More on This War Without an Enemy

Not much progress on this I'm afraid. Partly the motivation is lacking for wargaming at the moment. I find it easy to do other things, even if it is just binge-watching Marooned with Ed Stafford. That is watching a TV programme called Marooned with Ed Stafford, not that I'm watching something called Marooned with a bloke called Ed Stafford.

I finished the Playbook (but haven't worked through the sample scenario). For one I hadn't got around to sticking the labels to the little wooden blocks. This is not an activity that I like doing. I don't have fingers nimble enough, nor do I have the hand-eye co-ordination to get the labels on exactly right. That task is now 90% complete, as I decided to get it done whilst watching the aforementioned survival programme.

The final 10% are the labels for the Siege Markers. It is not clear from the labels or the information provided in the rules, exactly how to place the labels, and there's no mention of them in the sample game in the Playbook because there aren't any sieges in it. There are six Siege Marker labels numbered 0-3 and two labels marked 4-6. There are 4 blocks.

The markers are to be turned during each Siege Resolution Phase, increasing the number at the top by 1. There is a Siege Attrition and Surrender Table which has the Siege Marker value on one axis and a D6 roll on the other. The higher the D6 roll and the higher the Siege Marker, the higher the chance of attrition to the defenders and surrender. The Siege Marker Value axis goes up to 5. So the Siege Marker is meant to represent progress of siegeworks and falling morale and resources in the garrison, but this is not explicitly stated anywhere. No matter. But what does a Siege Marker value of 6 represent? I could assume it means automatic surrender, but what of the other outcomes like Attrition?

It looks like a Siege Marker with a value of 5 means  an automatic surrender, but what about a value of 6?

Anyway, a query has been sent off to Nuts Publishing, the game producer. Let's see what the answers are.

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So what of the Playbook? Well, the sample, scenario takes you through two turns in 1642. As there are no sieges in the play-through I could work through it without knowing the answers to my queries. So no excuses.

The sample game takes up only a third of the Playbook. The rest of the Playbook consists of historical background, army make-up during the 1640s, the cities and regions of England, main political events affecting the war, pen portraits of all the major leaders, and a rationale for all the Card Events. The pen portraits are particularly interesting and useful, and are balanced. Sympathetic even. Far from the stereotypes of popular history. Descriptions of the Event Cards are also useful, and give extra historical flavour. One thing that could improve the Playbook would be to run through a complete siege. If it was a question of space, then some of the other historical information could have been omitted.

The original purpose of me getting the game was to generate meaningful battles within a campaign context. The next step to that end, apart from running through the play test, is to convert the strength values into table top units. I think I need to tabulate the blocks of the various arms for both sides and compare this to the models I have available. I don't need to have parity between the game blocks and my figures, but I will need a reasonable ratio. What I want to avoid is being short of figures then having to delay things further (or have the excuse to delay things) while I wait for a new delivery of figures from Pendraken, then have to paint and base them. 

Fingers crossed.