Hello guys,
I'm spending a few weeks at the beach at the moment, which is great, but there is one problem: I can't bring all my miniatures, terrain and everything else with me. So I needed something a little more practical to get my wargaming fix and ended up buying "The Wars of the Sun King" a boardgame by Serious Historical Games, designed to play, with a single set of rules, the five conflicts led by France under the reign of Louis XIV and the great rebellion called “La fronde”.
https://serioushistoricalgames.com/product/the-wars-of-louis-xiv-sun-king-1648-1713/
I've started with the War of Devolution scenario, mainly because it is one of the conflicts that interests me most from the period, and the easiest/fastest to play. I've played it several times now and I have to say I'm enjoying it quite a lot. The rules have, for me, just about the right level of complexity. There are enough decisions to make it interesting, but once you understand the basic mechanics the game moves quite quickly and doesn't become a headache.
Most of the time I've been playing solo, basically playing both sides against myself! It may sound a bit strange but it works perfectly well with this sort of game. I've also played it with another person and enjoyed it that way too.
Something I particularly liked is that, at least in the War of Devolution scenario, the result tends to be more or less what you would expect from the real campaign. Of course things can go differently (otherwise there wouldn't be much point in playing it), but France has the advantages you would expect and the general feeling of the conflict seems right. So far I'm quite happy with it.
The counters are nice too, although I have one small complaint. Some (in the case of Spanish at least) of them look to me a little too much like troops from the War of the Spanish Succession, rather than the earlier wars of Louis XIV. Nothing terrible, but once I noticed it I couldn't really unsee it.
And of course this meant I had to start messing around with the counters...
I've made my own versions of several of them, replacing the artwork with, mostly, illustrations by Bruno Mugnai, from several books I own. Bruno is my favourite illustrator for this period. They are obviously only for my own personal use. At the moment they're just digital counters, but when I get back home after the holidays I plan to print them on proper cardboard and use them with the game.
The game is French and, unsurprisingly, very French-centred. I don't really have a problem with that considering the subject of the game, although sometimes I think it goes a little too far and some of the other nations don't get quite the same attention. There are also a few omissions that I found a bit strange, especially when it comes to some troops and personalities from the other armies, but nothing serious, this is not a super complex game like others in the market.
So while redoing the counters I've added some of those missing units and commanders as well. Nothing particularly ambitious and I'm certainly not trying to redesign the game. I just wanted the other armies to have a little more personality and, where possible, look a bit closer to the troops that actually fought in these earlier campaigns.
Anyway, it has turned out to be a pretty good solution for wargaming while I'm away from home. I'm enjoying the game, the War of Devolution scenario has been a very good starting point , next scenario I want to play with, will be Franco Dutch War.
I hope you like this little update with boardgames instead of miniature games!
Cheers
