Diego adapted the 1990s rules 'Pig Wars' to cover tribal raiding warfare by horse archers etc. They are a relative of Fistful of Lead, being a skirmish game with card based unit activation. The plan is to run this as a participation game at a show, so this was a bit of playtest.
We didn't have a big turnout for this one as it is half term, just John, myself and Simon with Diego adjudicating. The general scheme was a raid by competing tribes on a camp, with various bits of loot available, but also objectives around defeating (or not) the various other tribes.
The enemy camp. The huts and figures are all 2D laminated printouts on little plastic bases, and they look really, really good. Sadly my photos of the Zoom screen don't do them justice. The terrain is Hexon with various features on it. We didn't use the hexes to regulate movement, Diego just measured distances.
John was defending the camp and had two Yurts, defended by four bowmen and three javelin men. They were all lightly armoured. Various goodies were inside the Yurts. My tribe had a particular hatred of Johns, so we got many points for killing them as well as nicking stuff. I wasn't too bothered by Simons lot, as long as they didn't get in my way.
My guys (Tartars) can be seen lurking behind the bushes to the left. They have a full armoured leader with a crossbow, three part armoured veterans with crossbows and two trained troops with bows. All are mounted on horses.
Just visible on the right are Simons tribe wending their way through the rugged mountains. One problem with the 2D figures is that they are hard to see end on! They had a very similar looking force to mine but I didn't know what their objectives were. Our full armoured leaders were rather slower than their part armoured pals. I kept my troops together in a tight bunch, but Simon strung his out as they had to go single file through the pass anyway.
We came on from the southwest and southeast corners respectively. The order of activation was determined by a single card per unit (not per figure like FFoL), in fact very similar to the activation system we use for NATO Brigade Commander and OP14. This introduced a nice bit of friction into the game turn.
Activated units can essentially do two actions, shoot twice, move half and shoot once or not shoot at all and move full. Along with stuff like melee and other things. I burst through the scrub as a full move while Simon lurked a bit. John responded by moving his javelin troops behind the yurts as they were very short ranged, and pushing the bowmen forward to fire a few arrows at my guys. Fortunately they either missed or my armour saved the hits.
Firing and armour were resolved with card draws, which was very slick and simple once you knew what cards you were looking for.
Simon emerged and there was a general exchange of arrows with the camp. The superior firepower of the horse archers (12 of them firing stationary, so 24 shots) manifested itself and three of the enemy archers went down. Well, this was most satisfactory.
Unfortunately Simon then decided it would be a good idea to shoot my guys up at point blank range. I returned the favour. Both sides had reasonable armour so the losses were not excessive, but we both lost a couple of men. John chipped in and I lost another one, and suddenly things weren't so good.
My guys broke and ran for it, having lost 50% of their force in one turn. We headed back for the safety of the bushes.
Simon then set about playing a cat and mouse game with the last archer and the hiding javelin men. Diego took the Yurt model off so we could see what was going on. At this stage the javelins have charged Simons leader and managed to wound him. Although hits have a chance of killing Leaders, they more commonly get wounds (unlike the other figures).
My guys eventually returned to the fray and I joined in the hunt around the Yurts. Having despatched the impudent javelin men, Simon took the opportunity to loot the Yurt on his side of the table and made off with a 'princess'. Meanwhile I managed to lose yet another bowman and with only two figures left and my Leader wounded I decided to head for home.
In the totting up, we'd all done OK. Simon had made off with tons of loot, John had saved one of the Yurts and all the heavier stuff Simon couldn't carry off and still had a man on his feet. Even though my party had lost lots of men, there were an awful lot of Johns men on the ground, and I wasn't too worried that it was Simon who had killed them.
That worked really well and was a lot of fun. It moved along rather faster than FFoL, probably as we didn't have a card per figure and the mechanisms were easy to pick up, even if the rules were a bit daunting at first glance. We had a bit of a discussion about the player experience and victory conditions, but it looks good to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment