Black Powder Playtest

I dropped by Bruce's fog-shrouded house last night (the roads home were crazy!) to give Black Powder a playtest. This was part three of our four-part effort to work through the new tactical level sets of Napoleonic rules.

Overall, these played much like Warmaster, but with many of the problems fixed. The rules were easy enough to learn and contact was made almost immediately so all the mechanics were in play by about turn three.

The command system is streamlined (one roll per unit or group per turn, but multiple orders are possible). Base removal has been dropped from combat which solved a multitude of issues and cleans up the mechanics. Dice still determine to some degree where the focus of your attack will be, though. In our game, Bruce had terrible command rolls (thank goodness) and missed winning the game twice because his units bogged down.


There is a fairly good relationships between foot, horse and artillery which allows historical tactics. Here's a tip, don't ride your horse in front of a cannon. There were also a couple of nice places where the game modeled things (e.g., advantage of charging in attack column) without any real mechanics at all--that is to say, the meta-design created natural and historical advantages in gameplay.

There was also some nice grit to the game, albeit through the relatively clumsy mechanic of special rules. Not sure how to work around that and cover 200 years of combat, mind you.

Not quite as good as LaSalle but still a good game.

Up next: Still working on some 15mm Saracen cavalry (whew!) and rebasing more 6mm fellows. Somehow I lost a 6mm cannon in the carpet. That is going to an unpleasant discovery with my foot.