Friday 18 October 2013

First Look: By Savvy and Steel

By Savvy and Steel is the latest release from Two Hour Wargames and is obviously intended to capture the spirit of the Three Musketeers.

The rules are 90 pages can be purchased as either a pdf or in hard copy.  As you might expect By Savvy and Steel is built around the Two Hour Wargames' reaction system but with a few extra elements in keeping with the genre and combined with a campaign system based around the fictional country of Edenstein.

Character generation is somewhat more detailed than many of the other THW rules - largely as these are based on having a much smaller number of characters.  In addition to the usual Reputation, players have to determine their character's Birthright, Social Standing, Age, Nationality, Class and Attributes.

Once you have your main character you can then try to recruit some Grunts to help you on your adventures - this can actually form part of your adventure.

The core rules will be very familiar if you've used the reaction system before; however, you can supplement the standard melee mechanism with a special more detailed duelling system if both participants are of sufficient social standing.

The rules are about half the book and are then followed by a campaign and scenario system which takes up the remainder and provides plenty of variety of genre appropriate situations and encounters.  It includes everything you need to generate non-player characters and PEF (possible enemy forces) rules which will allow players to play against the system or for the game to be played solo.

Given that I have suitable figures for the Musketeers, Cardinal's Guard etc. I could hardly not try these rules out and I'm looking forward to getting them to the table.

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