Dux Britanniarum... game over man

Readers of my blog know I joined in a Dux campaign that is running since last year over at the club, and at time of writing, I'm actually in the lead.

But I don't like the ruleset by Too Fat Lardies one single bit.

Now, this has as a result that I haven't been declaring raids for months now, and only play when forced, aka when people attack me.  And recently I'm turning those games into non-fights, withdrawing from the field after the whole process of setting up and such has been done, generally making it a non-game, even though I declared this in front that I don't want to play it anymore.

The reason?  The rules suck, and as a lot of historical players tend to shout those sorts of things about GW rules, sometimes correct, I think it isn't obliged to be a TFL "fanboy" either because of those same reasons.  Well, in my opinion, and let me enlighted my standpoint on them with some examples.  Surely, it might be that this is how they interpret the rules at the club, but it makes for a really bleugh experience for me on the table.

Here is a first example from a game.  My opponent has a unit 20 something wide, and I managed to get units on both his flanks in a reasonable charge range.  The card for the unit on the left fals, and they charge in.  Now according to the rules, the attacked unit now lines up, but this means it suddenly carreens on it's flank point, and the 20+ unit now goes on it's side, making it only 2 figures wide.  This means it suddely "shortened" almost 10+ inches, and gets out of charge range should the card for the other unit fall.  Let alone if they actually win and get even further away should my units be pushed back and persued.

And that brings me to the second, and even bigger gripe I have with the rules: the totally random manner of unit activation, and no, no "fog of war" or "chaos on the battlefield" blahblahs can convince me otherwise.  It's not that they where fighting in clouds of gunsmoke...
I had it happen that I manoeuvred my cavalry into a good charge position, when at the end of the turn my opponents cavalry card came.  His horses (sanely) moves away and turns around to prevent a back charge, but I would need a far above average roll now to charge his horses.  The deck gets shuffled and hopla, there is his cavalry again, he plays the Carpe Diem, +1 dice for move card and one that makes you hit easier with his Shock cavalry, which was doomed after 4 rounds of carefull movement on my part, now thunders forward and totally flattens mine.

The randomness for me totally takes out the "tactical thinking" part of the game in the movement phase, and the degrades the game to nothing more then pray you come first and charge in everywhere as headless chickens.

Heck, to say it in 40k terms, even Khorne Berserkers have more tactical insight in battle...

So yes, these two examples have seriously caused me to dislike the ruleset, and I am praying the campaign is over ASAP for me.  I will definitly NOT end on spot 1 even if it means having to loose on purpose, so I don't have to participate in the 8-man multiplayer challenge for the win (something that did come in the campaign as it was already running, but as the majority agreed to this; so be it) and become the Dux of Britain (aka the winner).

Now, don't get me wrong, I see a lot of people having a good time in the campaign, but it is just not my cup of tea in both style of how the games are able to be selected, or how the rule mechanics work.  The campaign as it is is well thought out by the organiser, but it is just not a place to be for a player who "disects" his opponents armies and tactics in order to gain an upper hand, only to have everything screwed over by just pure, uninterruptable or influenceable randomness  (for an example with what I mean by this, the Opportunity Fire rule in Future War Commander for example is a good thing on how to try and do something on your opponent's turn, at a cost in your own, so you have to balance the potential advantages against the tactical plan on your turn).

The one thing I do know is that the army I bought and painted for the campaign will be on eBay as soon as the final whistle sounded...