takes me a few plays through set of rules to get in to the finer points of play.

Playing these rules has also inspired me to finish a bunch of 25mm RSMs that I been sitting on waiting for inspiration...so now the 25s are finished and the ImagiNations game is back on!!!...more on that in the next post. Until then, here are images of my 6mm Adlers in action.


French attack columns try conclusions with a solid Highland line.



French and Brit Cavalry go toe to toe!



Overview of a 6mm battle...the table width is a mere 24" ...just enough to fit on my kitchen countertop


The terrain boards are Masonite (or "hardboard" for my Brit readers...), simply painted with roads and rivers to be used "geomorphically"... I made them a long time ago for a Franco Prussian War 15m collection that I still occasionally play...and since the "Black Powder" rules do encompass that period as well, I may break out my Franco Prussian War stuff as well.

Nothing better than a great "toolbox" set of rules!

3 comments:

Fitz-Badger said...

Nice! I like your sculpey terrain, too. Not hard to see the appeal of the wee figures, especially for "big battalions" in a small space.
I've been seeing more references to "Black Powder". I think I'm going to have to buy them ...

Bluebear Jeff said...

Oh, yes! I know that old "play the rules, then read them to figure out what we did wrong" system. It actually is a really good way to learn a rule set.

I will look forward to more of your comments about the rules (with luck, my copy or the BP rules should arrive in a week or so).


-- Jeff

abdul666 said...

Welcome back to thne tricornes!

Jean-Louis