Outing for new edition of V&F today at Stephens using a scenario based around assault on Redoubt at Borodino with Stephen as French and I as Russians.
I had briefly tried the original set and new version led to same sort of conclusions (surprise !) ie V&F is a broad brush, quick play set, with some woolly writing, odd situations, simple playable firing and combat systems, sort of Black Powder 'lite' feel overall but comes at a highly competitive price (its free by gad !).
Being a short set several things are not fully defined such as flank attacks but easy enough to sort out.
Some things are a bit jarring such as the full and free interpenetration of units, so seemingly one can have units charge through each other in any formation leading to odd situations of Attack Columns charging through each other or through Lines or even through Squares, odd to see on table but certainly simple (again house rules could sort this).
Light Inf in Open Order seem overpowered (similar to Soldiers of Napoleon) as they generally have 1 extra firing dice but can also fire at full effect when in open order whilst taking half casualties and moving faster than Line and acting as a 'force field' for following units (I feel another house rule coming on)
On flip side we liked the effect of Artillery, being not overpowered at range but potent in canister range there is no bounce through, and the Activation rolls (less frequent failures than in BP) are easy to implement along with the varied actions allowed.
Also lack of Save rolls when taking hits cuts out a lot of dice rolls in firing and combat reducing any 'buckets of dice' feel.
The Valour rolls for 'excess' hits works well but as any failures are Routs (ie destroyed) this makes things rather bloody/decisive.
Interesting and a set we are considering for large multi player games where simple is usually better.
In other news I had unusually decent dice rolls today !!!
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