Slitherine - Field of Glory

[RADO]

I purchased the FoG miniatures rules and a few suppliments for about $130.00 to see what R.B. Scott had come up with. For those of you that do not know, Scott was the co-author on a number of games and works with Phil Barker. Mr. Barker is a "GIANT" in the area of games and research on the ancient and medieval periods. Scott somewhat less so IMO. To make a long story short, they finally parted company and Scott went his own way.

FoG miniatures rules are a very well marketed and produced set of rules. Unfortunately, in my opinion, they do not accurately portray warfare of the period, nor does the game provide a point system for buying armies that is fair across the periods the rules address. The rules are not well suited to large battles and I hear complaint after complaint by players that say nothing ever happens. They watch the two armies approach one another, go into combat, and the lines remain static for the rest of the day. Another complaint is that skirmish combat appears to be handled very poorly, with skirmishers repeatedly being caught in close combat and literally preventing the two main lines from engaging.

Again, in my opinion, Scott has produced a very poor product and has taken full advantage of his previous relationship with Mr. Barker and he (Scott) obtained a publisher with an excellent distribution list in order to market his product.

If you want his rules, all one has to do is go to other web sites to find people dumping the rules off cheap to try and recover some of their investment.

I can only hope that the computer game is better than the miniatures game. For one, I'll wait to buy it cheap after I see people dumping it as they are the miniatures rules.