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This is the second edition of one of the more succesful of Osprey’s ‘blue book’ wargames, revised and expanded to double its original size, as well as historically expanded to cover a much wider time period than the first edition.
This game is written with small armies in mind. An average army (24 points in size) will contain six units, and an all-infantry force of that size would have 72 figures. Generally most armies will be smaller, with cavalry and skirmisher units having six figures and some units costing more points. The generic sample army given early in the rules has six units and 54 figures so we aren’t talking massive armies, especially at 28mm scale.
The basic structure of the game is fairly simple. Each scenario has an attacker and a defender, and the attacker goes first. Each turn has four potential stages. First it is possible to issue a challenger for combat between army leaders if they are close enough to each other. Second comes the rally stage. Third is the ‘Wild Charge’ phase, in which units with that rule have to make an attack role and if succesful attack one unit within range. Finally every other unit unit is activated in turn, and can attempt to carry out one order – move, shoot or attack. The ‘Wild Charge’ rule gives a good idea of the general tone of the rules – the aim here is to reflect a more ‘Hollywood’ version of history, with headstrong knights
I’m not entirely keen on the standard unit activation rules. Each unit type has a target number which you need to match on 2D6 to get it to obey a particular order, with different targets for different orders – an archer needs 6+ to move or shoot, 7+ to attack for example. This part of the rules I do like – it gives a certain randomness to your ability to control a battle and reflects the different focus of different units. However in the standard rules if you fail an activation rule that ends your turn, and you don’t get to try and activate any other units. You get one reroll if the unit is close enough to your leader, but that’s it. In my first game I failed my first activation roll and the reroll, and my entire army just sat there, while my opponent passed most of their rolls, got to do nearly everything they wanted, and I never recovered – this was very much not fun. However there is the obvious alternative rule, where you roll to activate all of your units, with a failure only affecting that particular unit. I found this a far more satisfying way to play the game and rather closer to how I would expect real battles of this scale to have developed, with leaders sending out orders to all of their units using their squires, pages or other messengers, and being able to intervene with one nearby unit that didn’t do as it was told. This period may not have had standing armies, but its military leaders had been training for battle for most of their lives – they certainly weren’t amateurs.
Combat is nice and simple. The attack rolls 12 dices if above half strength, 6 dice if at or below half strength. Each unit has a target number it needs to equal or better to do one damage, each defending unit has an armour value that decides how many hits are needed to remove one figure. In melee both sides get to fight, with units having separate Attack Values and Defence Values. This allows for units that are more effective when attacking, such as charging heavy cavalry, or better on the defensive, such as heavy infantry.
Morale is very important – units can end up making several morale checks in a single round, as they are taken whenever triggered, and a failed test forces a retreat (or in bad cases a total rout off the battlefield!). Melee will always end with one side retreating (even if nobody fails a morale test), presumably so that units will need to roll a succesful attack order to return to melee in the next round.
Although the game covers a very wide time period, from late Rome to late Middle Ages, there aren’t that many unit types in the standard rules– elite, heavy and light cavalry, elite, heavy, light, warrior and levied infantry, archers, crossbowmen and skirmishers. The feel for the different time periods comes from the choice of units in the sample warbands given later in the book (and of course from the figures you play with). I’d say this is a fair enough idea for this time period – the special rules that go with each unit type give enough variety, and armies from the same time period weren’t going to be that different to each other – 8th century heavy cavalry may have been rather different to 14th century heavy cavalry, but then they aren’t going to be fighting each other.
There are plenty of optional rules that the players can choose to use if they wish, from fairly trivial ideas such as specific hand gunner stats to an entire glory system for making boasts. This is where more variety of units appears – camels, chariots and pikemen, handgunners and slingers
The scenarios chapter provides sixteen different scenarios, varying in complexity from ‘kill the leader’ to a convoy escort battle. These produce some fun games, with some nicely varied aims. A short chapter on campaigns gives ideas for a long running linked campaign or a set one of five battles.
The last chapter gives a wide range of sample warbands covering seven periods and locations, from the Later Roman Empire to Medieval Eastern Europe. These are fairly simple lists, as you would expect from the fairly limited number of unit types, but do give some idea of how to match the rules to the sort of armies fielded by different peoples at different times.
This is a fun game. Things flow nice and quickly, the rules are simple but satisfying (with the above caveat, and not everyone will share my views on that), and plenty of flexibility and alternative and extra rules provided. The author doesn’t get bogged down in special rules for the different time periods, but the different troops types give enough variety to give different war bands very different feels.
Chapters
Battle Rules
Mustering Your Warband
Optional Rules
Terrain
Scenarios
Simple Campaigns
Sample 24-point Warbands
Pages: 208
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2022
Format: Hardcover