Twilight of the Soldier Kings

The Twilight of the Soldier Kings rules is a set designed to fight large historical battles on a reasonable sized table and with a reasonable number of figures in the era of Frederick the Great (1730 to 1770). The player is the army commander seeking to marshal the full forces that their historical counterpart had to achieve victory and not some colonel or brigadier controlling a few battalions or squadrons in the fight for some sector of a battlefield. The concentration is on the 'big picture' rather on relatively unimportant details. The rules reward historic tactics and practices while making typical 'gamer' tactics obsolete. So, players will want their forces to be in at least two lines with a reserve and not strung out in a line as is commonly done in other rules.

The system is intuitive and easy to pick up. The units are around 2,500 infantry, around 1,200 cavalry and 12 to 20 guns and so the units are often a brigade of around 4 infantry battalions or 8 to 12 cavalry squadrons. The scale is flexible with all distances, ranges, movements based on half of the frontage of the units you use.

While any unit size can be used if the frontage of a unit is in the region of 120mm then most battles can be fought on a table 1.8m by 1.2m (6 feet by 4 feet) or similar. Most standard battles should be playable in a typical afternoon or evening playing session. It is possible to play 'Manuever' battles in which the attacker has extra options to attack but will usually require a larger table.

The rules include scenarios for the battles of Mollwitz (1741), Kolin (1757), Krefeld (1758) and a generic Maneuver battle based on the battles of Hochkirch and Zorndorf (both 1758).

In addition to the scenarios in the rules there is a scenario book with 12 other scenarios.