THE HAMMER’S SLAMMERS HANDBOOK
John Lambshead and John Treadaway
The Hammer’s Slammers “universe” takes the Viet Nam/Cambodia experiences of John Drake and turns them into futuristic science fiction military adventures featuring Colonel Alois Hammer and the 3rd Millennium. This book is intended to be the basic rules set with vehicle design and technical specifications. 48 pages with a bibliography related to Mr. Drake’s writings, multiple well done color and black and white photos of figures and vehicles; the black and white drawings are amateurish. A description of the color drawings is found at the back of the book along with addresses where figures can be found for the game.
The game is centered around each side’s leadership value and a 2d6 dice roll (to get their Leadership Points – LP) to determine how many Tactical Units (TU) can move during their turn. Once one side has finished all movement or has expended all their LPs all available units may fire and close assault enemy forces; there is no defensive fire. After one side is done, the other side gets to go. The game appears to be two dimensional as advanced automatic targeting systems and artificial intelligence has made life very difficult for airmen. There are long tables describing the types of weapons strengths and target defense factors. To compute a hit takes into account the troops quality, the firing weapon and the roll of a d6. If this equals or exceeds the target defense rating, then a “hit” is sustained. Infantry that are hit are removed from play; vehicles roll on a separate table and suffer results from “stunned” to “blown up”.
The book has extensive background information that includes a brief description of the coming of the 3rd Millennium, description of Col Hammer and many of his top officers, a detail of the campaigns in which he has fought, his order of battle and the orders of battle of the many Mercenary Companies. In fact, the actual game rules do not begin until page 23! There are very nice color drawings of vehicles and descriptions, however, these are described in “real life” instead of “game terms”; they are nice looking pictures but are so spread out in the book that it makes it difficult to follow.
It is interesting to note that Col Hammer hails from Friesland, a small region in the Netherlands (akin to Catalonia with their own distinctive dialect). Thus, tiny Friesland has become a galaxy superpower!
Price: appx. $15.60 (£10.95)
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