Sergio's blog: hints, ideas, pictures and news about SDS (and more) from the author

Thursday, May 26, 2011

SDS Tournament Rules

Some of you are maybe wondering why the translation of the Tournament rules is not out yet.
The reason is that - since a couple of months - I am completely rewriting the squad composition and terrain making rules.
After 2 years and many (Official and Unofficial) tournaments, I realized that the "choose whatever you want within the 400 points" principle is wrong.
Wrong on the historical point of view, wrong because allows too many tricks that kill the game, wrong because the last games I witnessed looked boring.
When I designed SDS I envisaged a game full of movement, of coup de theatre, of heroic actions ("my Officer draws his sword and attacks your Grenadiers!!"). Competitive gaming is much different - and I am not blaming anyone, to be clear.

Therefore, with the help of many proficient SDS players, I started to collect opinions, ideas and proposals: and the results are now at hand.
Please bear in mind that any modification I make on the Tournament Rules should NOT heavily affect the normal Rules, as we don't want to have 2 different sets out.

As a general anticipation, the new Tournament rules ask you to choose in advance which type of squad you want to build (Line, Light or Cavalry) and 250 of your 400 points must be of that type. The other 150 point can be chosen among the SPECIAL selections, which include Heavy Cavalry, Grenadiers/Guards and the like.
The terrain generation rules will reflect your basic choice (if you have a Light squad you'll want many woods on the table... :) and will give you (and your opponent) options.
Finally (drums beating....) when your soldiers are fired upon, you'll always add 2 to your die roll - no matter what your C is. This is the only real change to the pick-up games rules, but for competitive play I decided to listen to the many voices of players telling me that "a bullet is always a bullet, no matter what head it hits"...

The die is cast.

5 comments:

  1. Grazieeee! Probabilmente mi tornerà la voglia di partecipare ai tornei :-) - Diego

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  2. Diego, perchè sei "Anonymous"?
    Lieto cmq che le modifiche ti trovino favorevole.

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  3. Ciao Sergio,
    a quando l'uscita di queste nuove regole da torneo, che mi trovano completamente d'accordo?
    Inoltre, scusa la domanda fuori tema ma a quando SDS large battles?

    Paolo

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  4. Paolo,
    per le nuove regole da torneo, spero di finirle nel week end. SDS Large Battles (se funziona una nuova regola che devo testare) forse molto più presto di quanto si pensi..... :)

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  5. dopo aver letto ciò che ho potuto, concordo in pieno con lo "spirito riformatore"...
    Stefano

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