A Few Loose Ends…

Just a quick note to say that I’ve now (rather belatedly) updated the scenario for “Breaking the D-Q Line” which we played at Bovington 2012.  I’ve added the German and British briefings, orders of battle, card information and special rules for those of you who would like to know all the secrets of the game!  The full scenario is available as a download from Google Docs on the on the right hand side of this blog under the heading  “Playtesting Scenarios, Campaign Diaries and Play-Aids”.

I’ve also up-loaded a pdf of my homemade card decks for “Through the Mud and the Blood” onto the blog.  I’m not sure how much use they will be to people.  The Big Men in the cards are all quite specific to the characters who have appeared in our games.  However, I know I very much enjoy looking through things like this when they get posted by other folk.  They were fun to prepare and pretty easy to produce.

So in the spirit of sharing, you can find mine in the section headed “Playtesting Scenarios, Campaign Diaries and Play-Aids”, again to be found on the right hand side of the blog.  The PDF file for the cards is quite large (they’re in colour), but if you keep clicking “download” in Google docs, you can hopefully get access.  Please let me know if there’s any difficulties accessing them.

A few notes on the cards:

1.            I’ve included the cards for British and German forces.  The card backs (with the imposing picture of Lord Kitchener) are on the first page of the PDF.

 

2.            Among the cards are additional “Up from the Ranks” cards for Big Men promoted in the game.  Players always seem to have fun with battlefield promotions in games, and its nice to have a few cards to hand so that the newly promoted  Big Man has a name and card distinct from the others in the deck.

3.            The British cavalry cards are included although we’ve not really playtested these enough.  The idea of separate command initiatives for the cavalry is to emphasise that in certain games the cavalry and infantry commands maybe dislocated or compromised.  In such situations, it seems strange that a generic “British Command Initiative” card could serve for both the infantry and cavalry commands.  Breaking the generic Command Initiative cards into separate cavalry/ infantry cards makes the command slightly more brittle and frustrating for the British player without wrecking his game.  The same principle may well apply to the Tank Corps, especially in 1916 and early 1917 (although I have not done separate Tank Corps initiative cards at this time), and probably for any force where the integration between separate commands is not strong.  I think they work quite realistically in some multi-player games for this reason.  I’ve included separate Dynamic and Heroic commander/ leader cavalry cards with the same ideas in mind.

4.            Quite a few cards deal with special rules which we’re still playtesting.  These include “Stretcher Bearers”, “View Halloo!” and “Skirl o’ the Pipes”.  These will feature in future battle reports on the Blog this Autumn hopefully.  Other cards deal with special rules which have been published in the TooFatLardies’ Summer or Christmas Specials, or have featured on this blog, such as “British Battlefield Fatigue”, “Abysmal Terrain”, ”Communications Down” and “Poor Gas Discipline”.  But please give me a shout if you can’t find where the rule is covered and I can pass on the details.

                
As ever, please do let me know if you’ve any comments.  

Next up will be some Picts for Dux Britanniarum, so get your woad on for that, chaps….