Memoir of Command and Battle Colours Cry '44....Part 1

Messing with the (Richard) Borg Collective....Resistance is futile....Prepare to be assimilated....

Given that I will be making much use of the above system in one form or another for my myriad of planned (and yet to be planned) hex and block based adventures I think that now would be a good time to sit down and think about exactly what shape I want the rules to end up in. It is absolutely my belief that it would be possible to have a single set of rules that cover the entire period from 1700 to 1945 so the plan then is to prepare such an animal. This is not without a few pitfalls but I think it is certainly achievable. I also think that taking the best elements from each current set – Napoleonics, Battle Cry and Memoir ’44 – would be a good starting point, sprinkled with a dash of Bob Cordery’s Memoir of Battle for good measure.

The biggest single difficulty for me concerns command cards. As it stands we have a WW2 set, an ACW set and then one for Napoleonics – I am not including Ancients at this point. There are other unofficial versions as well. These have one thing in common regardless of the period being gamed. They all have sector based movement/activation cards. The special cards are the period flavour specific types. Now I am thinking that it should be possible to draft a set of generic command cards for movement/activation and even for the special cards but with these meaning different things in different periods or even the same thing effect wise but described differently. This is purely a personal thing but if the tabletop reflects the action you are fighting then having generic cards should not matter – to me the description of the ‘period effects’ is a piece of ‘chrome’ rather than being of essential value.

I am planning to compare the command cards across the sets to establish the common cards and then take a look at the special effects to see what degree of crossover exists. As it stands at present there is one official set for the post Napoleonic 19^th century (Battle Cry ACW) period; a period that I would like to explore in respect of Colonial actions and even battles up to the Great War. The easy solution would be to use the cards from closest period to the game you are fighting but I would not really be happy with that approach – it would be a fudge too far, even for me.

I believe that it would be easy enough to formulate a single set of rules that cover 1700 to 1945 using the Command and Colours system with a set of generic command cards and with period specific special effects added to taste. This is one of tasks I shall tackle over the weekend, along with sorting out the Ironclads boardgame and starting on the final tranche of the block armies.