by David Sullivan
ds.sullivan@verizon.net

I first played Flint & Steel at Pacificon in California. I'd seen the rules in the shop and they looked a little intimidating. The key appeal of playing in this game was that the author of the rules, Rich Kane, was running it himself - which is sort of a mixed blessing.

One the one hand it gave me the chance to get right into the game and see how it works without the intervening necessity of learning the rules; the expert on them was right there. If anyone had a question, Rich just gave an answer and on we played. This leads to the "on the other hand..." part of the mixed blessing: without Rich, finding the answers to questions would have been frustrating, as I learned when I brought them back and started playing them. Still, lest I leave you in suspense, I have to say that these are some of the best AWI rules that have come out.

While I'm hardly a doyen of 18th century wargaming, I am fairly well-read on the subject. A few years back I spent a lot of time trying to develop a "realistic" set of Marlburian rules. Armed with volumes of Chandler, Nosworthy, Churchill, Hughes, et al., I tried to get to the heart of 18th century warfare. I came up with what I still - modestly - consider some good ideas, but never put the whole thing together.

However, the experience left me pretty snobbish when it comes to evaluating any wargame rules for the period 1690-1783. The popular rules I've seen seem too generic to me and use rules mechanisms that could apply as much to ancients or colonials as to the 18th century. I got the impression from my reading that serried ranks of musketeers exchanging close-range volleys until one side or the other wavers or breaks is a fairly complex game of morale. Designing a set of rules that does this right is not easy. I immediately liked Flint and Steel for the one thing that was obvious about it: Rich got it right.

The feel is all there. The need to soften up an enemy line with fire before trying the bayonet is all too clear. A unit charging troops in good order is in for a tough fight ­ possibly suicide ­ as is historical. To get the right feel Rich used different morale charts for different things. There's one set of modifiers for charging, one for being charged; there's a chart for reacting to an enemy unit that ran away when you charged it; there's a chart for morale taken after each melée round; finally, there's a chart for general morale as well. This gives a better feel for the different conditions under which a unit must check, but it takes some getting used to.

Fire combat does a good job representing the rapid attenuation of fire effectiveness at even moderate ranges while making it wickedly murderous at point blank range ­ also a very nice historical touch. Musketry uses a percentage value based on range, this value is multiplied by the number of figures firing to get a total percentage for a hit, which is rolled on percentile dice. At extreme range the percentage per figure may be 1%; at medium range, it's slightly better and at point blank, it's 10%. The end result is that figure loss doesn't often occur unless you get in close ­ and then it gets nasty.

Figure loss is critical since it affects morale. Units are rated according to size for a ratio of morale loss to figure loss. As morale begins to decline due to losses, the ability of units to charge home, stand when charged, or perform well in melée begins to decline as well. This last point is important since melee works similar to shooting. The unit's morale grade (a number that starts at 5 to 10 depending on the unit) is multiplied by the number of figures in contact to get a final percentage value for inflicting casualties on a melée opponent. At the end of every round of melée, a morale check is made. Melée rounds continue until one side breaks.

The rules come in two parts: the rule booklet and the compendium. The compendium has all of the stats for every unit in the Revolution as well as leader values for every Rebel, Loyalist, British, Hessian, Brunswick, and French officer above the rank of major. I suspect Rich fudged it on some of the values, still, it's pretty impressive that he had all the names. The compendium also has an annex of optional rules and generic stats for European units of the Seven Year's War period.

The only drawback to the rules is that they're not that well organized. Whenever we play there's a good deal of flipping through the rules and compendium to find something (since we can never remember things from one game to the next). I suspect that if you played these every week for a short while, you'd know them backwards and forwards, but if you're more occasional, like me, a well-ordered rules set is pretty important.

Nevertheless, these are, in my humble opinion, some very good rules and you could do worse than buying and playing them (and we all know there's a lot of dreck out there).