This Very Ground - Victory or Death Wargaming Rules 2nd Edition, Softcover
By Keith Stine.
It has been a real pleasure to revisit This Very Ground. It had been a long time coming since the original was published in2005. I hope you enjoy the new edition of the rules and I hope they are a true improvement over the last edition. I made alot of changes to the system, but my goal was to maintain the playability of the original while adding tactical nuance andflexibility that brings out more of the flavor of skirmish warfare in North America from the early 1600s through the early1800s, with a focus on King Philip’s War through the War of 1812.
I wanted to capture as much of the tactical feel of the period as I could, while allowing players to field forces from each ofthese periods. I also wanted the lists to reflect the differences in weapons, unit types, and unit qualities across these warsas well. With that said, they will have some similarities. Militia from the French & Indian War are still going to generallybe poorer troops than their regular counterparts, and these lists are scaled to each other as well. With that said, I wanted thelists to also act as a basic guide for creating your own forces for these wars. It is truly impossible to present all of the unittypes and variations for each of these forces across four wars. There will always be something missing in even the mostexhaustive list. Players are urged to see these lists more as unit archetypes than lists for specific units. It is suggested thatplayers tinker with these lists to put together the types of units and forces they want to see on the tabletop. These lists are away to do that and allow both sides in a game to be on the same page as far as unit stats and weapons.
This Very Ground: Victory or Death certainly has come a long way from the original French & Indian War focus of the firstedition. It is my hope that this has not diluted the rules but strengthened them and broadened them to allow you to playa variety of wars and field a variety of units and still maintain the tactical feel for these periods. And these four wars arenot the only conflict you can use these rules for! This system will work for nearly any small-scale skirmish in the musketera. You could use this system to game the wars in the Caribbean and in Spanish America or on the battlefields of Europe.Of course, it is still meant as a small-scale skirmish game. With the basic tactical unit being a platoon, the focus is still on1:1 scale infantry combat. But this shouldn’t stop players from zooming into a small area of a bigger battle. The scenariospresented here of Parker’s Revenge and the Battle of Lundy Lane are exactly that. I felt it was important to showcase howeasily the system will handle skirmishes up to bigger battles yet keeping a skirmish level of playability. It is suggested toplay most games using single-based 15-28mm miniatures on a 4'x6' table. Players may wish to field much larger forces onup to whole companies per side, or to use unit-based miniatures but record casualties on unit rosters.
--Keith Stine, December 2019.
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