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A neat and elegant set of wargame rules for Napoleonic era land battles fought at a high level, regiment or above, and yet accommodating the influence of individual leaders.
It's a turn-based system, quite logical in approach, written with an eye to quick resolution of each turn so that you can see the effect of your tactical choices developing on the table before you. Once mastered, frantic checking of rules becomes unnecessary as the sequence of actions fits the rythym inherent at this level of abstraction.
It is predicated around the use of miniatures, although those who do not care for them could devise a system of counters without too much difficulty.
Rules are presented clearly and well-illustrated, and they take acount of historical knowledge concerning tactics and characteristics of the different nationalities involved.
The whole thing is nicely-presented and if you enjoy the broad picture, the wide sweep of events on the battlefield, and are happy with a nice balance of abstraction over realism, these rules are worth a look.
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I recently downloaded Pike Hack. I have extensive experience with Classical Hack as well as having played other Hack supplements and was willing to take the challenge of another expansion. A quick overview of the rules confirmed they are easy to read with plenty of pictures & diagrams to explain the rules.
Pike Hack is well balanced for the 12-20 units per side recomennded for battles. Players familar with the Hack system will easily pick this up since Phil keeps the Combat Matrix along with the Morale Check system, those who aren't should be able to do so as well, since Phil clearly explains how a given rule applies to a battle as well as charts builts into each section of the rules. Unit creation follows the Hack system and the Order of Battle for the armies is easy to understand.
What I like most about these rules are the changes Phil made. It's nice to see thinking outside of the box and adapting a rule set to a new era. Command stands, with a required standard bearer, are innovative. Having varing distances for type 1,2, & 3 units from the command stand is an effective way to give better units more flexibility. The addition of the Bombardment phase shows familiarity with the period. The use of the random hit die until a shot hits a unit reflects this. The Shooting phase is now after movement, instead of before as with Classical Hack, folllows other Black Powder Era rules, giving a player comfort with the flow of the game.Opportunity fire is also allowed. Charges are now simultaneous instead of 1st one side then the other, as Classical Hack does movement. Finally, unit movement is faster. To sum it up, Pike Hack follows on the traditions of the Hack system. plus thinking outside the box with several new concepts.
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Most poorly laid out rule book I have ever seen. The so called "chinese menu" format is horrible.
I had played variations of Gaslight at HMGSE cons as run by the authors and their cronies. The rules seemed like an adaptable system that could be shoe horned into most VSF concept. However after purchasing and reading the book that idea was shelved due to the confusing nature of the layout. Instead of each level of play (regular, big battle, rpg, fleet) having its own section, they are all shuffled together with a change of FONT so you can keep clear what is what.
One of the authors is pimping for folks on their yahoo group to post reviews poo pooing any reviews slamming the layout. Which is what prompted me to come and give my 2 cents.
PLEASE fix the layout so each book is in its own section or put a big warning that this book is for people who already own one or more of the books already, and are familiar with the game. As it is laid out now it would be impossible for someone to start from square one, read this book, and put on a game. Print it out and give it to your fellow gamers to read and watch their eyes glaze over.
If you are already comfortable with the GASLIGHT way this would be a great value. If you are not you may want to think twice.
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Good simple product that gives you some good information about adventures in steampunk era.
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This is a supplement for the GASLIGHT miniature wargame, and is a great deal of fun. The GASLIGHT rules are a straightforward, flexible ruleset for playing "Victorian Science Fiction" and steampunk type battles, but with this supplement your characters are thrust into the wild pulp adventures of the 1920's and 30's serials. Note, you need the basic GASLIGHT rules, or the Expeditions By Gaslight rules to use this supplement.
To Be Continued... lets you recreate the pulp serial adventures that were a mainstay of picture theatres a few (dozen) decades ago, and are intended to help you create your own 12-part serial on the tabletop. The game is quite comprehensive in what it covers - everything from outrageous props, swooning sidekicks, monsters from mars and space travel. It guides you in creating your serial, and offers plenty of advice along the way ("Does anybody die in this game?"). It is liberally illustrated with stills from classic pulp serials, and lots of authentic-sounding quotes from serial movie directors. It is a lot of fun to read.
