Solo practice with Die Fighting 2

Set up a practice game for Die Fighting 2 as Stephen due to play a face to face game and needed to get gist of rules back into my head.
Used my Napoleonic Prussians and French.

Several queries answered by author Bob Jones on forum main one being my misunderstanding of the number of Commanders used.

In original set it was 1 commander per 4-5 units but now its 7-12 units per commander as the focus has changed a bit from units to leadership.

Will give further comment after live game.

Die Fighting II using Seven Years War kit

Trying out the new version of Die Fighting by Bob Jones in solo venture using my Seven Years War Prussians and Russians.
I used Warfare In Age Of Reason to roll up a tabletop and used the dice values of units from original Die Fighting to generate a couple of reasonably equal forces but with Prussians attacking as such.
Rolled for Leader qualities but stuck with generic values for units (ie Elites are Crack, Line are Average, etc).
I used Bobs suggested x 3 initial dice per command (instead of x2) to generate Resource dice.
The new card system is very nice (I thought I might miss the more varied system of DF but no) with a maximum of 6 phases per turn out of a basic 8 card deck (I placed some of the solo type cards into Russian deck).
This works well to generate usual Bob Jones turn chaos !! my favourite method of gaming especially when going solo.
Already this has seen the Russian Cavalry Brigade on their right get the drop on opposing Prussian mounted.
However they failed to cause any damage and indeed lost (albeit narrowly) the initial Melee Combats.
Artillery has only just got targets and Prussian Infantry are advancing steadily.
The moving and combat systems are essentially the same as in original DF with a few tweaks to the Dice Templates outcomes with main one being addition of 'Black dice'.
These are 'awarded' if a melee lost badly and are rolled as a minus total (this was late optional rule in DF) but can be rallied off.
All the usual re-rolls of lowest and multiples dice, extra 'Free' dice, Command dice are present from original rules still based on varying troop quality and tactical circumstances.
Also now a loss of 13+ dice results in a destroyed unit rather than just a costly Rout, I like this as DF felt a bit bloodless at times.

Biggest and most welcome change is the generation of Resource Dice.
In DF this was based on unit values to generate an overall army total but in DFII it is now based on Commander quality.
Each Commander generates his own pool of dice with the CinC having a 'bucket' he can distribute to other commands at start or during game.
Also on the Restore card (Known as 4R card) the Commanders get to roll to regenerate used dice.
This I really like as in DF the resource dice seemed to dwindle rapidly especially when attacking whereas now they can be restored and indeed Inert Brigades can accumulate a good old stock.
Will be interesting to see how this pans out over course of full game which I hope to complete over next few evenings or so.

Only real downside for me is the PDF style rules (combined with a nice video presentation) as I would still prefer a good old style printed set, but that is just the old curmudgeon in me !!

Not much time for Blogging......................

Been rather busy this festive season (well more the run up to it) so been bit slow on Blog posts.
I did manage a couple of gaming sessions.

Had a quick playtest of Die Fighting 2 with my Napoleonics but sadly had to cut it short.
Hope to have a fuller play through and proper look rules but suffice to say they appear to be a more streamlined version than DF1 and come in novel format ie a DVD that has video tutorials of rules in action along with printable PDFs for charts and suchlike.
Prefer 'old school' book myself but this is certainly a different approach and most definitely less expensive to purchase from USA.

Also had Combat Commander session with my Dad playing 3 scenarios but I only managed photos from one of them as got so engrossed in this addictive game.

My Seven Years War Prussian army arrived from Stonewall Figures on 23rd so in process of trying to base these in between family visits etc

A Field Of Glory Ancients and Shogun Saturday with a new arrival....................

Had a quick game of Field Of Glory with Stephen using my Romans versus Carthaginians.
Not much to say about this one as it was straightforward bash in center of table which which went the way of Carthage in the end.
We are finding FOG a great system for quick games when time for preparation is minimal or non-existent and we just want to play a game.

Later it was three player game of Shogun with my Dad and son (home from England for a few days).
Great fun with this game.
Nice components combined with Risk style domination and combat systems make for good game.
I twice managed to obtain services of the Ninja and took out enemy Daimyos including my lads last one whom I then managed to destroy with my experience level of 2 ending the game in my favour.

This also arrived and I hope to get a game set up and played with these asap