Here's a shot of the terrain upgrade in progress deep in the donjon at Chateau d' Amok, to prove to The Baron that I'm "gettin' to it."
This upgrade takes us from Terrain One Point Oh My. . .
to Terrain Two Point Oh Yeah!
In addition, the good folk at Renaissance Ink hooked me up with some thin profile, beveled masonite bases, complete with magnetic bottoms, for my Jenkins figures. The masonite has a great "woodsy" color feel that works really well with the terrain. Now all my "little guys" stand tall - even in the Rough.
Come see us at Recruits!
I committed today to presenting "Blunder at Turtle Creek" at Recruits in April. "Blunder" will be fought using This Very Ground, of course. I am using the Blood in the Forest scenario from the rulebook but adding a "civilian" twist, and using points to provide balanced forces.
The introduction:
"Following Braddock’s defeat on the Monongahela, the Pennsylvania frontier was awash in fire and blood. The French encouraged their Indian allies to raid the farms of the British colonists. As the infiltration of Lakes Indians and Coeur De Bois in French service increased, hostilities escalated. In response, many small excursions of British regulars and their colonial militia counterparts attempted to attack the Indians on their own terms. A nearly-abandoned storehouse on the very fringe of British settlement becomes the scene of the Blunder at Turtle Creek as one of these British counter-raids runs headlong into their intended prey."
I have some terrain work to do over the next couple of weeks. . . I may show some of it in progress if I have time.
See ya!
And the winner is. . .
This Very Ground from Iron Ivan Games. What the . . . !?
If you've visited here before, you may be aware that I was already invested in This Very Ground for my French and Indian War project when I decided to give Muskets & Tomahawks a look. Overall, Muskets & Tomahawks is a very nice product. The N.C. Wyeth illustration on the cover alone gets a nod.
Recently The Baron pointed me to a post on Anatoli's Game Room that includes a thorough review of Muskets and Tomahawks as well as a "short comparison" with This Very Ground that I find quite useful. If you're interested, Mr. Anatoli also provides a similarly-thorough review of This Very Ground here (and I do hope Mr. Anatoli doesn't mind the links, but I would be hard-pressed to improve on his detailed reviews).
So why do I use the term "useful" to describe the comparison? The comparison provides an opportunity to show subjectivity in practice, as Mr. Anatoli and I look at the same points of difference between the rulesets and draw opposite conclusions, based ultimately, I think, on "what we like." Both systems quite obviously provide a good game and lots of period flavor. . . but as we all know, it often just comes down to what "feels right." Mr. Anatoli is calling Muskets & Tomahawks (M&T) his "go to" set of rules for the French and Indian War, while I have decided to stick with This Very Ground (TVG). For example, if we look at the comparison:
1) Shooting Mechanics. In M&T each soldier in a unit can take one action, which means some soldiers can move while others shoot while still others reload.
Individual soldiers' firings have to be tracked for reloading, which I don't like as well as the Volume of Fire in TVG, which is tracked by unit, and provides a neat little morale mechanism based on the amount of firepower a unit puts out.
2) Movement Mechanics. I prefer that in TVG Regulars are limited to Formed Formation, regardless of terrain, which makes them slow and cumbersome in the forest, all the time. Regulars don't get to break into skirmish formation for movement in the woods, which I think better reflects their European training prior to their arrival in the colonies.
3) Close Combat. I really like the "psychology tests" involved in the "Charge" and "Standing Ground" procedures prior to Melee. Used with the Initiative system, there is real finesse in the tactics of driving off the enemy with a volley and the threat of the follow-up with cold steel. If you can get to hand-to-hand, the new streamlined procedure makes Melee fast and lethal.
4) Casualties/Morale. TVG uses a roll to hit and a roll to wound based on a D10, and different Volumes of Fire provide Morale modifiers - the "psychology" of coming under fire is well illustrated. Using a D10 (rather than the D6 in M&T) allows Units to be defined more through differences in numerical ratings as opposed to the use of "traits." Morale is based on percentages of casualties in a unit - this coupled with the D10 means the game is scalable. A unit can be 5 soldiers or 20 and the game plays just the same.
M&T uses a deck of cards to activate units; it works fine. I prefer the Initiative-based system of TVG because it is a little sneakier - you can actually choose a disrupted enemy unit to activate on your Initiative and force to it take a Rally test that just might cause it to rout off the field if it fails. . .
M&T's Scenario Generator and Random Events are great features. No reason you couldn't use them with TVG, too.
So two really good game systems. . . and which one is "better" is totally subjective.
I'll be taking This Very Ground to Spring Recruits in April. See ya there, maybe!