It is not all fantastic, though. The layout is not particularly inspiring, being single column with headings that often spill all over the place, and looks pretty much like a word document. Perhaps more frustrating is there are no hyperlinks or even bookmarks, making it tedious to search through.
If you like the GASLIGHT rules, and enjoy your pulp adventure with tongue firmly planted in cheek, this is certainly worth checking out.
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I bought GASLIGHT as I had been told it was amongst the best of the VSF rulesets.
To be honest this might be true but its a bit on the expensive side and the contents are poorly laid out, seemingly trying to cover three rulesets at the same time, that of skirmish, mass battle and roleplay.
It does have some nice rules in it but really needs re-editing so its easier to make sense of.
I would recommend WE CAN BE HEROES instead as its cheaper and far better laid out and a fun game to boot for folks interested in pulp and VSF gaming.
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This is a huge download considering the number of pages and simplicity of art. The style is not particularly descriptive, with no army lists (special notes for particular nations and units are interspersed throughout the body of the rules) and a 4e-like opacity to the game mechanics themselves, so setting up a game will practically take some extra research. The idea of specifying slightly different rules and options for each of the four periods is intriguing, rather than trying to come up with universal descriptions to apply to every possible army.
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In the Introduction, the author remarks that the ruleset herein presented was written to meet the needs of the convention-going wargamer, for whom a typical complex set of wargame rules is too complex to learn from scratch during a single convention game. So he set out to write some rules that were simple to pick up quickly, yet still managed to reflect the style of warfare of the American Civil War period. This is followed by notes on the requirements for running the game, assuming standard 15mm miniatures are to be used.
Next comes an overview of the way American Civil War armies were organised - although similar there are minor variations between Union and Confederate forces. Naturally an enthusiast for the period will have more detailed information to hand, but for someone who just wants to try out an ACW skirmish or two, this does fine. This moves on to more arbitrary ways of measuring the 'quality' of a given group by means of assigning a 'morale class' to them. This gets slightly muddled as one moment there's a description of morale STATES - which will change during the course of a battle - which morphs straight into a discussion about how some regiments can be elite while others are green. This rounds off with how to determine starting morale for your units.
The discussion then moves on to how the game is actually played. It's a multi-phase turn-based system, with some phases - such as initial writing of orders - taking place simultaneously while others require the rolling of initiative to decide who goes first. To reflect the quality of command, a die roll must be made for each Divisional Commander which, modified by the Commander's personal rating, determine how many 'Command Points' he has at his disposal: these are spent as orders are issued to units under his command. There's a random system for determing personal ratings if you do not want to use hisorical commanders for some of whom ratings are given. Then comes movement, with an initiative roll to decide who goes first then units from each side alternating until all have gone where they were ordered. You can mix in modifiers for terrain, weather and darkness if more realism is required; and there are a range of movement types from which you can choose. Once everyone has got into position, those which are engagement range of the enemy can exchange fire with them.
Rules and tables out the way, a couple of scenarios are presented for you to try out. The first is a fictional skirmish designed to introduce the ruleset in action, and the second is a recreation of the First Battle of Bull Run (also known as First Manassas). For each, army lists and objectives are given, as well as the starting positions of the forces involved. Nice and clear, complete with victory conditions and diagrams of the battlefield. To round off, there are a couple of quick reference sheets that summarise the rules, far easier to cope with around a wargames layout than the complete rulebook.
While this is a simplistic system as far as wargames go, it is probably still a bit complex for a complete newcomer to wargaming... but as an introduction to the particular requirements of an American Civil War simulation it does quite well.
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I bought this hoping it to be a significant expansion on G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. proper, but as an experienced RPG GM, I felt that adding 4 traits to characters and slightly modifying the Advantage/Disadvantage tables fell short of my expectations. It's a good set of rules for VSF and plays quickly, but you'll need to be a fan of the genre already to get the most benefit.
I like the whole GASLIGHT package, but feel that if you own the base rules, A&EbG is seriously overpriced.
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