Fantasy Rules ~ part 2

I spent a week writing, testing, discarding and re-writing and inventing, re-inventing, a set of big battle fantasy rules. Some aspects seem to work well and others don't. Terminology is a killer. Trying to find a one word solution or a short phrase to encapsulate an entire concept is trying. There are only so many words out there and it's often difficult to find words that don't seem to tread on the toes of others.

Anyway, I put concepts into writing in order to try and make better sense of what I'm aiming for. I expanded on my original concepts, adding and discarding various things. Then I put everything together for another game with varying levels of success.

I wanted to try something a bit different this time around and decided to take two historical armies and add a bit of a fantasy element to each. I didn't really work but the main reason for this was to tryout a couple of other unit formations and test other things.

So I dug out my Anglo Saxons and re-dubbed them Wild Men of the North and pitted them against my Imaginations pseudo-13th century Germans. Lots of colour on one side and lots of grey chainmail on the other.

One of  the concepts I tried is having a of a Battle Mage Company instead of single magic user characters. This is a spell casting unit that incorporates offensive and defensive magic elements. It worked well but I'm having trouble with other magical unit ideas which encroach on this idea. 

This is a very basic unit with generic magic users stuck on a skirmish base. However, I envision players being able to use those big, lovely, fancy models that I've seen of magical cauldrons and alters with witches dancing around and what-not, as their Battle Mage Company.

One of the things I wanted to try with this game was heavy cavalry. I wanted to see if if I've over-powered them or left them to weak. So I set up the game with a major central cavalry charge and smaller cavalry actions on either flank.

I also wanted to try out my rules for flying units. The pic below is a single figure but I used it as if it was a company sized unit.

Companies and Regiments. I've tried to incorporate two different sized units a Company (a single row of bases) and a Regiment (double row of bases). Companies can support each other in combat or act independently, such as archers or crossbows. Regiments act as two companies permanently fixed together so they will always have built in combat support and they are more durable with other benefits and restrictions built in. There are several Regiment formations with unique rules.

Last game I used monsters intermingled into units and it worked well. This time I created an independent unit to see if it worked. The unit of ogres did work and were not as hard hitting I thought they might be. That was good. I want such a unit to hit hard but not so that they unbalance the combat mechanics.

The General of the Wild Men of the North looks somewhat familiar with his muscles on top of more muscles and a square-cut black mane and all that. This was a Warband regiment with the Special Ability: Berserker. This ability gives a unit a one-off combat boost. The rest of the North men units were Shieldwall regiments.

I don't have any suitable cavalry so the Northen Men got some orc allies. The wolf pack below is a Fantastic Creature unit. I've created about a dozen generic templates that can be tinkered with to create different types of fantasy creature units. (And... I know wolves are not fantasy creatures but packs of them fighting in armies is a pure fantasy concept.) On the other hand the Orc cavalry are just Heavy Riders with the Special Ability: Gore, added on to account for the armoured-boars they're riding.

I also got to use my new stream terrain pieces that I made a few weeks back.

Skirmishers v's Crossbow companies. Not a very equal match up and the crossbows won out. Skirmishers are not very effective against formed heavy troops. They have little chance of causing casualties especially shooting front on. What they can do, however is cause unit to take a Test of Valour on a dice roll of multiple 6's which can cause units to become Disordered. It won't happen often but there's always the chance disrupting the ranks of the foe.

A barbarian general's eye view of the advancing enemy.

The cavalry lead the advance. One of the reasons for trying out the riders is because I expanded the cavalry to included knights. Originally I had only heavy and light riders but decided to tone down the heavies a notch and create knights/cataphracts for truly heavy cavalry.

After the first move only the riders, skirmishers and crossbows of each side have moved forward (except for the ogres who plunged forward on their own).

The crossbows have the option of using pavaises but they need to spend a Function to set them up. Each unit has two Functions. The crossbows below chose to move with one function and then shoot with the other.

