Rules Review; Blood and Valor

 

       I had heard great things about Blood and Plunder (a rules for the Pirate era from the same publisher) but, having a different set that I was quite happy with, had never played them. When I saw that Firelock Games was bringing out a set for the Great War era I was interested and picked up a copy shortly after they appeared at Michigan Toy Soldier.

       Having read the rules a couple of times through I decided to give them a go with my gaming group.  Our first scenario pitted three British tanks against a well-armed group of German Stormtroopers with the tanks having to fight their way across the table and off the far edge. I always prefer historical scenarios to the contrived one where everyone is fighting to capture some odd bit of dirt. Tanks often were stripped of the infantry and ended up forging on alone toward the objective, plus this would stretch the rules and give an idea as to tank vs infantry combat (always a difficult thing to model in a rules set).  I had to improvise rules for the T-Gewehr as the book does not supply them. I also had to come up with effects for bundle grenades as these are also not addressed in the rules.

        Our second scenario was a simple meeting engagement on the Eastern Front (for which I had to improvise stats for Russian troops as none of the eastern forces are covered in the army lists provided in the rules). This saw roughly identical forces facing off, each side having one gun, a couple of MGs and the balance of forces being infantry trying to capture a village at a crucial road-juncture. 

        In both these games we made some mistakes as we were just learning the rules but the games played fast and fun. The bidding structure for unit activation added another layer of decision-making and trying to outguess your opponent without slowing the game too much. The rules are clearly written with good examples of play and simple enough that by the end of the second game we had things pretty well in hand, not even needing to check the QRS.

        Overall, if you are looking to play a GAME that looks like the Great War, this will provide you with good entertainment. The game systems are straightforward and easy to remember and they reward careful use of the troops that you have to hand. You won't need too many troops (we played games in the area of 300 points and didn't need more than seventy figures on a side) and the 3' x3' playing area means that you don't risk breaking the bank buying terrain either. This is a fun game.

         On the other hand, if you are interested at all in how troops fought in the Great War these will leave you wondering about a good many things. Weapon ranges are tiny and the penalties for firing at longer ranges (the range-bands are in six inch increments) stack up very quickly, and the troop organization presented in the Army Lists bears no relationship to how actual units were organized. There is no provision for the mixing of weapon-types at the squad level that occurred later in the war. Although cavalry are addressed armored cars are not, and the French Schnieder tank has gone missing entirely. Troops stats are blandly alike and units are only differentiated by "Special Rules" which allow rerolls of dice under certain circumstances. Although the Army Lists expend a lot of space on the Gallipoli, African and Near East campaigns the entire Eastern Front is ignored and the Italian Front makes no appearance either. Naval gunfire barrages are included but there is no consideration of air-power at all. A great many other weapons are ignores as well, an example being the T-Gewehr. I am left with the feeling that these rules just substituted Great War soldier type for Pirate types with a feww odd new bits "bolted on".

          Physically the rulebook is a well made hardbound product that is clearly printed on good-quality glossy paper. The layout suffers badly from the current trend to substituting flashy color photos for content as well as some glaring layout issues. 

 

the contents pages are a two-page spread with a color photo background but the contents subjects and page numbers are printed at about a six-point font, despite there being two full pages of space dedicated to the matter 

 

this could easily have been juxtaposed with the Contents page 

and the remaining space given to a Russian army list 

 

 

I consider myself a slightly above-average painter but I have to say that if I were going to illustrate an entire page in my rule-book I would have rounded up better-looking minis than these

        In all these rules strike as the sort that we used to get for free in the pages of Wargames Illustrated (back in the glory days, before it became a "house-rag" like White Dwarf); simple, easy to play mechanisms, with a dollop of history on the top. The use of over half of the page-space for photos of minis unrelated to examples of play simply makes it look like they are trying to fluff up a rules set that would easily fit on ten pages to create a sense of value-for-price. Another complaint is that there are markers required to play the game indicating unit status (i.e. "running" or "taking cover") but these are printed on the back of the QRS while there are several pages of advertising and blank pages for "notes"  that is just sloppy layout.

        I like the Command bidding system, it simulates the decision-making that a small-unit commander would experience; "Where do I exert my energies to accomplish the mission". The rules mechanics have finally broken the strangle-hold of "roll one six-sided die" that has plagued small-unit games for the last decade by going with ten-sided dice, these allow the rules to include more factors and each one is less impactful upon the result. The sequence of "roll to hit, roll to save, check morale" will be familiar to gamers from the sixties and seventies (such as dinosaurs like me); it might be old but it works just fine.  With a fair amount of tweaking to bring the squad organization into line with reality these can be made a playable and somewhat realistic set of rules but I am left with the nagging feeling that the rules were haphazardly pasted over the original Pirate Rules without enough research into the Great War and what made it so different from the conflicts that preceded and followed it. I won't be buying any expansions that come out for that reason alone.

       I can say that these rules will give you a fun game, they play slick and fast; but if you are looking for something that will give you a real feeling for commanding small-unit actions during the Great War I think that you should consider other options.