War Without an Enemy - Sample Game and Further Thoughts

At the moment this is still very much a War Without a Game. Tonight I finished off the sample game in the Playbook. The sample game takes you through a hypothetical game between Charles and Robert during which no aspersions were cast on Robert's marital relations. It consisted of two turns in late 1642 - the scenario starts as the historical war did in September. Remember a turn normally contains 5 phases (with 6 in the Winter Turn). 1642 is a bit different in not having a Winter Turn.

It was good that I did run through the sample game. I would never get through a game turn unaided. The Playbook explains each phase in clear detail, but even then I found myself looking up sections of the rules to check why such and such a unit has dice in combat. I'm glad to say I got there in the end. The whole process took me 3 hours on two different days, including setting up. It would probably be quicker if my mind were more nimble, and obviously it will speed up as I get more used to it. Bear in mind that this was only a 2 Turn year - the other 4 years have 6 Turns, with the last (Winter) Turn having an extra phase!

During those two Turns there were half a dozen battles, so used as a campaign to generate tabletop action you will be setting up the figures a LOT! I played through the battles using the abstracted battle format the game gives you. Each battle has lots of clever nuances so I can this can become absorbing. And lots to learn, but if each turn is generating at least one battle you will get used to it quickly. At anything like this frequency however, playing out battles as miniatures games would drag the campaign out inordinately. This would lead me to either abandon the idea completely, and just play the game as it was intended, or decide to play some games with figures and some using the game rules.

One of the little features I like are the options to Withdraw Before Battle and General Retreat during a battle. These allow players to decide discretion is the better part of valour, but you suffer consequences. And you really should only do this if you have some cavalry left! 

The battle mechanics are quite nice. Units (blocks) have strength values which get eroded with action, and Effectiveness which doesn't. The Strength determines the number of D6 rolls a unit gets, and Effectiveness determines the maximum roll on a D6 that will inflict a hit. Thus a unit with Strength of 3 and Effectiveness of 2 gets to roll 3 D6 scoring hits on 1 or 2. Artillery only get to fire in the first of 3 Battle Turns. Infantry can opt to either Fire (-1 on the effectiveness score) or Engage (no deduction). Horse only Engage. If no enemy Horse are present, your Horse get a +1 on Effectiveness. For some reason that I haven't figured out yet, the defender gets to fire first.

One of the battles was actually a Storm (Waller capturing Plymouth from Hopton) and this had some slightly different factors, but similar enough to field battles to keep it understandable.

In terms of the practicalities, the board, cards and associated sheets took up the best part of a 5' by 3' table. The wooden playing pieces need to be handled with care. You need to make sure that the pieces face the right way in order to keep track of their strengths. They are only flipped over to show the opponent what they are when they actually end up in a battle. There isn't a huge amount of space within some of the areas on the map to fit many blocks into the same area. It won't really be practicable as a remote game.

I'll probably have at least one more walk through the sample game to make sure I get the processes hammered home. Then I can think about where I go next with this. So as the managers of just defeated football teams say, "we go again".