Drum Beats on the Battleline pt.17

Today the latest version of American Battlelines was playtested and the rules gone over thoroughly by the OGDW partners.  Bob Benge got me on the phone, and said that it was "not a slaughter," though he did indicate that there was some head-shaking going on.  Pointed up a number of areas that I did not update from the original to the new edition.  So there were some dropouts.  Also there was some question of my reasons behind some of the changes, and why I had dropped one possible action from the list.  All in all, it was productive, and I hope that the changes are adopted by the folks whose ultimate vote I would need.  I can attest that the new game is less fiddly than the old, and seems to have an intuitive feel.  There are fewer die rolls overall.  I also cleaned up a lot of the areas that were not clear from the original.  Just not all of them.

Drum beats on the Battleline pt.7

One of the most significant problems with the current game is the ranges for the artillery, which seem to be far off historical norms.  Along with a very kludgy manner of resolving the combat, artillery becomes very problematic on the battlefield.  A lot of work may be needed on this topic.  I am looking at throwing out the current method of resolving artillery combat completely, and am not sure how to replace it.  Yikes!

Drum beats on the Battleline pt. 2

I am anxious to see all the posts arriving about the Battlelines playtest rules, for good or ill. Have not come up with a good plan yet for the Command section, though some limitation on the ability of all units to do whatever they want is likely in the works. The original designer of Battlelines absolutely hated morale and command rules, so much so that he never used them when playing his Mein Panzer games. He left it up to me to design those sections. Now I have been doing quite a bit of reading to see how command was administered in the late "Lace Wars" period, just prior to the Napoleonic years. I want the rules to work within the game context, but also to be unique in giving the flavor of late 18th century warfare in the New World.

Drum beats on the Battleline pt. 1

The first several chapters have made it to the playtesters via the ODGW web site, which, wonder of wonders, seems to be working now, even for yours truly. There have been changes to Battlelines, which will annoy, even outrage, those who are used to the old version, but the proof is in the playing. I want to see how it works first before cutting off the new version at the knees. There were some anomalous things that occurred in the rules, that I struck out, making the rules simpler and cleaner. We will see how they are received in this new, controversial version.

Battlelines volunteers

We still hold out hope for the web site, which is undergoing repair as I write this. In the meantime, I have completed the first two chapters, and am willing to send them to you, since they are introductory and do not need the meat and potatoes of the actual rules, which start with Chapter 3.

N.B. My writing style is most definitely different than that of the original designer, so if there are jarring syntactical shifts, you'll know why.

Command Radii and Regulating Battalions

Almost two thousand posts on TMP on these two issues alone, and they were very detailed arguments backed up by plenty of primary research that I managed to get hold of. Just phenomenal. Hope I can put some of it into version two of Battlelines. Pretty overwhelming, though. Lots of reading of documents from the mid-18th to early 19th centuries.