Black Powder

Aside from adventures in basing our old ACW armies (I'm about halfway through doing the Union army), I've been reading a few things including Black Powder, which arrived safe and sound from Amazon last week.

The rules have been reviewed a fair bit in various places so I'll not say much more here, other than so far I've found them enjoyable and interesting to read.  I like the command constraints mechanisms they offer, for example, although I might adopt some of the house rules out there after reading the discussions on the BP Yahoo group.  I may also put down some of my thoughts on the rules once we've played them a few times.

However, I have to say that they did grab me straight away with the faux pompous style (at least I hope it's faux) and in fact there is quite a bit of humour throughout: even the 'Black Lung' cigarette cards on the front are faintly amusing.  I expect such cards come with the cigars one is supposed to puff on furiously whilst playing in the billiard room.

So, some play testng in the offing, I predict, perhaps even with the ACW troops I'm re-basing...