Suits You Sir

I got my copy of the new version of I Ain't Been Shot Mum a couple of days ago, and I have been working my way through the rules (toddlers make reading a slow process).

It's not often when I am looking through a set of rules that I go, 'that's neat,' or 'I can't wait to try that.' But as I lay in the bath I found myself making such mental exclamations rather often. Which given that the rules are somewhat slim - in a good way - is remarkable.

Ok slim is perhaps a problematic word as it carries an implied value judgement. Put it this way, if you stripped out the examples and the pictures, and the stuff at the back - oh and re sized the pages to an A4 booklet (like what proper wargames rules should be) - the rules would probably be about 15 or 20 pages. Or roughly the size of my favourite rule set General Quarters.

But then the opposite of slim, in rules terms, is bloated.

Don't get me wrong I have no problem with the full colour, wargame porn rules that are the fashion these days. I have no problem with the price - if i didn't want them I wouldn't buy them - and  I don't understand this idiocy about pdfs having to be cheaper than paper, after all I am buying the content of the book not the paper or pixels that the ideas are written on. But I have an admission, I never read the damned things. I try to read the rules, but the damned thing is so heavy, and every time I try to read the rules I get bored at the same damned bit, and I flick through and 'ohhhhh shiny picture'.

I mean I love my 8th edition Warhammer rulebook. I well remember the sunny day that it arrived and the nerderection induced by the ink fumes as I opened it for the first time. And I am still on tablets for the heart condition brought on by opening page 462, but there is no way I am ever going to read the fluff section. There are pages of that monster that have never been the human eye.

Anywho...

One of the things that made me go, 'do I like that,' in Graham Taylor fashion, was that on the outcome of a single throw a tank firing at troops in a building could miss, hit the building and put the wind up 'em, set the building on fire, or destroy the building killing everyone inside.

Still got to paint lots off tiny men before I get to play...

peace:)