[Review & AAR] Baroque

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Righty, first of all: Happy new year! For the first time in years I've been out for new year's. Friend bought a house, we all (well, all three of us, boostered, tested of course) came over to do the new years things. It was fun!

Apart from that, I set up a game of Baroque on the 31st of December, so I could get the year started properly. Solo game, to test the rules and write a review of this set of rules. If you're interested in my profound thoughts on these rules, along with a riveting test game battle report, come this way, please:

https://www.tabletopstories.net/language/en/2022/01/baroque-review-and-test-game/



Hope you like the article!

[Captain Darling]

BBS well laid out review and a very good AAR. Thanks for posting!

We’re tried these rules a few times now for our ECW games and like them. They fit in with our Monday evening gaming sessions well ensuring we feel like we’ve ‘played the period’ and importantly get a result at the end of the night!

[Codsticker]

Great review as usual Sigur; your reviews always tempt me into a new ruleset.

[Norm]

Superb blog post - thank you.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Captain Darling: Thank you, Darling! A funny (and utterly self-sabotaging in this case) thought crossed my mind around the beginning of the game: The rules really don't matter all that much, do they. It's mostly about the figures and the scenario. The rules are just an intermediary between us and the figures moving around in the scenario. Anyway - yup, I think that Baroque works rather well. As I said, the main strengths probably are the minimal down time between player decisions, and I just really like the Impetus system. Especially for 16th/17th century warfare, where unit cohesion basically was the dermining factor.

@Codsticker: Thanks very much! View it as a revenge for your own rules reviews. 

@Norm: Thank you for reading and commenting!


Speaking of commenting - the comments function on https://www.tabletopstories.net/language/en/ works again. It had to be turned off for a bit due to overwhelming spamming, but things seem to be better now. I'll see that I find the time over the weekend to write up and publish another Sharp Practice AAR.

[MGH]

Great AAR and once again I am in awe of your painting skills. Those tiny figs and they look so detailed and realistic. I wish I could paint like that.
I've never played those rules but you made them sound good.
The Thirty Years War is fascinating but I've never collected it, the closest I have are the Great Italian Wars and in 18mm (Blue Moon).

Looking forward to any future encounters, thanks for this one!

[fred]

Great looking game - always good to see your 10mm armies on the table!

Reading the review of Baroque reminded me of my problems with my attempts to understand the rules - and it was the odd acronyms that just seemed to constantly confuse me.

I’m not sure I’d really got it into my head that the game is alternating unit activation, with the option of multiple activations, with enemy reactions available - so thanks for making that clear to me.

We’ve been playing FKaP which the whole gaming group has found accessible - so much as I like the idea of Baroque I’m not sure I’ll be swapping rules anytime.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@MGH: Thanks very much! 18mm Italian Wars sounds amazing. As much as I love 10mm, I think Italian Wars really have to use larger figures, simply because it would such a waste of prettiness if you used small figures.

@fred: Thanks for the comment! Yes, as well as the rulebook is written, there's some small little things to overcome. The activation is something I really like about the Impetus family of games actually, and very well suited for periods in which unit cohesion is the #1 priority. Sorry, I can't work out what FKaP stands for right now. Could you help me out? I mainly got Baroque because I like Impetus, and at the time I just didn't know of any other suitable rules sets. In more recent years we've been spoilt with them though.

[fred]

If you are already familiar with Impetus, then I’m sure Baroque is straight forward to pick up

FKaP - For King and Parliament, the ECW version of Simon Millar’s To The Strongest rules - makes use of a grid for movement and playing cards for activation.

[MGH]

Yes, our Italian Wars games use a version of FKaP with our own modifications. Our local group loves the whole To the Strongest game system of which FKaP is based from. Once we started using Simon Miller's rules we have stopped looking at other rules, we are quite content.

[Baron von Wreckedoften]

Anyway - yup, I think that Baroque works rather well.

Well, you know what they say - if it ain't Baroque, don't fix it.....

[Codsticker]

Well, you know what they say - if it ain't Baroque, don't fix it.....

Ba-dum-tish!

[nickdives]

Cheers, now they allow a game to be finished in a couple of hours, how will they handle a large all day game, a few thousand figures on a 20 x 8 table?

[pogo]

Cheers, now they allow a game to be finished in a couple of hours, how will they handle a large all day game, a few thousand figures on a 20 x 8 table?

out of curiosity, i suppose you mean 8 foot across ? how on earth do you play in the middle ?
my own table is 10 x 6, I myself am 6'3 and is about the very max i can reach
I even have been thinking to reduce to 10 x 5

Alex

[nickdives]

A foot stool! (See Tales from the Wargames Shed on FB)