EVENT CARDS

[billwargames]

Gerry,Alan,and myself had a discussion with regards to cards used in the most enjoyable game at the weekend and alternatives to how they be used.Here are some of my suggestions from the above conversations..
Suggestions
-The card deck is used only once.cards are drawn as per the game when used- are discarded,but the deck is used only once and when its done,its done.
OR
-Each player is allowed one card during the game and can use it only once,they are allowed to change the card at the end of each round if they do not like it,but to repeat their card can only be used once during the game..This would allow the player to try to get a card they felt suitable for their situation but not overly dominate their action with cards.
The King is allowed 3 cards, he can use one per round,and draws a replacement at the end of the turn(an option in this case the King can also change one card per turn at the end of the turn -I wasnt sure about this as this could allow the King to build up an overly strong a hand).
This would mean that the King could put some influence on one area only- per turn and would also force the players to be more frugal in the use of their card.
Greetings also to the Pretender King,and also to my gallant team mates who put up the good fight.....
signed
William-R................
PS has anyone seen my white horse.......................

_________________
biomed

[j1mwallace]

Good morning gents.
I enjoyed the game thoroughly at the weekend.
As regards the cards.
good idea but...
I thought that the idea of the cards was to be a random event style with a few twists. However in the first game they radically influenced the flow of the game, entirely disrupted any "plan"you might have and completely undermined anything you were trying to do. However the first game was only for learning.
In the second game though there were still too many. There were usually 16 random or non random events per turn. The ability to target specific units is too powerful. Eg playing an out of ammo card on a unit which has never fired is a bit strange.
The cards become a battle winning strategy handed to you out of nowhere!
As an example of this I can only quote from our side where the Dutch guards were downgraded to elites with no ammo even though they had never fired a shot. This happened to both battalions.
William never supplied his favourite troops with ammo?
A potential fix?
Give the C in C cards only. Give them relative to his capacity as a general.eg a plodder receives 2. a bog standard receives 3.
Also make the cards less unit specific.
Instead of choose a unit to go low on ammo etc., try randomly choose a unit.Makes the cards useful but not too effective.
So if playing a card on your opponent the result should be more random.If playing on one of your own units then allow it to be specific.

Encourage people to actually read the card, not just read into it what they would like it to read.!!
A good example of this was the low on ammo card played again on the unfortunate Dutch Guard.
Out of ammo until resupplied by an ammo wagon. Nowhere does it say that they must retreat to re ammunition. The ammo wagon comes to them.
So... cards a good idea but reduce numbers and effect.
See Jerry's comment from the first game re a complete embuggerance over which we had no control.

Highlanders.
Charge is too strong. After the first charge reduce it to plus 3 if charging again.
I thought that Jerry had a good idea of plus 2 per base. Then you don,t have a unit of 4 highlander figures who have have already fought twice, still getting more dice that a unit of guards who are entirely fresh!
An excellent game. Played in the spirit.

Barry you'll need to book for boat for exile though!!When Marlborough comes around be prepared to receive some closet letters. Is the Jacobie clset the only one you are in..... just i nquiring like.

[Redmist1122]

Piggybacking on this post from the one I started about event cards. I've only used "event" cards in two games/eras...Pirates and BLB. So, with the BLB game I've used the pre-posted events from the rule books; which gives the player a choice to randomly select a unit.
I agree w/Gunter about the using cards for a specific unit...game changer.
Using events for specific battle works based on that scenario; i.e. "capture the enemy's powder wagon by turn 5, or your units will be out and unable to fire their muskets."

My two cents...

[Churchill]

Ray.

[andy thompson]

Damp powder?; Sub-standard quality powder as the Colonel has embeze "cough", sorry, invested in other areas of equipment as a priority; wrong size ball?; wrong size coat buttons? There are many excuses for why a unit might be out of ammo before firing a shot. The causeway at Aughrim springs to mind.

As for the drifting powder smoke that obscured Kirke's first fire (the unit Jim was about to unleash on some hapless Highlanders), it was hilarious , but...our ammo cart had been burning since turn 1. (Incidentally gutting two squadrons of Dragoons straight off the bat). It's just possible that you could argue that that was where the smoke came from - naturally Gerry and I did just that.

The actual cards were fine and added a bit of fun and randomness to the games, there were just too many flying about.

Andy

[barr7430]

Actually the post match feedback and comments are pretty interesting. Despite the fact that the cards are generally accepted as being too abundant, the chaos they caused seems to be the most memorable and for the most part it seems, entertaining memory for many. We wanted to make the weekend a bit different and a spectacle, not just something you could experience at the local club only bigger. The cards are currently under review for commercial release and that is not an if but rather a when.
The many suggestions on usage are noted and very helpful. The plan is likely to be as follows:

1. Generic deck
2. Theatre specific decks
- Jacobite Scotland
- Jacobite Ireland
- Flanders & Germany
- GNW
- Eastern Wars
- Colonies
- Domestic insurrections
3. Events deck drawn from the original ideas in BLB1 & 2


Each deck will probably be 20 cards.

We will recommend a variety of different 'use' mechanics which players can choose for themselves.

