Like many of us I was playing fantasy wargames ‘way back in the day’ using various incarnations of GW’s Warhammer Fantasy Battles. So when Warlord announced these rules I was mildly interested, then I noted the author and my interest increased substantially. Some good chums got the rules and said many good things, so I jumped in and bought the book.
Initially I thought the production quality was very good, despite the book arriving with an errata card for some missing text. But after an initial read through I see that Warlord still aren’t bothering with a thorough proof read. This is a pity because otherwise the book is a thing of beauty.
Reading rules and actually playing them can be quite different experiences. I skimmed through to get the gist of things knowing that a friend was going run some games for me and another friend me. There are plenty of detailed explanations of how the rules actually work so I’ll not do that here but suffice to say players familiar with the basic Bolt Action rules will soon pick up these. However, there were a few aspects of the rules that I didn’t like.
Pre-measuring
Or, more precisely, measuring distances, ranges etc at any time. This irks me considerably. It seems to take away part of the skill IMHO. A typical unit movement seems to consist of establishing how far they could actually move, moving the unit, then checking ranges to all nearby units (often asking if the troops have any different movement rules), then tweaking the unit back so as to be just out of charge range. Similarly for missile ranges too. Players look to spend more time faffing the unit ‘back’ rather than getting on with game. It just feels gamey.
Combat
This was less of an irritation for me but still mildly annoying none-the-less. Simply put, unless you roll very well, your unit is likely to be ‘spent’ after just one combat. Yes, they should be less effective but not practically useless. Bear in mind that being a fantasy game I would expect to have a lot more hand-to-hand combat troops (depending upon the exact army). You end up having to hide them behind woods and hills – oh very heroic!
Shooting
Four smaller units of 5 figures are far more effective than two larger units of 10. This is due to the ability to inflict more pins with more, smaller units. Again, it feels gamey. This is technically also true of Bolt Action although in our group we tend to stick to section sized units of infantry.
Magic
This was just plain annoying. For example, units can be repeatedly moved back to your own baseline. Dull.
Conclusion
There are clearly a lot of players out there who are thoroughly enjoying these rules. This is a good thing. Rules are very much a personal choice. But I don’t think I’ll be playing these again!
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| The Book. The pic I took for eBay (oops... Spoiler alert!) |
Initially I thought the production quality was very good, despite the book arriving with an errata card for some missing text. But after an initial read through I see that Warlord still aren’t bothering with a thorough proof read. This is a pity because otherwise the book is a thing of beauty.
Reading rules and actually playing them can be quite different experiences. I skimmed through to get the gist of things knowing that a friend was going run some games for me and another friend me. There are plenty of detailed explanations of how the rules actually work so I’ll not do that here but suffice to say players familiar with the basic Bolt Action rules will soon pick up these. However, there were a few aspects of the rules that I didn’t like.
Pre-measuring
Or, more precisely, measuring distances, ranges etc at any time. This irks me considerably. It seems to take away part of the skill IMHO. A typical unit movement seems to consist of establishing how far they could actually move, moving the unit, then checking ranges to all nearby units (often asking if the troops have any different movement rules), then tweaking the unit back so as to be just out of charge range. Similarly for missile ranges too. Players look to spend more time faffing the unit ‘back’ rather than getting on with game. It just feels gamey.
Combat
This was less of an irritation for me but still mildly annoying none-the-less. Simply put, unless you roll very well, your unit is likely to be ‘spent’ after just one combat. Yes, they should be less effective but not practically useless. Bear in mind that being a fantasy game I would expect to have a lot more hand-to-hand combat troops (depending upon the exact army). You end up having to hide them behind woods and hills – oh very heroic!
Shooting
Four smaller units of 5 figures are far more effective than two larger units of 10. This is due to the ability to inflict more pins with more, smaller units. Again, it feels gamey. This is technically also true of Bolt Action although in our group we tend to stick to section sized units of infantry.
Magic
This was just plain annoying. For example, units can be repeatedly moved back to your own baseline. Dull.
Conclusion
There are clearly a lot of players out there who are thoroughly enjoying these rules. This is a good thing. Rules are very much a personal choice. But I don’t think I’ll be playing these again!
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