As it is October it seems like there should be some Russian Civil war content. October Hammer are a set of fast paced rules for the Russian Revolution based on the Nordic Weasel Trench Hammer system.
Nordic Weasel Games produce a lot of niche and innovative projects, in a sort of stream of consciousness from the fertile brain of designer Ivan Sorensen. Definitely worth a look.
Here are some notes from our first game(s) using October Hammer. It was back at the beginning of the year but it's taken me ages to get around to posting anything. The pictures were from this and later OH games if my memory serves.
In our first game we had four players and me as umpire but that quickly broke
down into two games either side of the bridge objective and river
line. The Whites using the Volunteer army list as a basis attacked and
had a slight advantage in quality versus the Red Army’s slight advantage
in numbers but most troops were using standard stats.
On the east bank the Whites manoeuvred impressively to form a powerful
attack that was horribly gunned down by maxim fire. Brutal! On the
west bank the Whites advanced in better cover and with an armoured car
in support and took out most of the Red Rifle units and MGs in the
centre. Neither side really got any cavalry into action and the
Armoured Cars seemed rather dominating but we made lots of mistakes so
I’ve no idea if that’s a fair judgement. We didn't use the ACs in the later games.
I generally
liked the mechanics, although they took a bit of getting used to. The shooting is
quite variable with units sometimes wiped away in very short order and
at others clinging on for ages. The game is not very attritional or predictable.
The order choices make a big difference and there is seldom an obvious pick, making
the gameplay fun but luck a heavy element. Some parts of the rules could do with a bit more
defining. e.g. With artillery we were unsure if they could move
and fire or withdraw/redeploy and at what rates and with what effects
from terrain. We forced shooting at the closest
target after the first game, as some of the ganging up seemed gamey. We also used half speed in
bad going instead of -2″ as it was more intuitive. You could tweak the
stats a bit to reflect unit quality and
special RCW circumstances. e.g. RCW MGs were often short of ammo and
either unreliable or badly manned, so universal -2 on the hit number is
maybe too good. Although, several were knocked out in our games, so that
might not be necessary.
On ranges we used 24″ for rifles 36″ for MGs
and 60″ for field guns as the maximum. We were playing on roughly 8’x6′
each side of the river, so it made sense given the large playing area. We also only used the leader casualties within 12″ but mostly forgot to roll anyway.
So, on balance a good fun game with potential for tweaking to taste. As a general note, I liked the quite elegant mechanics and the rules are good value
for what you get even if a little incomplete. They could also be adapted easily with ideas from other variants in the series.
We played a few more games after this first one and all were fast and furious. I'm still unsure what set will end up as our go-to RCW/BoB rules, partly
due to the large armies we've now amassed, but October Hammer was fun and
original. So, I don't regret this foray at all and would gladly play this
or other Nordic Weasel games in the future.
I made some unit cards for the games we played. Shamelessly copying the great design from the Great War resource page on the Jozi's Tin Man blog. See specifically here for the cards. I have uploaded my versions here in case they are of use to anyone else.
The cards were made on a great free vector graphics program called
Inkscape. I have included a copy of the files in
PDF and the original
SVG format, so you can print them or edit them. The SVG format isn't previewing correctly in my Google account but the files open okay in Inkscape for me. Jozi used paperclips to mark the hits but we just used markers on the cards or white board pens on laminated cards.
