Best time for fiddling about on your own - the house is quiet and much cooler. Tonight's action was some gentle testing of the revised Combat rules. OK - identified a couple of areas where I'm not quite sure what happens next (or, let us say, there are some choices to be made), and confirmed one rule I wasn't sure of. Good so far.
Buckets of Dice and Old School monochrome; The IR Palffy try to see what happens if they make an ill-advised attack on a superior force of Bavarians
Workmanlike testing laboratory?
Monasterol Dragoons, with General attached, check out their chances against an isolated Austrian unit across the valley. This section of the testing confirmed the adoption of a provisional ruling: viz Mounted Troops who do not win a Combat, if the troops are still in contact, must retire 1 hex or 2 hexes - their choice, but they become Shaken if they go for 2...
Up close and covered in soot
Tomorrow some more complicated Combats, and try out the new Artillery rules. Baby steps. Take lots of notes. Hot chocolate is a big help. And a little Couperin on the hi-fi does no harm for period feel.
Testing. I love playtesting. For repeated trials, I create a simulation study so that I can run the experiment 10,000 times with any number of variables. Yeah, that's the way I do it...
ReplyDeleteHi Jon - that's very good. I know my new artillery rules will work OK numerically, because I set up a simple Excel spreadsheet which does 100 trials for any range and target type, and analyses the results for average no of hits, no of times that we get 0, 1 or 2 hits. Fairly crude, but it gives some confidence. The numbers don't worry me as much as the procedural stuff. Last night I decided that a Group Order to a bunch of units can stipulate "advance to the attack" and then, after the defenders have had a chance to test for reaction and all that, the attacking player can decide on the spot which of his units will actually be attacking, which providing support (as defined in Rule 6.3(h) or whatever). These are the areas where the game can get bogged down, which is what went wrong with the earlier draft, and that becomes more unpredictable when people other than myself start playing the game!
DeleteThe joys and frustrations of rules writing and testing! One can spend a LOT of time thinking about these things, which can be good or bad!
ReplyDeleteHi Peter. It's good fun, frustrations notwithstanding, but can get a bit obsessive. On numerous occasions, I have got up at 2am because I know I won't sleep until I have written down some rule change that I've been pondering over! A couple of instances, testing last night, of my coming across things which are in the rules, but I haven't actually mentioned them! Proof-reading will find the spelling mistakes, but it won't find the bits you missed out!
DeleteOne thing that never fails to surprise is that the problems with developing rules usually appear in areas that I hadn't expected - the bread and butter stuff doesn't work. The clever-clever bits are usually OK, because I've agonised over them, though they may prove to be more effort than they are worth!
As I say - excellent fun.
Good way to spend the wee small hours, easier to cogitate and such.
ReplyDeleteOh and happy bastille day to you.
Wonder if Smiths do a themed bastille day card?
Nah s’pose not…they wouldn’t want to go giving us any ideas.
Probably more chance of Gregg's doing a themed sausage roll? Only slight problem with night-owl rule crafting is that some very strange things can seem sensible at 2am.
DeleteHave you got something in for having a second line to rally behind? Attacking in a single line ought to be penalised for lack of resilience.
ReplyDeleteYes
DeleteWell a little bit of moonlight rule testing never goes amiss and it seems you have made some progress? As to the off topic piece then it’s hollow criticism, in my humble opinion a criticism for the sake of it, and there are so many people out there now who feel it’s there entitlement to criticise anything that isn’t to their liking.
ReplyDeleteTheir loss is all I can say and to be honest I almost dislike the frothers as much as TMP
Thanks Graham - in fact my late edit was not such a great idea, since it seemed to generate some extra reaction, and someone with a rather longer attention span than most over there sent a comment which I have failed to publish. Most unusual; mostly, those saddle-sniffers from behind the bike-sheds usually just giggle among themselves rather than sending a message out into the real world. It is sad.
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