"Victory Without Quarter" --

Well, we tried the above rules out today . . . and they were a lot of fun. We did have some questions about the rules however since they are relatively sketchy is certain areas.

As to the report of the actual battle, I will leave that to Murdock. He will surely post a wonderfully illustrated battle report on his Duchy of Mieczyslaw website sometime over the next few days.

However, a bit of background would be appropriate. This was a civil war battle in the 1650s between the Duke's forces (high morale) and the Baron's forces (more numerous).

Because of this scenario, I chose to make some changes to the usual card deck. Clarence Harrison's "Victory Without Quarter" rules use a card deck that features activation cards for each unit, each brigadier, each general, etc.. There is also an "End of Turn" card -- which makes for a deal of uncertainty (and tension) which we liked.

Anyway I made a few changes. Instead of one "Reload" card for everyone, I had two cards (one for each side) -- so one side could get resupplied with powder while the other did not . . . and this provided an interesting dynamic.

Since we each had two potential brigades as re-inforcements, I made up a "Re-inforcements" card for each of the four brigades. On turn three, one random one for each side was plugged into the deck. Likewise on turn six, the other two were added.

Of course, when one of these Reinforcement cards was turned, the arrival was not automatic. Because of the nature of the scenario, the Duke's reinforcements would arrive on a 1d6 roll of 5+; while those of the Baron would arrive on a 4+.

We did have some questions about the rules. I tried emailing the author a few days before the battle . . . but he was probably off at a Convention because I've not heard back yet (and he's reportedly very good at responding to questions).

Our first question had to do with Shooting. It wasn't clear to us as to which "orders" permitted shooting. What we decided (until we hear differently) was that we could shoot on "Hold" or "Move" orders, but not on "Maneuver" or "Charge" orders.

Another "Shooting" question was whether the target got to shoot back or not. We decided that for this game at least, it did.

A further question arose in play when a "Melee" ended with the units still in contact. Does it continue right then? On the next card drawn that could "activate" one of the units involved? Or only when one of the units involved chose to continue it. We chose the latter -- which I'm pretty sure was wrong.

There were a couple of other minor questions which arose during play . . . but I can't recall them now.

These rules were very different from our normal sets . . . but we had a lot of fun playing them. There was a definite "ebb and flow" to the fight, with a number of reverses of fortune . . . and the "Event" cards (which provided a few odd incidents) gave us some good laughs.

All-in-all we will definitely give them some more play.


-- Jeff