Someone recently asked on the Black Powder Wargaming YahooGroup for the top 5 reasons to buy Warlord Games’ new The Last Argument of Kings supplement to their Black Powder rules, which I reviewed in my last posting? Well, for me they are:
- Inspiring – gorgeous photos, and written with a real sense of enthusiasm
about gaming the period. - Entertaining – it is actually fun to read as a book.
- Enlightening – I didn’t know much about the whole period, even though I have armies for part of it. OK, so the book may contain a few historical gaffes (by some accounts, anyway). But overall I’ve got a sufficiently good overview from it.
- Good general gaming ideas – scenarios of various types and sizes, putting on big games, running campaigns.
- Interesting period-specific rules amendments – I put this relatively low on my list, because I don’t get to play many wargames, and so for a rules book to be worth me purchasing, it has to be much more than just a set of rules. It needs to do all the above points as well.
There’s another somewhat more vague reason too – the attitudes of the authors
themselves. I like their take on gaming. I like their models and terrain. I
like their sense of fun. I feel like I personally know them, even though we’ve
never met. So I would love to play wargames with them. But I can only do this
vicariously through their book.
DRESSING THE LINES 