And then the first Charge of the game happened and the crossbows got hit without their pavaises in place.

Instead of having the benefit of shields the stream deducted some dice form the attacking wolf pack enabling the crossbows to hold their ground a push the wolves back.

Pavaises in action... Wow. This is a sight that you tell your grandchildren about in the future.

The knights hit the ogre company and push them back. Both units hurts each other but the ogres came off second best. I wasn't sure about follow up actions after a melee so the riders didn't press the attack. I've since devised simple rules for follow up actions after melee.

The gryphon attacked and failed. It has a special ability: Swoop which gave is some re-rolls but the Warband with a general attached was too strong even thought the warbands' main strength lies in its hard-hitting charge. The rules for the flyer were not solid enough or well thought out. For the majority of the game it sat around getting shot at.

More pavaises in action. Will this excitement ever stop?

I decided to use Skirmish Bases. This was a mistake and I soon removed them because they just proved to get in the way. Skirmishers should be able to flow around formed units and make way for them when needed. Having them on big bases negates this ability.

The big showdown in the centre was about to take place.

Meanwhile, the German infantry have been slow getting off their starting line. All of their fighting has been done by the crossbowmen.

The knights charged and pushed back the warband because the warband, even with plenty of boosts rolled truly awful dice. The ogres also got pushed back in their second combat with the knights.

Both the warband and ogres made their own charge. The warband pushed back the Teutonic knights but the ogres bounced.

A second concerted charge by the knights saw them break the Northern centre.

This fight happened over a two of turns and it ended up that in one turn both sides managed to engage the enemy a couple of times. this made for a bit of push and shove. I don't know yet if this is good or bad. But, as it turned out, when the centre broke it broke hard. 

On the Norther right the heavy riders charged their shieldwall and bounced off. The shieldwall, in turn moved in and bounced back. This went back and forth for several combats with the riders getting slowly pushed back and with each side taking minor casualties.

On the left flank the Orc riders and the wolf pack slowly ground their way forward. The crossbows were thrown back from the stream and the orcs assaulted the troops on top of the hill but fell back. 

A mixed regiment of shieldwall and two-handed axmen (what I'm calling a Zweihander Regiment) was supporting the orc riders but they got held back by a magic spell and failed to get involved with the attack on the high ground.

Conclusions:

The rules are making more sense and many things worked as I wanted. Unfortunately there were some things that didn't work out too well. But I've since gone over them and created firmer rules to try and get all my ideas grounded. One of the more difficult aspects is getting various ideas working with each other without compromising each other. In this aspect it's a matter of having to compromise with myself for the sake of balance. (I am a Libran after all!)

Being a wargamer for so long it's very easy to take things for granted. I'm finding that when I go back a read what I've already written I'll often realise I've miss out whole sections that need attention. This is because I know what should be there and, as I said, it's just taken fro granted. 

For instance: "Move your unit forward." I understand that in linear warfare you move straight ahead and formations can't just scoot around. On a re-read I thought... "Hmm... I need to elaborate and spell out exactly what I mean."

The gryphon didn't work at all. I have templates for lesser flying creatures and greater flying creatures. The lesser ones work as Company sized units, the greater ones are individual creatures such as a dragon or a roc. This failure prompted me to create templates for intermediate creatures (flyer and foot) such as the gryphon or a giant wolf or an Umber Hulk! The ogre company is made up of 3 Lesser Creatures. I've divided the Lesser Creatures into types: Brains, Brawn (the ogres), Fast and Flyers. With the Lesser Creatures you can include 1 model in a standard regiment or combine three models into a company. There are also Packs (the wolves) and Multitudes (rats, bats, etc.). There are 10 different templates.

Anyway, it's coming together. There's still plenty to include and plenty of fine tuning. Then there's plenty of play testing that needs to be done and more re-writing and fine tuning. And then more... 

And more...

Thanks for reading.