Slitherine

Knowing the authors, I am sure they will be pleased to acknowledge any problems. I contributed to the layout of these rules and have done so for those of several board games. Any comments that generate a better understanding of how games are learnt are very welcome.

The open ground and use of stakes is one point I would agree with. The index problem has already been addressed. The terrain effects might have been better addressed by a tabular layout showing the effects (I have made my own). It would be nice to find out what other items there are.

When the authors offered me the opportunity to look at the rules layout it was mentioned that their familiarity made it difficult to see the rules as a beginner might. Ater a few days of intensive reading of the rules, I was soon in this position myself. Rules organisation is not as easy a task as one might think.

Better/greater movement rates would be nice. My old fart opponents and I use 1 & 1/2 inches per MU. I guess we want it to be official as one more choice. IMHO, the increased distance has not caused "problems"....not that we have noticed.

By the by....we are using 25/28mm minies.

CrazyHarborc wrote:Better/greater movement rates would be nice. My old fart opponents and I use 1 & 1/2 inches per MU. I guess we want it to be official as one more choice. IMHO, the increased distance has not caused "problems"....not that we have noticed.

By the by....we are using 25/28mm minies.

If you use 1 1/2" or 40mm MUs then the game will work fine but if you play on a 4' deep table you will dissadvantage skirmishing armies. It just means that there is less room to run away.

25mm figures using 40mm MU on an 8' by 5' table is the same as 15mm figures with a 1" MU on a 5' by 3'4" table and that is really good fun.

An MU tied to base width would seem the cleanest solution.
30mm works well for 25mm, I find, even on a 6x4 table.

pyruse wrote:An MU tied to base width would seem the cleanest solution.
30mm works well for 25mm, I find, even on a 6x4 table.

I agree but I suspect that the fact that Phil Barker adopted such a system for DBMM may have been the reason that FoG didn't use it

I find the rules clear and easy to teach. I read through the rules once in a few evenings and knew how to start to play without a teacher. The first game had plenty of page-flipping and head-scratching, but we got through it on our own. That is so much more than what I can say for other rules.

I only have one suggestion: a more comprehensive glossary.
Some rules are printed no where else than in the glossary, and some italicized terms you'd want to look up in the glossary are not there. For example -- rear support, only in the glossary; "Battle Line", not in the glossary. Some terms in the glossary tell you nothing and send you to another page. I find it unreliable to turn to when I have a question or if my memory needs to be jogged.

That is my only suggestion.

Oh, well I might put the turn sequence near the beginning of the book as an overview "this is what we'll be explaining in the next few sections".
But that is a matter of taste.

pezhetairoi wrote:Oh, well I might put the turn sequence near the beginning of the book as an overview "this is what we'll be explaining in the next few sections".

We tried to avoid putting anything that looked complicated near the front of the rules, so as not to put off beginners, as one of the principal aims in developing the rules was to attract new blood to Ancient/Medieval wargaming. The rules "unfold" in a way that is intended to encourage complete beginners. This inevitably makes them less efficient for grognards.

hehehe.. the rules are about 6 months old now? I think they have done a great job.. Sure their are a few twinks that could be made... Overall the rules are solid and easy to understand after playing a few games... But nothing to warrant a rewrite of the rules... Sure in 5 years.. maybe 2.0? lol.. The rules flow quite nicely atm.. I only have about 15-18ish games under my belt now.. I still forget stuff.. But heck i do so with DBA also... But they are easier to understand though.. They are not in Kings English. Some of us Yanks are slow to read such things!

As JD said the process was about as thorough as it could be given publishing time constraints - certainly more thorough than 2 other books with which I was invovled in the past.

A rewrite - woah there!. . I suspect Richard, Terry and I would all need urgent heart treatment if we thought about that idea for too long (it is a much more mammoth act than it may appear to do one). Mind you we could share networked PCs from the ward beds and run test scenarios on the hospital side tables with the nurses ... and you could all send flowers

Of course one or two good improvements made since launch are very good (e.g. the fuller index) and one or two oddballs exist that we would have done differently had we spotted them earlier (stakes with hindsight is in too many places for sure). In practice JD could have had us refine forever, but had we continued to work to improve items mentioned above you would probably only be seeing the rules on shelves next month, and I will guarantee we would still have missed things.

We are always looking for good feedback so keep it coming in, and if anyone can post a "more logical" structure for the ruleset then I for one will be very interested to look at it and learn from it.

Si

shall wrote: Mind you we could share networked PCs from the ward beds and run test scenarios on the hospital side tables with the nurses
Si

Si, if the best thing you can think of to do with the nurses is run test scenarios on a bedside table, you are obviously a married man

/me snickers

Like all wargamers I like a lovely figure in a uniform ....

Si