Valour & Fortitude a try with Prussians and French

Game at mine today with Stephen and decided to give Valour & Fortitude rules an outing using my Prussians against his French circa 1813/14.

We tried 400 point forces and used GDB again to generate terrain which worked fine.

Been a while since we used V&F and not sure we have tried latest version (but no radical changes).

Enjoyable test of rules that certainly play very smoothly as written, and being very much a broad brush and fast play style set.

Very liberal movement system (even more so than BP) but works along with Actions Phase and shooting/melee all easy to adjudicate.

Units stats feel pretty much as per BP but nice addition of the Army Traits and card deck Special Abilities.

Of course couple of things we decided to house rule re Light Infantry,  Heavy Guns and some Skirmish Shooting, but really only minor tinkering.

Decent set of rules at really good price. 

Catch up on another disrupted gaming week and a blast from the distant past

No face to face game again this week (boo hoo) as wifey needing car for last minute dentist visit, and Stephen off to Warfare at weekend.

We had planned to try a Rapid Fire Reloaded scenario at Stephens based on action at Rauray during Op Epsom and hopefully we will at some point.

I had quick solo session with Fire In The Lake game using the 'medium' scenario which plays much quicker (only 3 decks) than usual full scenario I play. 

NVA start much stronger in this and US with many more boots on the ground but the sneaky VC came through victorious after a really powerful 'Tet Offensive' card play. 

Great game.

I also set up a solo test for latest (Sept ?) version of Valour and Fortitude rules with a basic 350 points encounter type game with French vs Prussians 1813

Only major difference I can discern from last version is that Rallying units hits is much harder (6 needed rather than old 4+), some other minor tweaks to unit abilities etc.

I consider V&F an alternative to Black Powder (feels very much like a variant) as only failing to activate Brigades on a 1 seemed better than 2D6 method in BP, but have to say so far in my outing there have been an awful lot of 1's and therefore inactive formations. 

But the 'event' cards are a nice addition (if a bit gamey) and the various systems for movement, shooting, melee and morale all work fine and are a tad less 'dicestatic' than BP. Fine as a quick play easy to balance (ie points) system although still well behind FOB in my own estimation. 

 

Also I came across some real vintage pics from my very early miniature wargaming days ie 1978/79.

Couple of (poorly lit as it was in our loft) early games with 6mm kit on an unpainted board with some unpainted terrain items. 

Believe this was during Christmas holidays 1978 when I was off school and Dad off work and think we used No 1 Wargames Command World War 2 rules.

Skip forward 6+ months and terrain has improved somewhat with a Hornby grass mat and more painted items of scenery (several old Bellona 'cut outs') 

Hard to tell but AFVs are mix of old GHQ and Heroics and Ros and all unbased ahh those were the heady days of yore.

I started gaming with Airfix 20mm around 1975 but cant find any pics (possibly some cave drawings someplace)

Valour and Fortitude test game

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 !!!