Song of Drums & Shakos AAR

[Captain Darling]

Played a set of my favourite Napoleonic skirmish rules recently, Song of Drums & Shakos at one of our regular gaming nights. We had four players so everyone commanded 5 to 8 figures.

Pesky Frenchies and Stoic British slugged it out while trying to recover some lost 'secret orders'.

Battlefield and figures ready for action...


British Infantry trade pot shots at close range with French Dragoons, even at that range scoring a hit was hard...bloody smoothbores or was it our die rolling!


The big melee that decided the battle!


Turned out to be a French victory!

The scenario is here:
http://toysoldiersforoldgits.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/scenario-napoleonic-skirmish-song-of.html?_sm_au_=iVVQ3qVq64RmW77F

More blurry pictures and the full AAR are here:
http://toysoldiersforoldgits.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/song-of-drums-and-shakos-aar.html?_sm_au_=iVVQ3qVq64RmW77F

[zippyfusenet]

Thanks for the review. I've been getting up to speed with Song of Drums and Tomahawks, which I think uses similar game mechanics to the other Song rules. SODT is a lot of fun, but is engineered for two players, one war party of 6 to 12 figures per side. Mike Demana runs multi-player games at conventions with one war-party per player, and they work well, but he's pushing his rules past their original design parameters with lots of hands-on tweaking and micro-management during the game.

I ran an SODT 'attack the Smurf village' scenario in my basement a few weeks ago, with the designed small number of warriors on each side, but there were more than a dozen women and children in the game, whose main function was to run away or be captured. It made for a *lot* of activation dice rolls, until most of the dependents got out of the cornfield and inside the stockade.

My point is, I'm looking for a way to run bigger games, in a North American frontier setting, using the Song engine. It looks like Drums and Shakos supports several small units, 6 to 12 figures, per side. Is that so? How many figures in how many units make a good sized game? What are the practical limits? How many players can it accommodate?

[TWD]

That looks great.
Sorry to read the game descended into a bit of "off table" disagreement. Always a shame when rules discussion breaks the flow.
The scenario looks familiar...I hope it was inspired by the one on my blog (which I'm not taking credit for, I lifted it form a SOBH scenario)

I really like SoDS and would like to play a few more games - thanks for a spot of inspiration.

[Captain Darling]

Thanks Gentlemen!

Zippy these are great rules I love them and in theory you could pair up multiple 'section' actions to make a bigger game I personally wouldn't do it though the activation rolling itself would be cumbersome not to mention combat is one figure to one figure rolls imagation 50 combats a turn  .

For a bigger one figure one man skirmish (more than 20 figures a side) for any 19th century game I'd go with Smooth and Rifled.

Yep should ring a bell with you TWD!

Cheers!

[TWD]

Hi Zippy,
There is a "Large Battle" version of SoDS available from Ganesha games - the catchily titled Drums and Shakos Large Battles
I've not played or read it, but I understand it "upscales" the basic game to allow proper unit actions and multiple players.

When we've played regular SoDS we've usually had around 10-20 models per side, usually split into small groups of 3-4 and no more than two players per side.
It's a "proper" skirmish game where each individual model counts. I think the practical sensible limit is probably 2 players per side each with 10 or fewer models. Doubtless someone will be along to correct me, but up to 20 activation rolls per side per turn is about the limit of my patience.
I've got a copy of SoMT but only skimmed through it but on first glance I don't remember thinking there was much difference between the two games in terms of mechanics of activation or figure count.

If you're looking for the larger skirmish type of games where the focus is on small units rather than individual figure actions then for FIW/AWI I'd suggest Muskets and Tomahawks or Sharp Practice would fit the bill better.

Yep should ring a bell with you TWD!

 

[zippyfusenet]

Thanks for your replies. Advice noted: I won't try to overload the Song rules. 20 activation rolls is a lot.

[Prince Henry of Ohio]

Great system for a skirmish...! Easy to learn and quick to play.