Following the Dark Lord's announcement about BKC my WWII project is now officially on hold. However, whilst playing last Saturday my gaming buddy expressed an interest in starting ACW in a small way to begin and then possibly moving towards large scale battles.
So, here are my questions:
1) Is there a simple ACW ruleset which would allow good skirmish games with the opportunity to scale it up?
2) What forces would I need for a decent scrap?
3) Would the Pendraken army packs fit the bill; their contents are a bit vague (120 mixed foot).
Thanks in advance.
Why not try something like Alter of Freedom
Although it is certainly not skirmish..You could just mount some figures on bases then work up to filling them out before finishing the basing..means you will get some big games in as well
As I had certainly forgotten about them http://realtimewargames.webplus.net/stonewall.html could do the same thing
If you can still get them, 'Brother Against Brother' was a great set of rules. Although aimed at 28mm skirmish ACW I am sure they would scale down nicely to 10mm. Tends to use units of 10 men/figures singly based but you could use circular bases with 2,3 or 4 figures a base?
Smooth and Rifled, produced by Dadi and Piombo, of Impetus fame, are a set of skirmish/small action rules, downloadable from both Dadi and Piombo and Wargame Vault. The ACW supplement is a free download. An infantry unit can be between 7 and 24 figures.
Aaaaghhhh! ;D
Never a simple answer :)
Thanks guys, will look at them. Anyone got suggestions for starter armies?
Isnt there an ACW version of Sharpe Practice by TFL?
Quote from: Fenton on 22 February 2015, 01:43:38 PM
Isnt there an ACW version of Sharpe Practice by TFL?
Just looked, there is.
ARe TFL rules any good; they seem to get a lot of flack on here? :-\
Quote from: getagrip on 22 February 2015, 01:46:00 PM
ARe TFL rules any good; they seem to get a lot of flack on here? :-\
Really? I hadn't noticed. :-\. They seem good to me, and Sharp Practice works very well at the large-ish skirmish level.
Mollinary
http://toofatlardies.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=76&zenid=375ace0ed1de91e1897ec5913e870dcc
Acw variant of Sharpe practice
Have you tried this? It's a company based game. But if you have 'Songs of drums and shakos' , you could play it as a skirmish game. http://www.ganeshagames.net/product_info.php?products_id=28
Cheers all:
Steve: yeah, looked at that one, maybe a goer.
Thanks CPT, will have a look.
Mollinary; I'm new to this so what would large-ish look like in terms of units / bases / minis?
Forty Dead Men on Wargame Vault.
Quote from: Leman on 22 February 2015, 05:33:44 PM
Forty Dead Men on Wargame Vault.
Just looked at that, might be a goer; cheap as chips too ;)
Thanks
Quote from: getagrip on 22 February 2015, 04:49:13 PM
Mollinary; I'm new to this so what would large-ish look like in terms of units / bases / minis?
Between 30-120 figures a side. Basing very much, up to you. If you multi-base you'll need to find some way of tracking casualties. But have a look on the TFL Forum or the yahoo group and ask your questions there, or I think the rules are available as a pdf for £8 from the TFL web store.
Cheers,
Mollinary
Quote from: mollinary on 22 February 2015, 06:08:46 PM
Between 30-120 figures a side. Basing very much, up to you. If you multi-base you'll need to find some way of tracking casualties. But have a look on the TFL Forum or the yahoo group and ask your questions there, or I think the rules are available as a pdf for £8 from the TFL web store.
Cheers,
Mollinary
Thanks ;)
The Pendraken packs would be a good starting point for that then unless someone has a better suggestion for starting forces?
Quote from: CPTHilts on 22 February 2015, 04:43:31 PM
Have you tried this? It's a company based game. But if you have 'Songs of drums and shakos' , you could play it as a skirmish game. http://www.ganeshagames.net/product_info.php?products_id=28
I also wanted to add this. SBH games are great.
