{"id":8735,"date":"2019-06-02T10:51:14","date_gmt":"2019-06-02T10:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bucksurdu.com\/blog\/?p=8735"},"modified":"2019-06-02T10:55:17","modified_gmt":"2019-06-02T10:55:17","slug":"played-a-gentlemans-war-at-nj-con","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bucksurdu.com\/blog\/?p=8735","title":{"rendered":"Played “A Gentleman’s War” at NJ Con"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric and I headed up to NJCon for the day on Saturday. \u00a0He and I both played in a RevWar game using The British are Coming<\/em> rules. \u00a0It was a fun game with an old school feel and the need to multiply two digit numbers together to reach the final percentage needed to hit. \u00a0We had a good time.<\/p>\n

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The cover of “A Gentleman’s War”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The real hit for me was playing A Gentleman’s War<\/em> with Howard Whitehouse. \u00a0When these rules were announced on TMP, I immediately ordered them. \u00a0My dad has been collecting old toy soldiers as long as I can remember, and he must have 20,000 of them. \u00a0I cut my teeth on Little Wars and the illustrations of the same toy soldiers my dad collects being used in games. \u00a0Of course you wouldn’t want to fire lead projectiles at valuable antiques, so A Gentleman’s War<\/em> doesn’t require spring loaded cannons. \u00a0I bought the book and read the rules, which are quite enjoyable to read, even if you never play them. \u00a0When I saw that Howard was running the game at NJ Con, I signed up to play.<\/p>\n

Below are some picture I took. \u00a0There is something charming about gaming with old toy soldiers. \u00a0Whether it is something inherent to the large, glossy figures, or the people attracted to gaming with large, glossy figures, gamers tend to be less focused on inconsequential minutiae and more willing to just play the game. \u00a0The rules are easily grasped after a couple of turns. \u00a0They could benefit from a PDF chart card that could fit on a single pice of paper, but in general, these are really, really fun rules, and we had a great game.<\/p>\n

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My gallant French colonial troops moving forward to flank the town.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I really like the activation mechanism, but there seems to be a fatal flow when a force has been heavily attritted. \u00a0A player activates units based on a card draws. \u00a0You can see the blue and red markers, indicating that those units have activated. \u00a0A unit may not activate again, until all of a player’s units have activated once. \u00a0(There is an exception to this, but let’s go with this for purposes of the blog entry.) \u00a0Once all a player’s units have activated, all markers are removed, but the turn isn’t over, so units may activate many times during a turn. \u00a0The problem is that if a player is down to just one or two units, he may activate that small set of units, clear markers, and activate them again, while the other player must cycle through all his units. \u00a0There must be a way to solve this. \u00a0I would like to borrow this mechanism for a set of rules I am writing for a secret project for a miniature manufacturer.<\/p>\n

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The British beat me to the town, which was both our objective, and immediately captured three of the five buildings while my Frenchmen dithered.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A view of the French side of the table after the initial deployment.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A view of the British side of the table after the initial deployment. The Nordfeldt caused a lot of damage on my colonial troops until we charged it and killed the crewmen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another view of the table.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I highly recommend these rules. \u00a0The are an improvement on Charge!<\/em>, McDuff<\/em>, and other similar rules without losing that really old school feel.<\/p>\n