En Garde!

I pre-ordered a digital copy of the new swashbuckling skirmish rules from Osprey a while back and they arrived on the Kindle today. A quick skim through and I'm really liking what I see, especially as the system is based on the Ronin rules expanded and developed to cover the swashbuckling genre. The rules are also lavishly illustrated with colour plates by Peter Dennis and photos of some stunning 28mm figures from Redoubt and Foundry amongst others. I expect that there will now be a bit of a rush for these ranges, especially the Redoubt Three Musketeers which are superb (I have some in a dusty box somewhere).

The other thing about En Garde! is that I actually already have some figures painted and ready to play! I have a decent selection of 28mm pirates that I originally painted up for Legends of the High Seas and which have seen quite a lot of action, even hunting dinosaurs in Saurian Safari on a few occasions. The figures might need a bit of a touch up where they've been bashed about a bit but they're ready to be organised into a warband, so a Treasure Island style scenario would be easy to set up and run. I'll have to sort them out and do some number crunching using the lists in the rulebook to see how far they can be stretched. It might even be worth painting a handful more to swell the ranks?

Project Plans for 2016

I'm being very cautious with my plans for the coming year, so I'm keeping down to a skirmish level and focussing on small projects that I can complete in the space of weeks rather than months. These will include both Dragon Rampant, which is already underway, and Lion Rampant War of the Roses which I've decided to do in 28mm rather than 15mm, at least at the moment. I'll may also have a crack at Black Ops, Ronin, Frostgrave and En Garde, all of which require a small number of figures and are published by Osprey. The Achtung Commando! project and Saga will be in there somewhere too.

One thing I will use to tie this all together is an ice and snow theme, using my lovely new(ish) tundra gaming cloth from Cigar Box Battlemats. This means that I can maximise the use of the relatively expensive cloth and combine any other terrain that I build or buy to cover several projects. I like the idea of War of the Roses in the snow for a start, all very redolent of Towton, and there are obvious connections with Frostgrave, the Heroes of Telemark and the Ice Elves on the workbench. I may even do something sci-fi or pulp set in the snow, either in 15mm or 28mm, who knows...

...and there will definitely be some more mdf !

En Garde!

Right Cover, Wrong Title!

I had a look on Amazon today for the new Fighting Sails rules from Osprey, which I duly ordered with the last of my birthday vouchers, only to find a number of future publications in the wargames series up for pre-order. The one that grabbed my attention is En Garde!, which looks like it could have a lot of potential, based as it is on the Ronin rules system (that reminds me...I really should get that buntai done). 

Anyway, here's the sales blurb:

En Garde! is a small-scale skirmish game based on the successful Ronin rules, in which small groups of warriors fight each other for honour or riches. Rather than just rolling a few dice, the rules allow players to make tactical decisions about how the models that they control will fight - offensively, defensively, or by applying special skills and abilities. En Garde! covers the conflicts of the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries, when black-powder weapons started to become common in battle but martial prowess still determined the outcome.

Play as Border Reivers, Conquistadors, Landsknechts, Aztecs, French Musketeers, Caribbean Pirates and many more, in scenarios that evoke classic engagements of the genre. Sub-plots (secondary objectives for each side) have also been introduced, making gameplay even more varied and exciting. Simple campaign rules allow multiple scenarios to be played in sequence and permit warbands to develop over time. An appendix is also included to provide brief rules for supernatural creatures of the period - monsters, demons, revenants and witches - and new abilities and equipment to fight them, making En Garde! the perfect ruleset for gamers who want something a bit different from the norm.

Published in January 2016...so you'll have to wait a bit longer!

Flashing Steel

I got hold of the .pdf download of Ganesha Games Flashing Steel skirmish rules a couple of days ago, to see if they'd be good for my 28mm pirates. The rules are very well set out and clear to read, with some excellent illustrations and lots of background information for both swashbuckling 'Three Musketeers' style games and for piratical action in various historical settings. 

The rules themselves are very similar, if not identical in most respects, to the Napoleonic rules we were using at the club. Although there are no rules for sailing ships or naval combat, there is a very neat mini-campaign generation system that would be great for a series of linked games. I'll see if I can get a try out game set up at some point in the near future.

Flashing Blades

I was browsing through RPGnow in the search for some downloadable card building kits for pirate games, when I bumped into this. I used to play in a Flashing Blades campaign when I was at college many, many years ago until the chap who was GM lost interest. It was a great set of rules and I really enjoyed the scenarios that we played, based on the Parisian Adventure module that came with the rules.

Anyway, when I saw the rules for less than the price of a pint of beer, I thought why not? I also picked up some of the scenario supplements so now have a very nice collection of .pdf's to while away the winter evenings on a nostalgia trip.

I have no idea what I'm actually going to do with them but they be good for skirmish gaming background material at the very least. I have some of the Redoubt Three Musketeers figures somewhere that I could dig out for this but I have more than enough to do without any more skirmish diversions.

Nice :O)