Recently I have been reading on other blogs (such as Neil Patterson's
Aufklarungsabteilung, and David in Suffolk's
The Ragged Soldier blogs) about using a Frank Chadwick designed board game called 'Soldier King' as a campaign engine for tabletop games for battles between 18th century imagi-nations.
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| Airfix British grenadiers painted as something different. |
While both blogs contain useful information with regard to the use of 'Soldier King' as a campaign engine, Aufklarungsabteilung has more detail with regard to using it with Volley and Bayonet.
In the comments on the Ragged Soldier post, Neil mentions that rather than use 'Soldier King' as a campaign engine, Frank Chadwick's gaming group created ‘Duke, Elector, King’ a V&B campaign system that was designed to fight battles between 18th century imagi-nations (more details can be found
here).
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| I like the Autumn flock but don't really use it much. |
I have painted and based these Airfix British Grenadiers for use in ‘Duke, Elector, King’ despite not having determined what nation they will serve. The paint scheme was loosely inspired by the uniforms of Russian Grenadiers.
The use of Airfix figures has been inspired by the comment made by Glenn some time back that with the release of the British Grenadiers set (PSR review located
here) and the Washington's Army set (PSR review located
here), Airfix had provided Wargamers with two very useful sets of generic 18th century infantry.
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| A view from the rear |
As I have been fortunate enough to acquire a number of figures from these sets from Glenn, using them as the basis for several imagi-nation armies would seem to be a logical employment of them.
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| Potentially I may designate these as light fusiliers and justify the headgear by means of cunning backstory. |
I also have a number of painted and partially painted paint conversions of Airfix AWI British Grenadiers into French Napoleonic Imperial Guard Grenadiers that I obtained from Glenn. These figures I hope to be able to convert back into 18th century troops in blue coats for use by another yet to be named imagi-nation.
I'm glad to see I'm not just rambling to myself! :-)
ReplyDeleteThe "DEK" rules allow for more design in terms of both the Imagi-Nation itself, as well as the army, with a points system tied into the state generation (so many points of infantry, cavalry etc). They even have rules for naval and sieges IIRC. Diplomacy is pretty much up to the players.
Soldier King on the other hand is pretty much mapped out with recruitment tied into the provinces owned or "acquired" . I drove myself to distraction trying to fit DEK into SK, before realising it was too much effort for too little gain.....
In the end, I opted for the simplicity of SK over DEK.
Neil
Hi Neil,
DeleteYou raise a good points with regard to the additional rules in DEK adding a level of complexity that might not be worth the gain in gameplay.
However DEK does have the virtue of being freely available, which for me currently SK does not. That being said, both SK and 'A House Divided' are games that I will be looking to acquire once shipping to NZ returns to normal.
https://www.oocities.org/zonker1.geo/index.html
ReplyDeleteThanks Neil - I checked the rest of the links in the post and have repaired them now:)
DeleteThanks Brian. I meant to put in the previous comment it was the link to "DEK" and was about to rectify that with a comment!
ReplyDeleteI have nothing against DEK; had I not already embarked on Solder King I would possibly used it as the basis. Having found it, I toyed with merging the mechanisms with SK before giving up. I'd already done so much work I was concerned that DEK would throw up inconsistencies.
Starting from scratch, it would be possible to use the SK map as a basis and generate the characteristics of the various provinces and create states without necessarily using those of SK.
Back when I was starting, Martin SC created a SK/VnB campaign. The link is on my blog somewhere to the new VnB site. It needed testing as the one campaign Martin ran descended into a slog of huge armies.
By contrast, the DEK battles in 54mm seem to have employed modest armies, judging by the pictures.
Neil
Thanks Neil for the additional information! I will try and track down the information on Martin's campaign, aand the idea of just using the SK map but with the DEK mechanisms is quite appealing!
DeleteThanks Uncle Brian for mentioning my blog, glad you were interested! I'm having lots of fun with it, but indeed Neil has done a lot more detailed thinking. I think using 'Volley and Bayonet' is a fine idea!
ReplyDeleteThanks David! - I have enjoyed reading both of your ideas with using Soldier King as a campaign engine.
DeleteThese are so versatile (and timeless). I really like the uniform that you have used (inspired by Napoleonic French dragoons perhaps?) and your basing.
ReplyDeleteRegards, James
Thanks James!
DeleteThe inspiration was from Russian Grenadiers, but I can certainly see where you are getting a French Dragoon vibe from.
Cheers,
Brian
Hi Brian -
ReplyDeleteThis posting seems to have got by my radar. I like the 'autumn woodland' stands for those green guys. I agree with Glenn that those Airfix AWI sets are great for generic 18th Century wars. The pity of it is, though, that the 'Washington's Army' box has only 4 musketeers loading as against 6 for each of the other 3 musketeer poses.
Cheers,
Ion.
Hi Ion,
DeleteI agree that it is a shame that the 'Washington's Army' set is shortchanged on the reloading pose. Glenn has suggested that it is possible to increased the pose range for each set by swapping their respective heads. I am very tempted to by make these head conversions just to see what it would look like.
Cheers,
Brian