Having tried a couple of games of Black Powder I’ve found Osprey’s “horse and musket” game to be faster playing and perhaps in my case, a better fit, coming as I am from a skirmish gaming background. While Black Powder does cover a wider range of late 16th-early 19th century warfare, Osprey has the luxury of multiple rulesets for different types of games and different eras. (Such as En Garde! And Pikeman’s Lament Which both focus on skirmish gaming the 17th century but in different ways. En Garde approaches with a storytelling, character driven aspect while PL goes at it with blobs of pike and shot and less story, more battle focus.)
While BP only briefly focuses on the Seven Years War (barring of course if you buy the $30 a pop rules expansions like “The Last Argument of Kings”.) Osprey’s HoW focuses on the conflict specifically, providing brief details on each army of the period and how they performed and even some detailed illustrations of uniforms. (Though if you really want a good resource outside of buying Osprey books, check out “Project: Seven Years War”, a vast wiki of detailed info on the period.) The main meat of the book, like any good volume from Osprey, is the rules. Brief, to the point, and backed up with easy to understand charts and tables at the back of the book, I found it fairly quick (less than an hour) to really get the rules down to memory to play a turn.
Warlord’s Black Powder supplement.
To start, the game is played at the Brigade level. This means for 25 mm gamers a hefty but not too wallet breaking investment in infantry. The game does allow you to determine what size your battalions (the basic unit) can be model wise for gaming purposes. I played my first game in 15mm which meant two to three stands of six men each made a battalion and two to five of those a brigade. I do recommend smaller scales like 10-15 mm for this game simply because of the scale of warfare involved. This isn’t a skirmish between scouting parties, this is the main engagement! The game I played had three brigades to each side and additional artillery to boot.
The Right Flank of the Prussian Army, comprised entirely of cavalry, with the Center made up of a brigade of line and fusiliers with attached brigade cannon. The brigades numbered 5 battalions each. A sizable number of troops in this game.
Damage dealt is tracked by each battalion. A battalion (or squadron if you prefer the term for the cavalry) can take up to 5 hits total before it is destroyed. 1-2 hits has no effect on the shooting roll for the battalion, 3 hits causes a -1 modifier to be applied to the roll (which can add up with other modifiers such as “long range”, “if the battalion has moved this turn”, etc...), 4 hits causes the unit to fall back to regroup (1-2 full moves until either driven off table or regrouped), and 5 is an automatic rout. This may at first glance seem unfair if the opponent has a hefty amount of artillery or their musketry is better, but it does balance out and it also makes for a quick game. I read a review once that said this game gives artillery an unfair advantage. I don’t see it. Honestly I found that once my infantry closed to within effective musket range that the hits piled on much faster than the odd artillery salvo. 1-3 of my musket rolls were devastatingly effective (standard infantry for instance score 3 hits on a roll of 4 or higher, while standard artillery score only 1-2 on the same roll.) while only 1-5 of my artillery shots managed to hit anything much less score more than 1 damage. And that’s within “effective” (non modified die roll) range.
My battalion of Prussian grenadiers waits to open fire as my attached brigade gun opens fire... and misses on a poor die roll. At close range! With canister!
Turns are done in this order: Roll for initiative. Roll to activate the Brigade’s movement. (Alternating back and forth til both armies have completed their movements.) Fire all artillery. Fire all muskets (if in range). Resolve all hand to hand combat. Remove destroyed/routed units from the table. And that’s really it. Osprey has kept it light and easy to memorize in this ruleset and the alternate movement of brigades keeps the guessing game that is the true mark of a good wargame in the fore.
The game also provides nice flavoring for the period with a “National Characteristics” section at the end of the book. Part of what makes the game unique is the qualities you can assign to your units which have an effect on die rolls. Troops can be classed as ether “inferior”, “standard”, or “superior”. This helps keep those Austrian militia units from being up to par with those British grenadiers, without being too game breaking. Commanders of brigades/generals can be rated as “dithering”, “dependable”, or “dashing”. Which give corresponding bonuses or negatives to each command roll made. For instance, a brigade of “superior” grenadiers led by a “dashing” commander will be able to rally much quicker from wounds, throwing off 2 hits instead of just 1. When the “superior” grenadiers shoot their score is usually 1 more hit than “standard” grenadiers on the same roll.
“National Characteristics” add additional bonuses/negatives to commanders. For instance:
Saxon commanders that are Dependable and Dashing get -1 to their move initiative. They have to roll one higher to move the brigade. Whereas for a formation change (such as forming squares) they only deduct half a move rather than a full move.
Likewise British commanders give their troops a +1 to their fire initiative, giving them far better musketry rolls than other nations. The rules even allow for all British infantry to be classed as “superior” if one wishes. (The author goes off the information from the period, such as how the British troops were trained to give a higher rate of fire, the performance of the army at Minden, etc...)
The game typically ends with a third to half of one side routing off table, or if specified objectives are met.
An unfortunate misuse of cavalry on both sides led to two full brigades of cavalry sitting atop a hill staring each other down in case the enemy charged first. Leaving the other brigades to shoot it out with no support other than artillery which the Austrians excelled at that day. Were I to do it again I should have kept the fore squadrons as a screen and funneled the rear troops to the opposite end of the field to make a difference at the objective!
A full view of the engagement at Corrugasberg. (We used an African village with corrugated metal roofs for lack of a proper Silesian one.)
The artwork is standard Osprey excellence and precision, with full color illustrations of painted armies interspersed with artwork from other Osprey volumes on the conflict.
There’s even a set of tables and charts in cheat sheet format at the back of the book for quick reference. The only flipping through the book I had to do to check on something not specified in the tables was the movement and firing ranges for other scales which can be found on page 56.
I highly recommend Keith Flint’s “Honours of War” by Osprey Publishing as a great addition to any rulebook collection and a good alternative to the much thicker volume of Black Powder. It’s a quick pick up and play game that keeps things fresh and doesn’t bog the player down in unnecessary rules lawyering and math calculations. And for $20 quite reasonably priced. For those who play at my local hobby store, there are a few of us who plan to make this our regular go to game for Saturday mornings, and readers of this review that game there are welcome to take up the colors and join us for our “Gentlemanly Wargaming” ;) 
Thanks, a very useful review. I've had a copy for some time but not the motivation to play. This may do it!
ReplyDelete