Still Alive

Well, the Winter campaigning season, such as it was, is over. Spring has been skipped and we are now in full summer mode. Wow, what a mess the yard is!

I have been trying to finish up the 2 new lancers and the 5 new horses for the Oberhilse Republican Guard but they have been resisting so there are still some belts and bits of harness and details to finish and touch up.

Apart from domestic distractions though I've also hmmm...used up .. a lot of time reviewing past posts as I prepare a summary of my plans and as I try to confirm that I'm on the right track ruleswise. Now even I am not self absorbed, diligent or crazy enough to read every one of the more than 1,000 posts (really? didn't seem that many at the time) , but I did at least scan enough to interfere with painting, playing and rule writing over the last week.

Archive shot of a game from April. This is the look that will continue.

Three things struck me as worth heeding. The first is that there is a fair amount of repetition as various thoughts and issues pop up and are considered . The second is that despite superficial changes some things have remained fairly constant for the last 10 years. Lastly, despite some change in detail, what I want and what I am planning have remained surprisingly constant.

The full plan is still coming but with great relief I have found a wording and format that will allow me to continue to use one set of rules for various sub-periods of horse and musket games in various scales with or without the grid. That is to say the same mechanisms but with different restrictions for units on the grid and off the grid. The plan is to take another shot at having 2 parallel versions rather than trying dealing with awkward phrasing or alternate rules side by side to deal with things like "adjacent". For the foreseeable future the 40mm Atlantica games will stay on grid because I'm lazy!.

At the moment the gridded version will keep the title Square Brigadier and has the mechanisms, all tried and proven, that will remain for both as well as some generic stats. I still need to add more detail on units and weapons and special rules for various wars and campaigns but it is available at right. 

As soon as I can get those pesky lancers dressed and sober I'll play a game then Atlatica will go on the shelf for a bit until I get some sculpting and painting of her Majesty's troops done. But that will have to wait until after Huzzah. In the meantime there are preparations for the Huzzah Charge! games and there is the Morschauser based Medieval/Fantasy exploration.

A Distraction. A shot borrowed from Gathering of Hosts blog.

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