Unleash the Spanish Fury!

By way of Mitch Williamson at War and Game, I discovered Spanish Fury and Very Civile Actions!, a pair of sixteenth and seventeenth century wargames released by The Perfect Captain.

The Prefect Captain describes himself . . . er, itself, thus.

We are a small group of gamers with some big ideas! We like to play and design boardgames, miniatures rules, and campaign games for a host of periods. We have a yahoo group that supports our products. By the way, maybe we should mention that our goods are totally FREE!

Spanish Fury includes rules for land battles and skirmishes, sea battles, sieges, individual duels, and land and sea campaigns. In short, it promises "a complete games system, enabling players to enjoy the period in virtually every scale almost anywhere in Europe, from Portugal to Urals."

I downloaded the whole lot Thursday night, but I only had time to look at Actions!, the company-level skirmish module of Spanish Fury. The basic rules run about seventeen pages, and they are simple and clearly written - with some referencing, I felt I could play an intro scenario after a single read-through of the rules.

I'm really looking forward to digging into this. Actions!, in particular, looks like exactly what I want for use with my Flashing Blades campaign. I've been looking longingly at my Field of Glory: Renaissance books for awhile now, but Actions! is a great example of how sometimes less-is-more, ideal for running the sorts of quick'n'dirty scrapes in which the adventurers are most likely to find themselves in the course of the game. And as an added bonus, I think I could teach someone how to play in about ten minutes.

Now, there is a catch, as far as the whole "totally FREE!" thing goes. The Perfect Captain asks, in lieu of payment for their rules and counters, for a donation to charity.

Having established that, let me add the following. As gamers we like to spend our dough on stuff that helps us unwind and have a good time. Nothing wrong with that! But how about this. What if we took a portion of our hard-earned cash and gave it to someone who is going without? I think that would be pretty cool, don't you? We are NOT going to force anyone to donate to charity before they can download our games. We believe in the honour system.

They include a list of suggested charities, or donating money - and if you don't have that, a bit of time - to the charity of your choice. Mine is the restoration of a Hungarian castle, a project to protect a piece of history and provide sustainable jobs for the community.