The search for a fantastic rule set
So, all
these 10mm rats and halflings – not to mention the Legion of Super Evil (not
yet previewed) – have caused me to start looking for a good fantasy mass battle
game for the first time in many years. All of the below is my personal thoughts
and I realise that many people may disagree with parts or all that I write.
In the
foolishness of youth I played Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd
Edition, but I fell out of love with Games Workshop a good twenty years ago. I
have no intention of re-engaging in that department, but even if I did, they
don’t even seem to do a mass battle game anymore for their fantasy setting. I
might be out of the loop on this one… 😊
I then
dabbled with Hordes of the Things, the WRG rules based on the DBX system. I rather
enjoy the elegant abstraction of DBX and its successors in historical settings
where the relatively restricted number of troop types battle it out against
their contemporaries. However, I’m not convinced that there is enough nuance in
the troop interactions to give a really flavourful fantasy game. Certainly, my
gaming circle here in Ireland doesn’t seem to think so.
So this
week we sat down to three games using different rules but the same small
selection of figures in each – Halflings verse Dark Elves. I outline my
thoughts on each below:
Game 1) Kings
of War, 2nd Edition, by Mantic (Halfling victory)
I had
played KoW once in the past, and watched
a couple of other games. My opponent JB haD played it rather more and helped
guide me through. On the plus side, it is fast. But – and it is a pretty large
but(t) – I don’t find it a particularly fulfilling game. At all. It lacks any
sense of command friction and that really takes away any sense of having to
make hard decisions. You can just move whichever units you want at a time that
suits you.
Coupled
with this, the combat system is a bit silly (understatement). Only the active
player rolls dice, and they roll an inconceivably large amount of them lot of
them. This means that, especially with regular sized or large games, the
opposing player just sits there and takes it in the face without so much as
being able to hold up a hand to shield their eyes. Not only is this pretty
unrealistic (fantasy setting of not), but it can get both dull and dispiriting
to see the other guy dander about destroying your units and you don’t even get
to roll a dice.
Speaking
of dice… I am not a ‘bucket o’ dice’ kind of guy. I understand within the rules
why so many dice are rolled to attack, but it’s just unnecessary. A small tweak
to the way units break, and you could reduce the number of dice down to a mere
handful. We ran out of dice and I have a bloody big bag of d6s!
Game 2) Mayhem,
Expanded Edition, by Bombshell Games (Halfling victory)
This game
has some really neat ideas, using different polydice to represent different fighting
abilities and equipment, an allowing you to choose to roll dice or accept the
average without rolling. Unfortunately, the game felt unfinished to us. Admittedly,
this was only after one game, but we ended up with quite a number of questions
left unanswered, that we just couldn’t could find answers to in the book.
There is
some command friction in the game, which we liked, and the overdrive system of
additional actions by units being possible at an exponential cost of command
pips is nifty. The concept of a single unit activation four times in a row
though, while every other unit on the table sat around and watched felt a bit
too farfetched though. I had 10 units on my halfling army and had a command
value of d12. Because of the nature of the rules, I was able to roll multiple
d12s each turn (one for the general, one for the hero, one for the elite eunit
etc etc) and managed to get 12 command pips each turn. This meant that rather
than feeling like command friction, I actually had more freedom than in the
previous KoW game! If we play again,
we might have a gentlemens’ agreement to limit command qualities to d6s, or
maybe somehow link the maximum command rating to the number of units in the
army.
Neither
of us were at all convinced by the rule that says that characters may only
attack other characters (including casting aggressive magic), unless they are
embedded in a unit. So, a wizard on a flying carpet can’t cast a fireball at a
unit of goblins – but if he flies over a joins a friendly unit of swordsmen, he
is suddenly somehow able to able cast his fireballs. It just isn’t intuitive.
The rules let you embed some heroes in units from the start, but your general
may not be created like that.
The game
is splendid in allowing players to completely customise their own army lists, even
if there are no example lists in the book at all. Once again, there is a
counter to that though, in that the points system feels a bit skew-whiff. There
are some traits and weapons that seem really imbalanced in the cost to buy,
benefits on the battlefield ratio. Also, the characters – the ones that can’t
attack units – cost the same to build as units.
Game 3) Kings
of War – with a fudge, 2nd Edition, by Mantic (Bloody draw)
For the third
game, we returned to KoW, but implemented
one simple yet fundamental change. In a melee, both players attacked and could
damage their opponent. This meant that there was no more charging in with
impunity for those knights who were already badly mauled. If they do charge in,
they may very well break, regardless of what damage they do to their opponents.
The fudged KoW game still suffered
from a lack of command friction and the buckets o’ dice thing, but it was a lot
more fun, and even faster than usual.
****
Where to
go now? Pending anybody else making any splendid suggestions, I might try Hail
Caesar, using the historical rules to start with, but with customised armies of
course. If it feels ok, then it’s just a matter of adding in magic. But only
time will tell I suppose.
It seems
that what I am after is a game that keeps both players engaged throughout. I don't want individual figure removal. It
needs to have some sort of command friction that forces the player to make hard
decisions, and have a well thought out and balanced points system, but not have
army lists that are too prescriptive. If it fits within my fantasy world, why shouldn’t I have a halfling sorcerer riding a
giant bunny?!