Alter of Freedom

We have played a lot of Blitzkrieg commander and Cold War Commander recently and we have really enjoyed the quick play big battle games and with the 10mm Pendraken stuff made it possible to filed big armies without the need for huge tables and lots of expense ,so after looking at the Pendraken ACW range I looked for a set of quick play period rules and found Alter of Freedom by Greg Wagman . The Rules cover large battles using Divisions with smallest unit being a brigade ,the game is historical scenario driven with emphasis is on the commanders with each one having traits representing how they behaved at the actual battle. Players bid points to get to move first and also to control the game clock which when thye have control of it they can manipulate it to shorten or lengthen the turn. There is no casualty removal or record keeping a unit is either combat effective or broken , the game only uses a D6 for each side and a D8,10 ,12 etc to represent the clock , the actual type is shown on each scenario. The scenario comes with a map ,instructions where to set up allowing slight chnages to the actual battle and comes with a sheet showing each commander their strengths and weaknesse ,what brigades they control and how many points they each have to influence the game .Another thing I like is each scenario comes with a printable sheet of lables to attach to your bases so you just change the lable for each scenario The rules come with 4 scenarios and are supported by 2 scenario books each with another 14 or so scenarios and a web site with lots of free downloads, videos and after action reports . Altough the rules are meant to be played for historical battles there is a section on how to build armies for points driven games and non historical games . From read throughs and looking at the videos and after action reports I liked what I saw and have started painting and basing some figures below are acouple of test bases I did a infantry brigade and an artillery battery .

Figures are Pendraken

Blitzkrieg commander British v Germans late war

Had a game of Blitzkreig commander with my late war Brits versus Johns Germans , a series of incredibly bad command die rolls meant very little happened and when it did it made more of a whimper than a bang after seven turns of action I had lost a 6pdr ATG and an armoured car and John lost a command vehicle ,I did have great luck in calling in air strikes but the the first caused minimal damage to Johns panzers and the next two attacks were driven off by AA fire . Still great fun and we are both off to alter our army lists and practice rolling D6