Hammer's Slammers Handbook

There have been a couple of questions on the list about this, and as I have a
copy I thought I would write up a short review. There are two
caveats - I have not yet played and games using the rules and I don't
have them in front of me while typing this.

First the physical stuff:

The book is a little smaller than A4 in size and has a total of 50 pages
(including the covers) it is profusely illustrated with black and white and
colour pictures, some of these are photographs of models, some are line
drawings and some vehicle pictures.

You get about 7 pages of rules and 5 pages of "army lists", the rest of the
book being background material. If you have the slammers book that included
the interludes or access to the web you will have seen most of the information
in some form before. There are also short biographies of Alois Hammer, Danny
Pritchard and Joachim Steuben as well as descriptions of some of the Hammers
campaigns.

Other mercenaries are covered briefly either by way of the notes on the colour
pictures or army lists, most of them come from the book except the 101st
Texians. The army lists include suggested models either from GZG or Old Crow
for each army's infantry and vehicles.

The rules:

At only 7 pages they are quite simple, the actual fighting is done by throwing
1D6 to see if you hit (hit number varied by troop quality), throwing to see if
you damaged (1D6 Modified by Weapon vs defence) and if you hit a vehicle
seeing what the damage was (1D6 with a 50% chance of some kind of kill). The
main factor is leadership, each side's leader(s) get a number of leadership
points, and it takes 1 point to move a unit (vehicle, Heavy Weapon, Infantry
Team) for the first time in your turn, 2 for the second and 4 for the third. A
generic Slammer's Major gets 10 points.

Any damage kills infantry and any hit that does no damage suppresses them.

The rules look like they will play simply and fast but anyone who wants a
system that simulates all the differences between different vehicles and
weapons will be disappointed. This looks to me more like a system that could
be used for tactical resolution in a campaign game.

Chris Downes-Ward

PS: after Steve Pugh's recommendation I have ordered some of the Kriegspiel
Australians and Musorians from Eureka, the Musorians will probably get added
to my "generic Balkan targets" collection which is mainly made up of Chiltern
Miniatures figures which are also more 28mm than 25mm.

After some thought Briony has decided not to try and mix plastic 20mm and
metal figures but to concentrate on 25mm for metal figures, she has also
decided to go for WW1, but has not decided whether to do a 1914 BEF force or
1917 Australians in Palestine (we watched "The Lighthorsemen" together about a
month ago so this might have something to do with it).

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The answer to Briony's question, do both!

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