Well, I have poked around a few 'Cons in my time and I always see those older gentlemen playing these games on gigantic tables, with really sweet terrain, and tons of miniatures in ranks and ranks. I may not be as long in the tooth as some, but I fancy a big table and tons of miniatures, so I put on my best powdered wig, hiked up my trousers and forged ahead into the unknown...
...and promptly got lost. The amount of manufacturers, scales, rules and time-frames is simply staggering. I started where my experience told me to start, pick a ruleset. This was no easy task as I wondered the very corners of the internet to find what was out there. And I do mean the very corners, behind all the silly cat videos and porn from the 80s were some very poorly designed and hard to look at websites, with some generally interesting information. Now I gathered from my research that a few rulesets were most common, though the arguments over which was better gets fairly heated.
My options for what I wanted (aside from about 2 million home-brews and local gaming club collaborations) were narrowed down to just a few. Now I wanted some feel for the era, but not a complicated ruleset that would take ages to teach, as this is not an every week type of game I wish to play. It had to be one that I could get my friends to dig through, and nice pictures help, so I wanted an actual rulebook, not some printout with a ton of charts.
Here is my first draft list of rules:
Black Powder - Warlord Games (duh)
General de Brigade - Cavalier Books
Lasalle - uhm, yeah I forget (Google to the rescue: Sam Mustafa Publishing LLC , Honour Wargames)
Napoleon at War - Mat at War Games
I am not going to lie, ease of acquiring the book did play a part in my decision, Warlord Games has a good amount of distributors (even some on this continent!) and some like GdB are only sold directly from their publisher (that I could easily find).
I was not disappointed in my selection once I ripped open the package and dug into the rules. Right away the forward to the book sets the mood perfectly, this was exactly what I was looking for. The rules are written by Jervis Johnson and Rick Priestley (of GW specialist games fame) with the collaboration of the Perry Brothers (sweet, sweet plastic crack dealers, seriously check out their website for beautifully sculpted models: http://www.perry-miniatures.com ).
I read the entire book that night, cover to cover, including the side bar facts and stories and the very nicely laid out sample games (scenarios) that they had played using the rules. These rules are not for everyone I can tell, as there are no points values or army lists per se (they do have a point conversion system toward the back of the book if you just can't live without one). Basing and army construction is more of a guideline to point you in a direction, not a WYSIWYG or forget it type of game for sure, it will take some discussion amongst your group to decide how you want to go and you are only limited by what you mutually decide.
That's probably enough for now.
Next time: Scale
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