Looking for reviews on The Sun Never Sets campaign system for TSATF

[rugaruga]

Has anyone played Patrick Wilson?s The Sun Never Sets sold by the Virtual Armchair General?  This is a campaign system for The Sword and The Flame rules.

[Doc Twilight]

Rugaruga -

I have owned the campaign set you speak of since it was re-released by Patrick at Historicon several years ago (I think it was Historicon 2003).

The components are quite nice, particularly the maps. At the time I bought mine, they were not satisfied with the way all the maps were being printed, so they re-did them, and sent me the new ones. Full color, very nice, and very useful for all sorts of campaign purposes.

The rules themselves are quite interesting. It's essentially an "everybody works with and is working against everybody else" type situation. Essentially, each player is a member of the British Government AND a commander of British forces in the Bush AND the leader of a native force. In other words, a player might be a member of parliament, the commander of British Forces on the Northeast Frontier, and the leader of the Zulus. There are lots of suggestions for who should command what and do what, to ensure that players don't find themselves battling their own natives, or interfering in something that would go against their interest to interefere with.

The essential idea of the game is that each of the players is competing to gain the most victory points, either by helping the Empire win, or by slowing down the success of other players by using his own native troops. A deck of event cards determines which risings are active, and allows for a variety of interesting random campaign events.

There are essentially three (3) major issues that I've taken with the system, and other reviewers have commented on the same.

The first (and a rather minor point at that, but it is mentioned enough in other reviews that I'll repeat it here) is that the campaign is clearly geared for use with The Sword and The Flame. This is not necessarily a problem if you are a TSATF player, but I have found that TSATF bogs down horribly with large battles. It was really intended for use in things larger than, say, Rourkes Drift. There are players who will disagree, and they are welcome to do so, but the reality is that not everyone who does colonials plays TSATF.

That said, there is an easy solution. Simply scale the armies appropriate to the rules you're playing. I tend to like Brother Against Brother for my colonial wargames, and I've recently been very intrigued by the Two Hour Wargames "Colonial Adventures" rules (which I own but have not yet had a chance to play). It is really very simple to convert, once you realize that most TSATF units are twenty figures strong. In BaB and in Two Hour Wargames, units tend to be smaller. It's just a matter of converting over to the appropriate unit side, and when specific campaign mechanics that call for TSATF rules come into play, simply use the equivalent in your own rules.

The second problem, slightly more serious, is the number of players required to get the campaign going. To put it quite bluntly, you really need anywhere from six to nine players to make the thing work (I have been told that any less than five and it just doesn't work well at all, six to seven being an ideal number, eight to nine being perfect, and this by one of the designers, no less). This may work well for you if you have a large club, but we all know how club dynamics work. You may have nine interested guys, but not nine armies. Or you may have nine armies, but only two or three players who are really dedicated enough to play the campaign.

And that's the other point with the second problem I've mentioned here. Dedication. This is not a campaign that can be played "lightly" (like, for instance, "Fire and Sword in the Sudan", which needs only minimal involvement for the most part). You really do need all or most of the players for each turn's Parliamentary meeting, and you need dedicated players to run the treasury, keep track of stuff on the map, etc. It is not a campaign system that works well for groups that tend to lose interest after the first couple battles.

The third problem is that the campaign requires a lot of lead, and some obscure lead at that. If you're a colonial gamer, you're likely to have access to British troops, and perhaps some Zulus. But how likely are you to have access to someone with Chinese for the Taiping Revolt? What about the native armies of the Northeast Frontier? Or the Ashanti? Maybe you do, and if so, fantastic, but it's worth considering. Of course, there is always the use of proxies, and some of the armies are going to be able to be ignored if you don't have a full house.

Anyway, the bottom line with me is that while I've read through these campaign rules as much as I possibly can, I have yet to find a group willing to play the whole thing through. My group is warming to the idea, but again, this can be a very daunting sort of thing to set up, and so I can only wish you the best of luck should you wish to go through with it.

One other thing - TVAG tends to charge a rather high price for most of their printed material. I'm not sure what the cost is now, but worth considering in lieu of this economy.

-Doc

[chicklewis]

We had a rousing good tSNS campaign at the Bengal Club.  Lots of colonial posessions went into rebellion, some were re-pacified, and lowly BURMA finally achieved independence !!  These parts of the rules, as well as those for parliament and buying and maintaining units, etc, work pretty well, and we had fun. 

The system really does generate some interesting battles, as well as a few really one-sided affairs.  With our Bengal Club play style, however, the 'Natives' often won the battles.  Colonel Winky, who was running the campaign, much prefers that the British win.  The Colonel then became enamoured of the intensely stupid Games Workshop Pirate rules, so, after about ten tSNS games, he lost interest in the campaign, which shuddered to a halt. 

That disappointed me, as I was prime minister at the time, and busily converting 80 Maoris from five manufacturers, which I never managed to finish or get on a table. 

Biggest problem with the rules, in my opinion, was that the many special rules for the various theaters and native opponents were very obviously never playtested.  This seriously bent two games. 

Overall, I would recommend the rules, with a caveat to carefully consider each of those special theater rules before adoption. 

Chick

[Plynkes]

Just thought I'd add that it isn't a system for running campaigns as such, but a campaign in itself. Britain vs. most of their historical enemies, in which as a player you take on the roles of both a British politician and a native potentate at the same time.

 I was one of the folks that subscribed to the new edition (so my name is printed inside somewhere: W00t!), but I don't suppose I'll ever play it, much as I'd like to, for the reasons stated by Doc above. Don't (and never will) have enough lead, and there's only four of us in our gaming gang. Can't really ever see it working for us as printed (they'd be enthusiastic players, but I'd have to do all the bookwork, and there just ain't enough of us), but maybe I will one day steal a bunch of the ideas and mechanisms contained within and use them in something a little less ambitious in scale.

[bulldogger2000]

When the system was first published in the Courier WAY back years ago.  The group I was gaming with tried it and we had a GREAT time with it!   

I would highly recommend it.

The map I have is from The Courier as are the rules.  Counters were hand made.  Given these facts I am unable to review the current release and the quality of the components, but the game and sytem were outstanding.

[Shikari Sahib]

I play two times the Sun.........and both many many years ago, it were always a great time, probably a great group of friends, in both case the game end because England made bankrupt 
highly reccomended expecially if play with a good group.
Piero

[Tommy20]

My partner in crime & I played in a TSNS campaign years ago at the original Emperor's Headquarters.  At the time, we were new to colonials, and became the whipping boys for the rest of the group (who we didn't know), and lost interest really quickly.  Had the feel been less cut-throat, and more "friendly competition", I think we might have stuck around longer, but that fault lies in the group, not the rules.

I tried for a while to adapt the rules for a smaller group (and include Mars), but was never satisfied with the results.  If someone came up with a similar system, that perhaps covered fewer territories and was playable by 3-4 players, I'd be first in line to buy it!

[Tom Reed]

Many years ago my local group played this campaign with the rules from the Courier magazine and we had a great time. With each person playing two sides (I was the Chinese and also the British in South Africa) everyone stayed interested.

[Plynkes]

You get quite a pile of maps and record sheets ans such, as well as the rulebook. The maps are quite nice...





Also there are event cards and a bunch of counter sheets for the strategic maps.