Then Drums and Shakos Large battle can be use to "scale up" for the ACW ( almost the same engine as 61-65 )
( I had some solo games : http://2d6.fr/?p=1532 (http://2d6.fr/?p=1532) for example )
Quote from: ronan on 22 February 2015, 06:24:26 PM
I also wanted to add this. SBH games are great.
Then Drums and Shakos Large battle can be use to "scale up" for the ACW ( almost the same engine as 61-65 )
( I had some solo games : http://2d6.fr/?p=1532 (http://2d6.fr/?p=1532) for example )
Thanks Ronan, my French not being up to it but the pictures tell a thousand words :)
Lovely looking battles.
Je suis Charlie aussi ;)
I know i mention this family of rules a lot, but USE ME ACW is skirmish:
http://15mmcouk.blogspot.co.uk/p/15mmcouk-digital-downloads.html
It's however the only one that's not available as a little book, only as a pdf download. But at 5$ , you can't complain, can you?
Quote from: petercooman on 22 February 2015, 07:41:29 PM
It's however the only one that's not available as a little book, only as a pdf download. But at 5$ , you can't complain, can you?
True ;)
Will it handle skirmish and larger scale?
Quote from: Bodvoc on 22 February 2015, 12:58:51 PM
If you can still get them, 'Brother Against Brother' was a great set of rules. Although aimed at 28mm skirmish ACW I am sure they would scale down nicely to 10mm. Tends to use units of 10 men/figures singly based but you could use circular bases with 2,3 or 4 figures a base?
Seconded - have enjoyed many games of Brother Against Brother over the years :)
You could try Civil War Battles by Peter Pig http://www.peterpig.co.uk/rules.htm
Ok they're not skirmish, but the figure count for an army is pretty low, typically there's only about 15-18 figure per unit and some scenarios only about 4 or 5 units a side.
So what bits of the rules do I like
1) They force the attacker to go all out (game end is done by a countdown, starting value minus a d6 roll at the end of each turn)
2) Nice and easy uniforms to paint :-[
3) Not a lot of faffing about, you#re in cannon range at the start of the game
4) Nice simple rules
5) since a unit is an entire brigade its possible to play quite large battle on the standard (5ft x 3ft) table
6) Fairly cheap these days at £18
they're written (obviously) for 15mm, but I'd just drop the base size down a little for 10mm and use the distances as written (smaller bases would mean even bigger battles)
Quote from: GordonY on 25 February 2015, 02:14:06 PM
You could try Civil War Battles by Peter Pig http://www.peterpig.co.uk/rules.htm
Ok they're not skirmish, but the figure count for an army is pretty low, typically there's only about 15-18 figure per unit and some scenarios only about 4 or 5 units a side.
So what bits of the rules do I like
1) They force the attacker to go all out (game end is done by a countdown, starting value minus a d6 roll at the end of each turn)
2) Nice and easy uniforms to paint :-[
3) Not a lot of faffing about, you#re in cannon range at the start of the game
4) Nice simple rules
5) since a unit is an entire brigade its possible to play quite large battle on the standard (5ft x 3ft) table
6) Fairly cheap these days at £18
they're written (obviously) for 15mm, but I'd just drop the base size down a little for 10mm and use the distances as written (smaller bases would mean even bigger battles)
Thanks Gordon; worth a look and, at that price, not going to smash the bank ;)
Quote from: getagrip on 22 February 2015, 07:42:31 PM
True ;)
Will it handle skirmish and larger scale?
I think most of their rules handle skirmish and larger scale.
The ww2 version i have can be used as:
-one activation per model for skirmish
-one activation per group of models for larger.
I have read that the fantasy set does this too.
Quote from: petercooman on 25 February 2015, 10:45:12 PM
I think most of their rules handle skirmish and larger scale.
The ww2 version i have can be used as:
-one activation per model for skirmish
-one activation per group of models for larger.
I have read that the fantasy set does this too.
Thanks Peter. It's going to be a tough decision but I think I will buy 2 or 3 rulesets (as they aren't really expensive) to use for comparison ;)