There's a moment in the wildly underappreciated Might and Magic X: Legacy in which the brogue-speaking dwarf (female) calls on the party to "behold the great halls of Sudgurd". After the appropriate pause she says, with a fair amount of pique, "I don't think you're beholding enough".
I feel that way when I show these dice to people. They're not huge. In my case they're stickered badly. But, to me, they are grand.
Created by the folks at Command Post Games (their wonderful Pub Battles: Brandywine is the background to this picture) their blog makes it sound like they set these up almost as a lark. Given the title of my blog, though, it shouldn't surprise anyone that I take these very seriously indeed.
While Too Fat Lardies did the world service when it brought the Reisswitz kriegsspiel with several of its maps back into print, and Photon Cutter Studios made nice unit blocks available for a reasonable price, this is the third and final step. Now the combat tables that the Lardies created are no longer necessary and we can play the game the way the Baron did in 1824.
For those unfamiliar, each of the dice represents increasing strong combat odds, i.e. 1:1, 3:2, 2:1, &c. The left numbers are for musketry at various ranges, the right for skirmishers at these same ranges, the top and bottom for melee results. All these numbers are expressed in terms of points, each point representing a different number of men depending on the formation in question.
I could say so much about them, but I'll observe this: Baron von Reisswitz saw musketry as far more bloody than many contemporary Napoleonic rule sets and he -- and those that played his game and praised it -- knew well of what they spoke. I have a corps of red and blue troops courtesy of Photon Cutter and will now be compelled to press the lads into service. If only that I may roll these dice.
Command Post Games is here: http://www.commandpostgames.com/command-post-blog/
Too Fat Lardies is here: http://toofatlardies.co.uk/product-category/kriegsspiel/
Photon Cutter is here: http://www.photoncutterstudios.com/kriegsspiel.html
Proud to say I played a wee part in helping Photon Cutter get started in the kriegsspiel several years ago. Buy early, often, and in quantities no smaller than a corps per side!
I just got my Photon Cutter pieces in today! I was comparing them to the Brandywine pieces. We didn't specifically plan them to match the Kriegsspiel scale but they actually come out really close. I'm going to take pictures and do a write-up later to compare.
ReplyDeleteThis got me thinking, how do you feel the Kriegsspiel dice compare to the Brandywine combat system? Should Brandywine be more bloody? Does Brandywine feel more in line with most modern wargames or closer to Kriegsspiel in casualties?