Skirmish Rules 1750 - 1850, Anschluss Publications £ 4.25 +p&p

These rules are fine. These rules work. They are also completely average. What is lacking, and what might have lifted these rules are some signs of originality. The rules for troop quality, movement, firing and morale have all been done before - only the numbers are different, not the models behind them.

The second major problem with these rules is a total lack of any rules for Command, Control and Communications. Each player commands a set of telepathic automatons who all do exactly what the player wants, with perfect coordination regardless of things like officers, noise, enemy fire. I have always been under the impression that even skirmishing was a fairly `organised' affair, with practised `battle-drills', systems of supports and so on. However, there is not a glimmer of any of these in the rules. They simply do not give any `feel' for what it was to command a low level skirmish, nor do they give any of the problems.

In short these are a moderately simply, workable set of rules, which unfortunately contain nothing that wasn't first done 10 to 15 years ago. Players wanting a very different, more realistic, game would do better buying `Hell by Daylight' rules, (also from Anschluss..£ 3.50), and devising suitable modifications for the weapons required.

Just as a final thought; is it `ethical' to ``underestimate the appalling carnage a .711 calibre soft lead musket ball makes on the human body'', (from the author's introduction), just to make our games more playable?

I'm not sure I feel comfortable with this notion.

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