A couple months ago I was perusing Facebook and came upon a post showing this book of scenarios for the Boxer Rebellion. Now, before you ask the answer is no, I have no figures for the Boxer Rebellion, but I will. Anyway, I thought I would do a mini review of it in case people were interested in it but had not seen a physical copy as yet.
It is a beautiful book, with a ton of pictures and everything you could want in a scenario book. Here is a shot of the contents.
As you can see there is a little bit of everything here. Historical background, 19 scenarios, uniform guides, and some rules to help you use a popular rules set to game the Boxer Rebellion.
First lets talk about the scenarios. Each scenario has a basic map, it appears most are 4x4 with some 6x4 and at least one smaller map. Here is a shot of a typical map.
This one is 4x4. All the scenarios have pretty generic forces such as a unit of this or that. This, IMO, lends itself to being rules agnostic. If you want a skirmish you can set it up with forces that go with your favorite skirmish rules. Want something bigger you can do that as well. I was pleasantly surprised with the force listings and saw immediately how flexible they were rules wise. Many of the scenarios have in addition to the basic stuff such as a map, forces, and scenario specific rules, random events tables as well. That to me enhances replay-ability.
Here is a sample of a force list
After the scenarios Chapter 10 gives a brief rundown of each force as well as plates and painting guides. There are several appendices, one of which is modifications for the Black Powder rules.
This appendix is 20 pages covering rules modifications and troop types/stats for the Black Powder rules. And if you really love Black powder, there are rules mods to use it as a skirmish game as well.
Overall, a pretty good value at $44 usd. I got my copy from OMM here in the US, and I would assume Caliver would have it in the UK.
I hope this was of some help to anyone interested in this particular period.
Thankyou for this review. I have been considering the book, but was unsure without any idea of actual contents. Just that page has helped me decide, so thankyou :)
ReplyDeleteGlad you found it helpful. I was in the same boat. Figured others might be as well.
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