Hello from an ex-pat

Brett From Bakersfield, CA, USA. I stumbled across Kriegsspiel in a history podcast, describing its use by the Prussian army and navy at the time. In Goggling this term I have come across this wonderful group. I am an ex-pat from Birmingham, UK. Where I used to play Warhammer fantasy and 40K at my local Games Workshop. Always entertaining but it always lacked the realism of combat and real world situations. Big fan of the Total War series, and I see you guys like the SOW series for its similarity to the original Kriegsspiel ethos of game play. Question to all of you is should I purchase the original Gettysburg game and/or do I need to purchase all of the expansions to be available for some MP games in the future?

Sincerely

Brett

Hi Brett and welcome.

If you are interested in SOW, then donwload the demo, play the tutorials and see if you like it.
Then you can either buy the original Gettysburg or Chancellorsville as a standalone. This is enough for most MP games. Only if you want to play on specific maps from the expansions then you would need to purchase the expansions also.

Welcome, Brett.

As Leffe suggests, run the demo first. It is the full game so you will see that SOW is much more challenging than TW. When you decide to purchase, I recommend you get Gettysburg. The countryside is much more open which makes it easier to see your command and control it. Chancellorsville maps are more challenging in that they are heavily wooded. Antietam and Pipe Creek expansions offer some great maps to battle over. Eventually, you'll want to purchase those too as we use them for many of our campaign battles.

Greetings Brett, and welcome to UK though you may have been here for some time? Not sure whereabouts in the West Midlands you are, but you will likely only be about 90 minutes drive away from our face to face group in the Chilterns, northwest of London, or lifts are available from Watford Junction, Harpenden, Berkhamsted, or other local stations.

We presently play monthly (with a Summer break), at Little Gaddesden Village Hall, an attractive location. Rural and forest walks, the Ashridge stately home golf course and deer park, a recreation ground and a very pleasant watering place, the Bridgewater Arms pub, garden, and pony corral, are all nearby, as is Whipsnade Zoo.

Next is a tactical game at 11am on 28th April set during the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century, which I happen to be running; watch on this site for further info, or just turn up 11am prompt if interested, or you could PM me with your email address on this site for a role allocation, if you wanted to commit to coming.

We can also put you in touch with Midlands-based gamers who favour the Kriegsspiel approach.

Thanks for the warm welcome and advice. To be clear I am a Brit now living in California. I have bought Gettysburg and played several scenarios so far. I'm very intrested to play a game based on couriers alone in multiplayer. I've got teams speak set up as well as the nspoleonic mods and map packs. I'm going to give MP a try this Saturday at 1200 Pacifict time +8 hrs GMT if you'll have me.
Reading about strategy it appears there's a fault in gameplay where doubling up on infantry lines creates an unstoppable tank of men. What counter strategys have been developed to counter close packed lines of men advancing on you?

Any other advice for multiplayer or technology to download would be welcome. I am very grateful that computers allow for Kreigsspiel type of play, and I am going to try and get a local group of tabletop gamers to play with me once I get the system down.

All the best chaps.

Brett

We'll be happy to have you. We will be playing with our butts glued to the saddle, which gives a very restricted view of things. Look at this thread: http://forum.kriegsspiel.org.uk/t370-set-up-for-sow-games-for-kriegspiel-style

Do the all the things listed under Game Option Settings. Then try a sandbox game. You'll get the idea. We won't be using the KS Teamspeak for this game. We will be using the GCM TS instead. It is listed in Palmer's announcement. If you don't already have Teamspeak, you can download it here, it's free: http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=downloads

For the American Civil War games we play, we use the Courier & Maps mod. You can also use it in you sandbox ACW games. You won't want to use it for the napoleon games.

Practice a bit commanding in the saddle. Since you'll be a brigade commander, start a nappy sandbox game of division size. Put yourself in as one of the brigade generals and fight your men as best you can. It's overwhelming at first, but after a little practice you'll get the hang of moving your troops from ground level.

Come onto the GCM teamspeak ~15-20 minutes early and someone will put up a test room and make sure you have everything set properly.

One other thing you will need is the SOW 1.6 beta patch. You can download it here: http://www.norbsoftware.com/Downloads/Beta/SOWGBPatch_16Beta.exe

Thanks very much Billy. Will the Beta patch install itself or do I specify its location, if so where.
Also on teamspeak what is the address for the game.

The teamspeak server is: voice.gameservers.com:9175

The beta patch will install automatically when you run it.