Thursday Spanish Fury

Spanish, meet the French. French, meet the Spanish

This was rules test #4. I dug out my" Spanish Fury Actions!" rules from the Perfect Captain. "Actions!" is really made for smaller battles, somewhere between skirmish and full on big battles, so this clash was going to push the limits of the rules.

THe rules are very straight forward, There are only two steps in the turn sequence and charges, shooting, morale checks, etc, is all handled as each unit activates. As expected, the first few turns saw the units steadily advancing. Most units opted for the "Loose" formation to maximize speed, but formed up once they got close. My poor Gendarmes waited patiently for something to charge, but stuck waiting because cavalry cannot charge formed, disciplined pike. Actions classes troops as disciplined, undisciplined or other. Disciplined troops can force morale checks n units they charge that aren't themselves disciplined, and can forced a 3rd turn of HTH combat.

All combat, shooting or hand to hand, is done very simply by taking your base fighting value, multiplied by the number of stands. Then there is a roll on a chart. Results vary from loss of a stand, nothing or the accumulating of "Terror" markers. For each terror marker a unit it has, it loses the use of a stand and creates negative effects to the morale rolls. So a 6 stand unit with 2 terror markers fights like a 4 stand unit.

Its a slick system and gave realistic results, but it took forever, we ended the game after 3 hours with no real results beyond pushing the Spanish back a little, which is probably how the real battle would have been fought. Any negative thoughts I have about the game, were no fault of the rules. Actions! is really meant for a smaller battle with specific objectives like a holding action, or cattle thievery, not for big meeting engagements that we wargamers love so much. Unfortunately, the Captain's rules for larger battles called, not surprisingly," Spanish Fury, Battle!", is well researched, thought out, and completely unplayable. So, I'll keep these for smaller fights, and keep searching for another for bigger battles.

If you look closely at this picture, you'll see I've created a Hex grid on my mat. Hmmm, what could that be for....?