We had another go with the Taiping Era rules Monday evening. This time we did a Taiping v Imperialist Chinese game, which is a bit more evenly balanced. The Imperialists were 50/50 Mongolian cavalry and Chinese foot (played by ECW Royalist horse and Fuzzy-Wuzzies respectively). The Taipings were made up mostly of foot, and were played by some Ansar.
We had a fairly straight set 'em up and run at them game. The Taiping foot was slightly better than the Imperialists, and their cavalry were of similar quality but a bit more manoeuvrable. With the Mongol cavalry on the wings the balance of the game was whether the Imperialists could turn the Taiping flanks before the latter ran over the middle and routed the Imperialist foot.
I had made few changes to last week's rules mostly due to lack of time, but also to give them a fair try out.
It went pretty well. The Imperialist horse had a nightmare, failing EDNA rolls when looking to roll 7 or less on a d8 a few times. This caused their charges to falter in the face of formed foot who gave them some effective musket volleys.
In the centre the Imperialist foot held up pretty well and even managed to break some Taiping foot units but elsewhere it was too awful for words and they ended up fleeing the field.
The core mechanisms are looking okay, giving simple, quick and clear results. The push back mechanism gives the game a real ebb and flow now I have it properly workked out. I need to add some more flavour and differentiate between different unit types, but I think I have a system that works.
I'm just not sure how much like Chinese warfare it is yet. That's the Chinese Puzzle.
We had a fairly straight set 'em up and run at them game. The Taiping foot was slightly better than the Imperialists, and their cavalry were of similar quality but a bit more manoeuvrable. With the Mongol cavalry on the wings the balance of the game was whether the Imperialists could turn the Taiping flanks before the latter ran over the middle and routed the Imperialist foot.
I had made few changes to last week's rules mostly due to lack of time, but also to give them a fair try out.
It went pretty well. The Imperialist horse had a nightmare, failing EDNA rolls when looking to roll 7 or less on a d8 a few times. This caused their charges to falter in the face of formed foot who gave them some effective musket volleys.
In the centre the Imperialist foot held up pretty well and even managed to break some Taiping foot units but elsewhere it was too awful for words and they ended up fleeing the field.
The core mechanisms are looking okay, giving simple, quick and clear results. The push back mechanism gives the game a real ebb and flow now I have it properly workked out. I need to add some more flavour and differentiate between different unit types, but I think I have a system that works.
I'm just not sure how much like Chinese warfare it is yet. That's the Chinese Puzzle.
Getting back to the polyhedral dice issue, I would suggest using different colors for the different sizes of dice . . . that makes it easier for people to find and roll the right ones.
ReplyDelete-- Jeff
Great minds - my d8s are yellow and d10s are purple!
DeleteHmmm ... you really need some Vermillion for the Imperials :-)
ReplyDeleteI shall look out for osme at Derby!
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