1st Playtest-Song of Drums & Shakos

The game was played at Discordia Games in Bremerton, WA using the Song of Drums & Shakos rules. Gary Williams and I each had a squad of five French with one sargeant and an Officer each. Ron Berry played the Brits with one squad of Rifles and one of regulars. Ron chose to defend and Gary and I were the attackers. We should probably have had more troops to attack, but I wanted to keep it simple for this 1st playtest.


Beginning Moves. British Infantry are defending the walled enclosure.Rifles are lurking at edge of woods. Gary's squad of French are advancing down the road in haphazard fashion. My squad of French in background are emerging through the woods in a group.

Gary started out using Group moves, but after a couple of failures decided to use individual moves and only rolled one die for each soldier. This prevents getting two failures and turning over initiative to other side, but results ina disjointed advance.

My squad emerges from woods and will cross the stream to attack British in flank. i had better luck rolling Group moves so was able to stick together.

Gary takes fire from the rifles and ends up loosing a couple of figures, but keeps steadfastly advancing. Well at least these Crapauds have courage, unlike the rifles hiding in the woods.

My squad gets across the stream, but the Officer is beginning to fall behind as he was forced to use his actions to move group and was unable to move himself. Well at least he was shouting encouragement to them. Gary has gotten his little group formed up again.

My squad approaches from the flank while gary is having trouble getting his guys across the bridge

My guys are now close enough to start to do damage, but now the
sergeant has fallen behind. Officer has yet to catch up. Gary's squad is still trying to advance across bridge. Group moves are difficult if you keep failing on two dice.

My Officer shows up in time to order two of my men to assault the gateway. My guys shoot and knock one Brit down, but he gets up next turn. Brits in enclosure start to turn to face this new threat.

Gary has finally gotten a few guys to attack the Brits across the wall. Ron has move some guys up to counter my fellows entering the gate.

Rifles are still taking pot shots from the woods and letting the redcoats do all the fighting. What a disgrace!

In my attack at the gate, one of the Brits is killed. Gary has now gotten most of his squad and the Officer up to the wall to make an assault.  Ron has finally moved the Rifles up to support, but they are still hiding behind the wall.

Gary's Officer jumps the wall on his horse and easily takes out one of the defenders. The rest of his squad aren't as fortunate and are repelled at the wall. Some more of my guys move up to assist and my Officer moves into the enclosure to attack

The Rifles take out Gary's Office with rifle fire. The Bastards! My soldiers in the enclosure are defeated and suffer a Knock Down(shown facing away rather than laid down so as not to confuse them with dead guys).

In a subsequent attack, my knocked down officer and his accompaning soldier loose a melee and hence are killed. Gary's guys fail most of their morale checks due to their Officer being killed and are running away.

My guys pass most of their morale checks but the heart has gone out of the French attack as all the officers  have been killed and the Rifles would make the odd unbeatable. The French run away to fight another day.

October Update

Well I finished converting Book IV of the Minimus Gluteus Chronicles to Blog format. You can take a look at the link below.

Strategikon II

Received two new rule books recently. One is Song of Drums and Shakos which is for small unit Napoleonic Skirmish Games. Rules look very interesting and I am anxious to try them out. Seem simple enough, should be very playable. One side has initiative and tries to activate his men by rolling on 1D6. Most you can get is three actions per attempt, but if you roll two failures, initiative shifts to the other side. An officer or leader can try to activate a group with one roll for the group.



You roll against the figures quality, the lower the number the better. regular troops are a "4". Officers may be a "3" or a "2". Combat involves attacker and target(defender) rolling off against each other with modifiers. If you double your opponent he is wounded, triples kills him outright. If you use "volley fire", the target is -1 for each figure firing beyond the 1st one.

Normal Infantry move is 120mm, about 5 inches(one action). If you succeeded in getting three actions, you would hence move about 15". Musket effective range is about 9 inches, with medium out to 18 inches and extreme at 27 inches.

Song of Drums and Shakos is published by Ganesha Games. Check them out at: Ganesha Games

The other set of rules I received is the Deluxe version of General de Brigade. They come in a hard copy bound book with lots of pictures, art work and diagrams. My first impression is that they are a big improvement over the original, but are pretty expensive, $55. They certainly appear to read better than the original and there are some subtle changes. Will have to play a game with them first before reaching any final conclusion. Bottom line is, if you liuke the original, you will like these better. If you hated the original, you probably won't like these either.