Review of SKT Wargaming Rules

This is a review of the American Civil War (ACW) wargaming rules by Steve Thompson (SKT Wargaming) Flame in the South

Firstly, let me start by saying this is a review of Steve’s Flames in the South rules for the ACW. The SKT Wargames site contains a suite of rules, each customised to cover the foibles of the period but build around a common core covering orders, firing, melee combat and moral.

Although this review is focus on the ACW rules I have also used the "Will Victoria be amused"  rules covering the Sudan war (1884) and "Carry on up the Raj" covering the Indian Mutiny (1857). Other sets in the range include:

•        Zulu’s Thousands of Them – 1879’s Zulu wars.
•         Good old Hook nose – Napoleonic
•         Kampfe in Reihen – Lace wars (WSS)
•         An Uncivil Affair – English Civil War (ECW)
•         Landsknecht – Renaissance

Price

Always a question of interest to wargamers with a lead mountain to buy. The rules are free! But Steve does ask for a charity donation to Combat Stress, which seems an appropriate charity for us to support.

Style

The rules feel sized for a “traditional” wargame, e.g. a dozen units per player for a afternoon game. They do not feel like a military simulation intended to refight a major historical battle in an evening. As much as I don’t like comparisons between rules they are more “Blackpower” than “Blucher”. Having said all this, Steve regularly collaborates with Mark Frith at the War Games Holiday centre  War Games Holiday Centre (wargameshc.co.uk) to run huge multiplayer (8-12 player) battles lasting a weekend.

Scale

The rules are figure scale agnostic. Units consist of a number of “bases”, typically 4. In my last 6mm game we used 30mmx30mm as a base and as my figures are bases to the standard Baccus 60mmx30mm, each physical base counted as two logical bases.

Equipment

When the rules were written Steve was using a pack of cards (red & black) to generate success or failure. Lately he’s moved to dice with three red sides and three black sides. The game plays perfectly well using any 50/50 mechanism, if you don’t have these special dice, I’d suggest a d6 with 1-3 fail and 4-6 success.

Command & Control

To me C&C is one of the great strengths of these rules. The fashion in wargaming for command and control has changed over the years. In the early days commanders got to move all their units exactly as they wished. Many felt that this did not capture the “friction” of command & control. The fashion moved towards a limited pool of command pips, forcing commanders to focus on the area of the battlefield they really wanted to win. The downside of the pip system was that some units would sit unused through the battle when in “reality” their commanders would have been following their pre-battle orders.

More recently a number of rules have introduced activation rolls to get a unit involved. Various flavours exist in rules such as Blackpower, Bloody Big battles (BBB) and the Twilight of the Sun king. etc.

For those of you who prefer guided missile control of you units consider that it’s not the units refusing to follow an order but rather unknow factors, e.g. the Prussian infantry at Kolin (1757) advanced through a meadow and found themselves mired in the mud of several drained unmapped ponds At the Battle of Minden (1759), the entire Cavalry Right Wing under Lieutenant-General Lord Sackville failed to advance and engage the French. Sackville was court-martialled after the battle. A number of people I play with do not like the activation roll approach as they don’t like their command sitting around unwilling to do anything. It may be realistic but it’s not fun. The SKT rules have a more fun/generous approach to unit activation. A commander can take a single activation for a unit (more or shoot) but if he wants to gamble with the command dice he can get two or even three activation…or loose his activation altogether. It’s a nice mechanic as a commander can have a unit ”plod” along but when the actins gets hot he can push his luck, at a risk. These rules make you feel like it was your choice to push for an extreme activation rather than you roll your dice and sometimes you don’t get to go.

Shooting

The shooting rules are quite straight forward with a unit having 3-4 bases and one firing die being rolled for each base, plus or minus a number of dice to allow for situational factors.

Melee Combat

This is fundamentally the same as the shooting rules.

Moral

Units take hits from combat. Once a unit has taken one hit for each base subsequent hits are moral hits. At the start of each turn units with moral hits test to see if they stand, retire, or flee. Players need to be able to track hits and moral markers on units. In the games I’ve played we’ve used two dice to track hits and moral both held in a double dice holder.

Customisation

The rules allow for elite, regular and conscript troops as well as various types, dragoons, skirmishers etc. Some rules (e.g. Blackpowder) will give “special powers” to units. In these rules customisation is applied to the commanders as “Style of commanders”; e.g. The Cavalry Commander - This chap loves the service and the feel of a horse under him in combat. Add one in combat if against foot, and two against other cavalry.

There are also commander cards which can be used to enable a commander to tip the battle at the right point, ranging from “+1 Shooting” to “Where the hell did that come from: place a 6” round piece of marsh on any open terrain within 20” of the commander at any time!”.

I have played both with and without the Style of commander and commander cards and without them. They add a touch more random chance to the game but are in no way necessary.

Overall

Pros	Cons
Very easy to learn. 1-2 turns to pick up the basic rules and by the end of the fist game you’ll have picked up all the rules. Great price Give a fun game Point system for sizing armies	Rules give a feel for the period and the way command and control works in war.  They make no claim to be overly historically accurate.             Players need to be able to track hits and moral markers on units which adds clutter to the table.