I was thinking SOMEONE on here has played it!

Bill, have you? I'm thinking of taking a break from Warhammer and the other GW games, this intrigues me. I've heard the rules are excellent!

I had to look it up on theminiaturespage. Seems like the reviews are good. Covering the Colonial period leaves you lots of options.

I should be able to check out the rules this week,

A buddy up in the Windy City is sending a copy down. Figs look good all over the net with lots of manufacturers!

Let me know as well what you have planned Paul. Thanks to Bill Owen, I now feel more comfortable playing miniature games. Plus I'd love to re-enact the Battle of Roake's Drift if possible.

10-4,

I'm not sure which area I'm going to try out first, if I do run Zulus I can use them of course for Colonials, at a stretch Historicals, and also WHFB as one of the armies there.

As long as I can figure out a common basing system...

No knowledge of Sword & Flame. I'd suggest considering Volley & Bayonet for several reasons:

1. Numerous V&B gamers throughout central Illinois already

2. Lots of support materials for different periods ( www.testofbattle.com and http://homepages.para... )

3. Allows for full-size battles not just fractions like most rulesets

4. Covers a wide variety of periods... from 1700-1890 (with rule adjustments of course) for example:

Revolutionary War
Napoleonic (I have played with guys in Springfield)
Civil War (I have hosted here)
Franco Prussian
Colonial

I am considering selling my 25mm Civil War troops and switching to a tiny scale i.e. 1:600 instead.

I'll do a search on V&B tonight after school,

Sounds like it might do the trick too. What appealed to me about Sword/Flame was the small scale, therefore cheaper to get into.

Depends on what you mean by small scale... either you mean:

Figure size or representation. It can only take 1 figure to equal 200 men like in Volley & Bayonet (although it depends on purely what you want to place on a stand--for my 25mm collection 10 figures can equal actual 2000 or with 1:600 6 "blocks" of incredibly tiny figures--about 300 crammed together figures equate to 2000 actual men)

Or I assume you mean 1 figure equals 1 or 10 men which means you will never play full battles but rather skirmishes or a tiny portion of a battle.

I don't want to put down the skirmish concept; it's just that I haven't done that since 1976 so I'm not the one the give opinions about those sort of rule sets. I got away from them because my interest is the interaction of the campaign (the larger framework possibly a board game) with the miniature battle(s). In a grandiose sense, history is replayed. Which may come from my having started out in Avalon Hill boardgames!

Skirmish games can indeed be part of a campaign. Instead it's more like following Easy company from this hedgerow to that hedgerow to that village to this village. In the resulting microcosm, personal ordeals are replayed. And so a matter of taste!

Paul,
There were 3 responses on the yahoo group VNBLIST to my question about comparing pro's/con's on Volley & Bayonet vs. Sword & Flame (which one refers to by its full initials TSATF!)... one from the author himself of V&B, Frank Chadwick & the last one included my original request for info:

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Rich Bliss has done a very nice V&B colonial variant called Age of Stanley. Not
sure if it's in the archives or not.

The Sword and the Flame makes for a very fun game at the scale [S&F] was intended.
Being the power-drunk glory junkies we are, gamers tend to try to run bigger and
bigger battles with it -- bigger than it was intended for -- and in large
battles my feeling is that it gets somewhat tedious -- wait forever for your
move card to come up, then wait forever for your fire card to come up.

Frank

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The Sword and the Flame is, indeed, a skirmish-type game. The designer, Larry
Brom, modeled it as much on classic films such as "Lives of a Bengal Lancer" and
"Gunga Din" as he did on historical conflicts. As a skirmish game, it is very
good and very popular. I've played TSATF variants for the French and Indian War,
Napoleon in Egypt, the Mexican Adventure (Maximilian and the French vs. the
Juaristas), etc., as well as the standard rules for Britain's colonial
conflicts, the French Foreign Legion and so-forth , and had a great game every
time. The figures are based individually, and the basic Eurpean units are the
platoon of 20 figures, the cavalry troop of 12 figures, and the artillery piece
and four crew. Larry also self-published a variant titled "Eight Hundred
Fighting Englishmen" for "big battles," in which an imperial infantry battalion
is comprised of 20 figures on five four-figure bases, a cavalry regiment is
comprised of 12 figures on four three-figure bases, and an artillery battery is
comprised of three bases with one gun and four crew on each.

You're right that V&B lends itself more to playing out actual battles rather
than skirmishes. If you search the archives on the V&B list, I believe that you
will find some variants for colonial conflicts at a lower scale than one stand
equals a brigade. I have no direct experience, but folks on the list seem to
have used these modifications to good effect to game larger-scale battles.

Good luck!

Byron

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>I have a friend who was thinking of going with S&F for colonials and
>I suggested V&B to him. I really don't know anything about S&F but
>gather it may be more of a skirmish game* and V&B is about entire
>battles. Is that a an accurate read? Could you add any pro/con comparison?

V&B can go down to 40-man 'strength points' - so a 40-man (1 SP)
skirmish group or an 80-man (2 SP) fire or shock formation. And you
get to build up your battalion squares from multiple stands ;)

>*And the thought of Zulus parry & thrusting against a few redcoats
>is just not my bag.

You & your friend might find a middle ground in a used copy of the
old "Soldier's Companion" colonial rules - they used a 10 or 20 fig
'company' grouping. ISTR that RAFM still does their nice set of 25mm
"Soldiers of the Queen".

---

My opinion is that I'd rather utilize a variant (which Frank alludes to) to system I already like so I don't have to learn a new a rule system and so between my 2 favorite rule sets (V&B & TOB) I can cover 1700-1945 on a grand scale!

But I certainly understand if your goal is to have a more skirmish-level game (which may be more appropriate for the era), V&B probably isn't the right rule set.

I got a "free" copy of TSATF from a bud up in Chicago,

I'll be heading over to Springfield to pick it up tomorrow (it was brought back last weekend by another friend!). I hear ya about the level of the game, there have been many times I've played a BN/BDE level game in Napoleonics, ACW, or Rev/War. Sometimes it's fun to take a break with a no brainer type of game, just to let loose, which I'm in the mood for right now.

At this time I'm really in the mood to stop playing WHFB for a while, the designers have gone back to "Herohammer" instead of the actual troops doing the winning. So core doesn't mean much, folks (in comparison) are bringing armies of Imperial Guard to the field to win at all costs. So low level to me means small numbers of troops at a low scale. Petrowski always liked the big games, I'm in the mood for a more relaxing period of gaming for a while.

Thanks for all the references! I know Greg Novak, the co-author along with Frank. I played my first Historical game at the Knights of Pythias in Urbana in a 7 Yrs War game using 6mm figs back in the 70's. It was a good time, TINY figs!