That should keep everyone happy

Getting back to the main event, the battle, the strategies and the mechanics.... I was very pleased that with the exception of Commanded Shot and Highlanders , everything else produced little or no rule query/anomaly/disputes.

[Gerryjd]

Hi Gents,

Even though I never took part in the game at Derby, reading some of the comments by those who did take part, especially Jim, it sounds as though the game was run by the event cards and not the players themselves.
I have to agree with Jim, how can a regiment run out of ammo when it hasn't even fired?
If I might make a suggestion once order markers are placed, every player (brigadier) roll's a six sided dice and a resulting score of 1 earns that player a event card and must play it (good or bad) straight away.
The player (Brigadier) must then roll another D6 for each unit until a result of 1 is met to decide which regiment is effected under his command.
C-in-C's get event cards for the number of brigadiers under his command, helping those units he wishes to push forward quicker.
He would discard the bad events, but could replace all cards the following turn.

Just my two penth

Ray.

Ray,

I'm afraid that could have made things even worse. On the left wing Andy and I had between 4 and 6 brigades. Across the whole table, you're probably talking 20+ brigades on the Jacobite side. If ye Olde Kinge was given one card for every brigade on his side, and let the players get a card as well if they roll a 1, you could, in the extreme, get almost 30 cards played onto the table in one turn for each side. That would destroy the whole game in my opinion.

The cards that Jim had played against him the most were the out of ammo cards and that was in the Saturday morning introductory game. I think me and Andy played 5 against the centre of his line....but that was just the way the cards came up, and we had far more cards available to us to use in the Saturday morning game than in the main game.

Being honest, you had to be there to see the hilarity that some of the cards caused, and it affected both sides at various stages over the weekend

Cheers

Gerry

P.s. given my ability to roll 1's over the weekend, I'd have had loads of cards to use.....Andy will back me up on that one!!

[Friedrich August I.]

...
2. Theatre specific decks
- Jacobite Scotland
- Jacobite Ireland
- Flanders & Germany
- GNW
- Eastern Wars
- Colonies
- Domestic insurrections
3. Events deck drawn from the original ideas in BLB1 & 2


Each deck will probably be 20 cards.

We will recommend a variety of different 'use' mechanics which players can choose for themselves.

That should keep everyone happy

Getting back to the main event, the battle, the strategies and the mechanics.... I was very pleased that with the exception of Commanded Shot and Highlanders , everything else produced little or no rule query/anomaly/disputes.

Barry,

this sounds great!
I cant remember of any specific moment that would have caused massive quarrels about rules or regulations. On the contrary I often witnessed the real 'Gentle agreement' as main stay to solve sitiuations.
It was great Fun.

Günter

[Gerryjd]

Getting back to the main event, the battle, the strategies and the mechanics.... I was very pleased that with the exception of Commanded Shot and Highlanders , everything else produced little or no rule query/anomaly/disputes.

Barry, one other thing , maybe,to look at is the minimum seperation distance on a steep hill. 3inches meant that infantry could never charge up the hill, so we reduced it to 1inch if I remember rightly and that seemed to work reasonably enough.

Cheers

Gerry

[Churchill]

Ray.

[Adam Hayes]

With hindsight the event cards certainly kept the action seesawing bck and forth, in our part of the battlefield anyway. (Three times I organised my cavalry into position to charge only to have the little feckers mistake their orders )

The only change I would make to the cards themselves is to eliminate most of the 'choose which unit to inflict it on' type, in favour of random choice of victim. Being able to nominate the unit you are about to attack as being out of powder for example was just too powerful. And I say this as benefitting from one of those cards when I was able to send a unit away from the post they were defending to loot some nearby houses. (I wasn't proud of this but tried assaulting hard cover and once a unit had been shredded I decided it was too formidable a challenge and deployed the event card.)

[Friedrich August I.]

.. )

The only change I would make to the cards themselves is to eliminate most of the 'choose which unit to inflict it on' type, in favour of random choice of victim. ....

I second that. There has been a situation in the center when Jim(Wallace) mounted a charge and I wanted to stop them by using a card that would have stopped them in the tracks. In this case it was one of the Dutch Guards . Jim read the card more closely and found that I overread the words 'random unit' what would have, from his point of view, prevented this 'halt'. So he numbered them from one to 10, I throw a 4 on a D10 and - voila - it was the same Dutch Guard Battalion I designated before
What a stroke of luck(for our center) or bad luck for Jim.

[obriendavid]

[quote="Friedrich August I." I second that. There has been a situation in the center when Jim(Wallace) mounted a charge and I wanted to stop them by using a card that would have stopped them in the tracks. In this case it was one of the Dutch Guards . Jim read the card more closely and found that I overread the words 'random unit' what would have, from his point of view, prevented this 'halt'. So he numbered them from one to 10, I throw a 4 on a D10 and - voila - it was the same Dutch Guard Battalion I designated before
What a stroke of luck(for our center) or bad luck for Jim.[/quote]

Knowing Jim, I bet he gave a big smile and said "well done Gunter?"
not!
Cheers
Dave

[j1mwallace]

And shook his hand!!

[Friedrich August I.]

And shook his hand!!

Yeah! Something like that