Pony Wars: Is B Troop Coming Back?

[Il Segaiolo Pedantesco]

Was anything controversial about these rules and/or setting? I recall a passing comment on Paul Sawyer's blog...

The Politics of Oldhammer.

Second, wargaming can be very crass sometimes. Whether it's the insidiousness of Pony Wars (which as a rational human being and wargamer is a game I choose to despise) on the Oldhammer forum, the preponderance of WW2 German armies weighed down with SS Tigers at my club or the grotesque glee I witnessed recently as a miniature woman clutching a baby was killed in a game of Warhammer I GM'd, the hobby can stray into areas that offend to some degree. Perhaps be aware of this just a little bit, it may be your God-given right to be ignorant and uncultured but if that's so then it's mine to point it out. That said, if ever I do take offence you may be sure I will forgive and forget very swiftly, moving on to deal with the world as it is, not as I would wish it to be.

[Bronshtein]

Er, beyond the whole colonial massacre of indigenous peoples shtick you mean?
Not really.
It is (or was) a self consciously Hollywood version of the Cavalry v 'Hostiles' thing - no consideration of the role of the cavalry in the 'clearance' of the land and a 'fun' game of ethnic cleansing with the actual legitimate occupiers of the land being played by an umpire and a preprogrammed algorithm which represented them as Space Invader type targets.
We played it but I don't remember missing it over the last three (?) decades and wonder if it is too much of its time to be a 'fun' evening game?
Perhaps a balancing game of defending your hunting grounds by seeing how many settlers ranches and smallholdings you could wipe out might be shipped with it?

[Il Segaiolo Pedantesco]

Er, beyond the whole colonial massacre of indigenous peoples shtick you mean?
Not really.
It is (or was) a self consciously Hollywood version of the Cavalry v 'Hostiles' thing - no consideration of the role of the cavalry in the 'clearance' of the land and a 'fun' game of ethnic cleansing with the actual legitimate occupiers of the land being played by an umpire and a preprogrammed algorithm which represented them as Space Invader type targets.
We played it but I don't remember missing it over the last three (?) decades and wonder if it is too much of its time to be a 'fun' evening game?
Perhaps a balancing game of defending your hunting grounds by seeing how many settlers ranches and smallholdings you could wipe out might be shipped with it?

Good thing I checked this sub forum, as I assumed the only the response would be from a spammer...

Got no answers, when I had asked this on Oldhammer IIRC, so began thinking thinking "Fat Bloke" was onto something, though he could've toned it down a little on his blog - can't find the bloop moment on Oldhammer. So he was just being a moralizing prick over a set of supposedly 'fun' rules. Would he have been all het up if the games involved sedentary tribes vs the depredations of nomadic ones, especially after the re-introduction of the horse? It's a bit hypocritical considering his company peddles figures and rules from periods known for atrocities: Romans vs. Celtic groups and Dacians, and they even stock a slave market set and Roman slave girls.

[Bronshtein]

I'm not sure that being pitched as a 'fun set of rules' necessarily absolves them of all criticism on moral grounds.
Perhaps a 'fun' approach to the sharp end of genocide might be worse than a 'serious' game about it? Unless of course the serious game is seriously promoting the idea it is desirable.

I confess I didn't follow your link at first to see where the quote came from. Now I have, I am little the wiser save knowing the author is a Warlord Games bloke. I have no idea what 'Oldhammer' is beyond having some connection to the whole 'xxxhammer' type universe somehow.

He may have been hypocritical and a bit po faced but that doesn't make his blog post wrong. I note it was a long time ago and unrelated to the re-release.

Wargaming has an uncomfortable side to it for me. Mostly I ignore it or use a series of no doubt badly constructed fig leaves to pretend I am not making a game out of the death of millions of people. The tipping point feels like it is where it stops being a fight that might go either way and becomes ruthless eradication of people as you might deal with vermin.

This isn't Yank bashing, I have similar ambivalence over a lot of games - AK47 feels a bit like taking the piss out of Africans trying to deal with a 'post colonial' legacy which is just a neo colonial exploitation. There was a TMPer who had a particularly unpleasant African ImagiNation with 'amusing' names and smug piss taking of African states. I quite frequently wanted to shoot him.