Stuart's Grey Horse and Big Wars

Here they are, ready for their first fight:

Stuart's Greys: Ready for some frays.

The Big Wars rules are nearly as simple and basic as one can get and if memory serves from my few trials in the days before I was ready for simple, they work quite well.

Play is simultaneous with a shared movement phase, shared fire phase and a shared melee phase.  The shared movement phase can be a bit tricky for solo play so I'll substitute an initiative draw to see who moves first each turn but keep the other two phases simultaneous.

Movement and ranges look relatively short compared to 54mm figures but fit a smaller table well. There is a fixed distance and penalties depending on troop type, formation and terrain.

Artillery fire resembles Charge! with a roll to "find the range" followed by a roll for effect but with shorter ranges and less deadly effect.  After several readings and some reflection, I've decided to rule that once artillery has "found the range" they don't have to do it again until the target moves.

Rifle fire is similar to Charge! skirmisher fire with a die per figure, but again shorter ranges, 6's hit at long range, 5,6 at short. Troops in cover as well as skirmishers, cavalry and artillery suffer 1/2 casualties as in Charge! but round down rather than up.

Melee is a series of figure to figure dice offs with a surprisingly long list of die modifiers.  +1 for this, -1 for that. Loser falls back otherwise fight again and if still a draw, both sides fall back.

Morale is dead simple, again as in Charge!, both units and armies fight on till below 1/2 strength then go home. That left me at a loss for what to do with the Elite infantry unit Red has so I gave them 2 extra figures which not only increase their fighting power slightly but also allow them to take 1 extra hit. The heavier cavalry types are slower without any compensating benefit so I am going to award a +1 vs lighter cavalry in melee.

The game is a-table.

Should be quick and bloody!  Probably tomorrow afternoon or Friday. I wonder what the odds are that I'll reset the table and play it again with AGW on the weekend?