History is a big place and despite one's best intentions, there are often gaps. AWB had for many years a rather large one between the age of Napoleon and the end of the English Civil War that clearly proceeded it.
A lot of this gap managed to be closed by the computer game Empire-Total War. This now slightly old release from the Total War franchise was the first to bring in a Tech Tree and as a result, it was entertaining to watch your musket armed units evolve over the course of the game. True we had some liberties with reality made in order to make the entire game more playable, but all in all good fun.
Which brings us to the current extended interest AWB has with the 1700's era.
First, in reverse order, AWB has recently received a copy of the game Pax Baltica by GMT Games. This is a 'block' style boardgame covering the extent of the Great Northern War from 1700 to 1721. The units, which are square wooden blocks, are for the most part armies and using the standard block gaming mechanism, provide fog of war for their strength and idenitifcation by standing on one edge as they are moved around the area based map of central Europe and Russia.
Not had great amounts of time to discover more about this game (read - actually played it) but it seems to be largely racing around the map snotting each other with buckets of dice in a simple and straight forward game system, which, considering the full campaign runs for some 80 turns, is probably exactly what you want.
So why the Great Northern War?
Well simply answered, because here at AWB we largely knew sod all about it.
Considering this was a confict that ranged from Norway down to the Turkish boarder, involved most of the states of the area we now refer to as Germany and finished with the once powerhouse of Sweden shattered and second tier Russia rising to claim the spoils, it is something that most in the English speaking world seem to have rather casually ignored. AWB now confesses to still know next to nothing about it but at least now owns the boardgame.
Which brings us to miniture gaming and the depths of the AWB unpainted figure pile.
Having been interested as a result of Empire-Total War, some years ago AWB then set out to find some miniture rules for the period and discovered and then purchased GaPo by Thomas Arnfelt (www.arnfelts.com). As described on the cover these are 'Wargames rules for the age of Marlborough, Eugene, and Charles XII - Core Rules for 1700-1739'. Again, mainly due to a lack of suitable figures, AWB have yet to play these rules fully appart from some very small scale minor tests, so the possibility our views may drastically change regarding this system in the future does remain.
At the moment however, AWB is still very interested in these rules and is slowly attempting to paint some 10mm units in order to play them in a reasonable sized game. More on the figures later.
The rules use the battalion of around 600 men as the basic unit and since the 'averaged' sized game is around 400-600 points and a battalion may be costed at 16, you can see you may need to be fielding some large armies. The core system involves making troop quality tests using 2D6 which give four results of success or failure. Achieve Descisive Success when shooting and expect the target to suffer. Roll a Failure when attempting to close for combat and your unit is very unlikely to be going anywhere. Troops are also classed based on what they are trained and expected to do and that effects their actions on many of the sub tables. Assault Infantry for example are trained to close with the enemy and will do so rather willingly, while Line troops will mutter comments about the King giving them these nice muskets for a very good reason and often remain at shooting range.
This class also effects the actions of troops that haven't been given orders during the turn sequence. Sides will have command stands which will attempt to issue order during the turn with various degrees of 1D6 success. Troops that have not been given orders will then start to wander off on their own based on the situation and what class they are.
All in all, despite the fact that AWB has yet to properly play it, these rules do hold great interest and probably the most annoying thing about them would be the lack of sample army lists within the core rules. Extensive notes are provided for converting real world formation types - say a 400 man battalion of musket armed men firing from 3 ranks - into game units, however if your knowledge of exactly how a historical army was organised is lacking, the core rules give rise to a rather confusing sense of 'where do I go from here?'
Fortunately the army list books, of which there are currently two, are very good, with colour (basic) painting guilds, background to the armies and their campaigns plus full lists of the historical commanders and the units themselves.
Which returns us to the figure painting.
Using 10mm Pendraken figures, AWB is attempting to paint and base some 600 men Swedish battalions. GaPo is big on having your units have the correct frontage (unlike one or two other rule sets that AWB find annoying and will discuss in other posts), so the choosen ground scale will be 40mm equals to 50 paces meaning the battalion will be on three 40x20mm bases stolen from the FoG stockpile.
In order to get a bit of visual figure density, unit scale will be one model equals 25 men so the end unit will be some 24 figures of 10mm musket and pike.
At current painting rates you can expect this unit to be finished sometime in 2018 which should then allow AWB to start on the Scotish Jacobite Rebellion army project for this rule set that sounds interesting.
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