In short, if you want combat with fixed and immutable rules, play chess or shogi.

I only add or tinker to give flavour to a scenario, even then it is only minor, most rules are well balanced after much play testing. The majority of house rules I've seen at clubs tend to favour the favourite army of the pushiest person there.

Cheers
Ian

These days, I tend to shy away from making tweaks and changes and fiddling, as pretty soon it ends up unplayable or grossly overbalanced and you have to tweak and twiddle and fiddle all the time in an endless faff.

I find we're more willing to look at the "big picture" and if it gives an over all game that feels in period, plays well and works then we just don't sweat the bits that previously we might have tinkered with. TBH most rules these days are well tested and written enough that over all they just work. Any that aren't/don't get junked

That said there's a definite difference on "tool kit" style rules where the actual intent is to pick up whichever bits are appropriate for the period/theatre/armies and use them as needed (Pike and Shotte etc are good examples here), but tbh I think we tend to drop them anyway as you don't really know what works until you play a few games, which cuts into "actual" play time quite badly!

Quote from: Sandinista on 07 September 2016, 07:29:28 AM
I only add or tinker to give flavour to a scenario, even then it is only minor, most rules are well balanced after much play testing. The majority of house rules I've seen at clubs tend to favour the favourite army of the pushiest person there.

Cheers
Ian

Funnily enough, the only other house rule I can think of that I think improves S&S is that light horse with bow (Mongols etc) can fire all round rather than just straight ahead. I pushed for this one after quite a few HYW English vs Mongols fights, because the fights just weren't fair - my English were winning every time.

Tinker - as in "toss a whole new idea at an existing rule set?" -- not much.  I will mess with my own play aids.
House rules I take more as a body of "case law" on parts of the rules where we have had interpretation issues -- pretty often.

Quote from: lentulus on 07 September 2016, 07:31:49 PM
House rules I take more as a body of "case law" on parts of the rules where we have had interpretation issues -- pretty often.

This can often be the case.

When I started playing Warmaster with my current group, they had some quite strange interpretations of some of the rules, which I think came from a quick read of them once, then playing the way they thought it was, rather than actually as written. This caused a few significant changes in game play - some of which the group never really got their heads around, as they had been playing the local way so long.

I've found this can happen with almost any game - but its often better to review these after the game, rather than trying to sort out the details in the middle of a game. I wonder if I come across as far too picky with some of the rules, but it seems that I'm able to read rules and understand them (often after a quick play though of a few key parts) unlike quite a few other people.

Quote from: Steve J on 07 September 2016, 05:56:06 AM
In terms of Bolt Action 2, I was reading the review in the latest issue of WS&S and was gobsmacked (to say the least) that in the 1st edition many players didn't take a Bren gun for the British . To my mind something is seriously wrong when that happens .

For some bizarre reason (and as much as I love Chain of Command), I keep coming back to Bolt Action for quick and dirty games where I have little time in which to squeeze a game in. I have slagged the game off (mainly due to firing ranges and the close combat mechanism which is appallingly poor).

However, I go for accurate forces based on real orbats rather than the power-gamers BA force which sadly is the norm among a lot of the BA gamers out there who are used to 40K lists.

Bolt Action In 28mm just looked and felt ridiculous. Played in 15mm it was good! There's bits I'd take issue with but I think you've covered the main point - aim to build something historical and it works out well. I'd also add ignore the scenarios - most of them end up very silly.

I think that's about the limit of my "tinkering" these days!

We play Warmaster regularly (usually once per week) and have slowly developed a few house
rules which we are all happy with.   Nothing drastic.

I took part in a Warmaster Tournie in GW HQ a few years ago and came across a well respected
player who insisted that we adopt a certain house rule mid-game (this made a substantial
difference to a combat at a crucial stage).   Being naive, I just went along with it.   Its only a game
but it does still annoy me - not the time to introduce a change in the rules !

On a more positive side, our gaming group did learn quite a bit at the tournie (meeting fellow
Warmaster nuts, finding useful tactics and coming across different interpretations of the rules that
made us question what we thought we knew).


Phil

Hullo,
I do tinker a little bit, but usually I try to use existing mechanisms in the rules rather than invent new ones. For example, in (ACW) Longstreet we felt that it was too easy for cavalry to charge infantry, so we just applied the existing "Dense target" modifier to mounted cavalry to make them more vulnerable to fire and motivate the player to dismount. In some cases I have had to do quite a bit of work to make the rules to our liking, especially in the case of Force on Force, which were so poorly written that we had to do quite a bit of re-intepretation. We may have changed the intent of the authors, but there was no way for us to tell
Cheers,
Aksu

Quote from: Glorfindel on 08 September 2016, 09:56:45 AM
I took part in a Warmaster Tournie in GW HQ a few years ago and came across a well respected
player who insisted that we adopt a certain house rule mid-game (this made a substantial
difference to a combat at a crucial stage).   Being naive, I just went along with it.   Its only a game
but it does still annoy me - not the time to introduce a change in the rules !

On a more positive side, our gaming group did learn quite a bit at the tournie (meeting fellow
Warmaster nuts, finding useful tactics and coming across different interpretations of the rules that
made us question what we thought we knew).


Phil

Oh dear, I hope that wasn't me!

It was interesting to see how others played and what armies they fielded. Also really nice to meet fellow Warmaster gamers and to put faces to names I'd seen regularly on WM forums.

As ever, I learned more from my defeats than my victories.

The tournies taught me many things, one of the main things being not to assume GW employees knew a damn thing about the rules they were supposed to be umpiring!     

Quote from: toxicpixie on 08 September 2016, 08:34:50 AM
Bolt Action In 28mm just looked and felt ridiculous. Played in 15mm it was good! There's bits I'd take issue with but I think you've covered the main point - aim to build something historical and it works out well. I'd also add ignore the scenarios - most of them end up very silly.

I think that's about the limit of my "tinkering" these days!

We played in 15mm too, looked a lot better and made more sense with ranges etc. And of course much cheaper, especially when you include vehicles.

Crikey yes, one 28mm vehicle is about the same as an entire 15mm army

Quote from: toxicpixie on 08 September 2016, 01:16:20 PM
Crikey yes, one 28mm vehicle is about the same as an entire 15mm army

Why you should go to 10mm or even 6mm. We have been using 6mm for Team Yankee, looks good and works better.

IanS

If we didn't have a lot of legacy 15mm, and the models weren't so nice, I'd have gone 10mm. Much of my last few years of gaming has been going to 10mm or 6mm, and now 2-3mm