Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany — Age of Reason

I wish to conclude this by discussing the long path taken to creating Horse & Musket. The origins of the game stem from my love for linear musket combat and my work on Hold the Line: Frederick’s War. That game came out from some simple fan made scenarios I crafted for Hold the Line based on the War of the Austrian Succession. The scenarios were popular enough to gain the attention of Worthington, who after much deliberation, decided to create both Frederick’s War and its expansion, Highland Charge. For a time Worthington was interested in creating a game based on...

  Scenarios are good and well, but one has to decide what rules to include and what kind of units to simulate. I wanted to avoid a boilerplate feeling where each nation plays the same relatively. After all, this period saw French tactical dominance whittled away by Dutch and British tactical innovations in both volley fire and thinner formations. Sweden, after a brief period of stunning military success, saw a stunning decline in power and military expertise, eclipsed by the rising states of Russia and Prussia. Bayonet charges were rare but coming into prominence. Artillery was mostly heavy and hard...

Horse & Musket covers the development of musket warfare from Vienna in 1683 and Sedgemoor in 1685 to Appomattox in 1865 and Königgrätz in 1866. After the American Civil War and the triumph of Prussian tactics at Königgrätz, warfare moved from muzzle loaded weapons to breechloaders. Volume I, titled Dawn of an Era, covers the years 1683-1720, which saw the conversion from pikes and matchlocks to bayonets and flintlocks.  If all goes well there will be five other volumes, each covering the development of linear musket combat. "The Battle of Königgrätz, July 3, 1866", Christian Sell, Lithograph, 1866. In the...

When we took over Horse & Musket: Dawn of an Era, it had a sort of cover already, which designer Sean Chick used to advertise it on BGG. It's a very nice painting, and one that evokes the period - in fact, we used it on the cover of the rulebook - but wasn't really our style; we're not "nice painting on the cover" sort of publishers. We don't mind incorporating period artwork or photos into our box cover designs, and we do that more often than not; we just don't want to let that artwork do all the heavy...