One of the many, many books I bought (digitally) during last year's big lockdown here in Belgium, I finally got round to reading them.
And realising I wanted to buy Dragon Rampant actually, the fantasy version, but heck, let's have a look at these Medieval wargame rules by Osprey, written by Daniel Mersey.
The book comes short just under 90 pages, and it is written with both historical style, as well as 'Hollywood' style medieval battles in mind. From the rise of the Normans to the Hundred Year's war, these rules should have you covered.
The ideal size is the retinue, battles fought with a few dozen models a side, as this was the most common way of fighting in those days. Surely, large battles happened, but generally it was a period of feuds and raids, and as such often only included two lords, perhaps an ally left or right, and their followers to duke it out.
Written in a style to promote fun above tactical simulation, that is always a good thing, because most of us (and more as in decades past, as I once mentioned already in an Opinion piece on this blog) are looking for relaxing, quick to learn games in the rat race of real life, so I guess that plays a large part in the stellar rise of skirmish sized games the past years.
As such, it is also recommended to play the game with individually based models, mostly due to the fact of facing of each soldier on the battlefield as well as suffered casualties. Standard games go around 24 points and in the example of a retinue that would contain about 6 units. Mounted units number 6 models, foot units 12...
Next, the unit profile is explained, but to anyone with some experience in wargaming, they are self explanatory, with attack, move, armour and the likes, basically the usual stats for the usual goals in a game.
There are of course rules for the terrain and how that influences your units cohesion and cover, and the Leader, aka you, who gets a whole list of skills to select (usually at random).
The turn sequence, which is a standard I go you go affair, is then explained, including what happens during each of the four phases of said turn, and how to activate your units... including an actual flowchart of what can happen or will need to be done! The rules then proceed to how everyhting works exactly like shooting, attacking and the likes.
After what is the biggest section of course, we move onto the next one, which involves how to muster your retinue and what sort of troops there are at your disposal. The special rules are also mentioned in this section for the various sorts of units, as well as the possible upgrades and points costs for each of them.
Section 4 takes us to the scenarios to play your games over, which can be decided by a diceroll or agreed on in front of course. The scenarios all have different victory conditions and you can also claim boasts for your forces, on how to gain more Glory.
After that, some sample retinues are presented in case you want to dive straight in with models from other gamesystems for example, but which can always be tinkered with of course to ones own likings. And which also has a section on Hollywood Legends forces and even Old school fantasy forces!
Rounding out the book is a reference sheet (handy to print if you have the digital copy) and the warband roster (same).
The rules look like fun, but like I said, I basically bought the wrong book and I'm not (re)starting a collection of medieval figures anymore... but that is no argument against these rules of course!
They are fun rules, great for a club night gaming
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