Drum Beats on the Battleline pt.16

My good gaming buddy Sacha has designed all of the new covers for Mein Panzer.  He also has a new design for American Battlelines, which would replace the fifty star flag on the cover with a more atmospheric set of pictures.  I can only see this as an improvement.

ACW 10mm

Here is an excellent 10mm ACW photo album.  It is my chosen scale.

Building fortifications

Here is a wonderful site with many pictures and info on fortifications.

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.

new place for playtesters

The web site is now accessible. A key feature preventing access to many ISP's has been turned off, allowing almost everyone through. The only requirement for access is that you register. Once you have done so, shoot me an email at gregoryfk@odgw.com, and I will give Battlelines volunteers playtester status.

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.