Slitherine

Hello all,

My friend Noel and I played a lovely game yesterday, and after having a little time to mull over the events, review the rules to see where we'd made mistakes or failed to find a rule in a timely fashion, I have a few comments, criticisms, and what not.

First off, we had a great time. Noel played Phyrrus the Great versus my Boshporans led by... Vlad Dracula. Ah well, make that WALLACHO-Bosphorans, which will have to do until the fall :) At the end of the day Dracula's boys had the better of Phyrrus, but not without having to fight hard, and do some serious ducking to avoid being pushed off the board by his blocks of pike.

Overall, the interactions had a very organic feel about them, particularly the skirmishers interaction's with each other and non-skirmishers. The close combats seemed to drag on a bit, mostly I suspect because they were skirmisher vs skirmisher, until I slammed a block of impact foot into a block of disordered pike, rolled well, and they routed.

The importance of forcing cohesion tests became readily clear, as well as how critical it was to use your commanders to bolster the morale of the troops. Several of the mechanisms, like the ability to drift bases to the side, intereceptions, and so forth were a refreshing change from other games, and we found maneuvering and what not fairly easy.

My main criticism at this point has to do with the index. It was nice to see it there iniitially, but when we were trying to look up rules on the fly, some very big holes opened up. For instance, "Shock Troops" are not in the index, which led to us leafing through the book longer than we needed to trying to recall who qualified.

But thats it by and large. Noel has a short list of questions that he'll post up, and I've posted a couple as well. I'm looking forward to having another go, fortunately another friend, Christian will be fresh back from Cold Wars with a few games under his belt as well, so we should be getting a bunch of games in in the next bit.

In conclusion, thanks, so far its looking pretty interesting, and I'm keen to take it out for a few more spins...

Have fun!
Cole

Yes the index is a let down TBH. I can find a listing for pretty pictures but not scythed chariots? Others as well. Close but no cigar.

Maybe after years of DBx where the index is not much use my expectations were not high but in general I have found the index useful during play - a few gaps though.

100% perfect in one go would be boring - there would be nothing to complain about

There are one or two bits missing from the index but once you play a bit you will pporbably find the colour side bars more useful. You will know where the main bits are and this allwos you to navigate quickly by colour coding. I am colour blind and it works for me!!

Glad you enjoyed it. The rules are set up to try to give quite a few ongoing melees that take time which isnquite realistic in many cases, whuile still maing each round exciting with Cts and bolstering all over the place.

Si

I find that only 1 in 4 things I look up in the index can be found. There are also many things in the index that don't need to be, or are badly done.
For example under "combat mechanism" there are 13 lines of sub entries, 1 line is "see also" the others are references within the range for the main entry apart from one reference to another page. I don't think anyone would look for any of these items under combat mechanism, they would look for them directly. And there are at least 3 other places where the same problem occurs. There are also 13 lines for "roman army" which while nice to have aren't as important as say "Shock troups" that isn't in the index - except hidden under troop types where you are unlikely to look for it as the two are almost completely unrelated.
There are also entries that are hidden - like shock troups [ hidden under troop types], or battle wagons [hidden under wagons, battle]

That's why I prefer personally the cvolour coding and text in the borders.

We will have to set up something to report missing items from the index so they can be added next time its printed. I'' set up a sticky that people can respond to.

Si

My understanding is that the index was produced by a professional indexer rather than a wargamer. That may explain a lot.

All things considered I find it normally quite easy to find what I want but the main innovation I have added to the official QRS which I hope will stay there is page references and a very mini index of useful rules. Shock troops are ot however in the mini index

Thanks, I'll make some notes and post in the index topic...

Cole