Wargaming in the Time of COVID-19

I went in with low expectations about what this experience would be like, and I left very pleasantly surprised by how much much fun I had with fellow Scrum Clubber Steve Braun playing a game of Battlesystem "virtually" today using streaming video via Facebook.

Steve set up everything on his dining room table, and he would occasionally pick up the camera at my request (or to clarify his own move) and move it around the table so I could get a better sense of positioning in various parts of the battlefield. I'd give him orders, roll dice on my end, and we went back and forth from there.

Battlesystem (2nd ed.) is a lot of fun, and while a clear descendant of Chainmail, it does have a bit more rules overhead that we are still grappling with. We'll have to dig into the rulebook a bit more to make sure we're getting correct the costs for certain kinds of movement and changing formations. So, though a bit more complicated than Chainmail, it also adds a lot of much-needed material to help differentiate an Orc from a Dwarf from a Troll from a Bugbear. Furthermore, the magic system is far more robust.

We both really wanted to get our feet wet with this new (to us) set of rules, and we accomplished that and had fun bashing into each other's armies at the same time. We're hoping these rules will work for the mass battle sessions in our Braunstein-esque campaign the Scrum Club is working on.

Thanks for setting it up, Steve! I'll definitely play again! Here's to miniatures wargaming in the time of COVID-19!

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