I have played a couple of games of this now and watched one
more. Not an expert but enough to share my opinion.
It’s mixed
I have enjoyed my games and will enjoy several more but I
would caution the general recommendation for this rule set that gets chucked
out regularly on reddit when anyone asks for a medieval or ancients ruleset.
 |
| Hannibal surveys the field from behind his gallic infantry |
I will stick the boot in first then end on the positives.
As a simulationist by preference this game is nonsense. A
generalist ruleset is going to struggle to represent the nuances of warfare in
a specific era. I should not be surprised that the way elephants are used is
not that similar to their historical deployment, or that running three lines of
republic romans is a bad idea however I’m not sure that these rules represent
any ancient or medieval warfare in a particularly meaningful way.
Let’s start with the victory conditions. Your army routs
when you lose roughly 1/3 to 1/2 your units. Each unit counts as 2 points and
each unit with a cohesion hit but still in the field counts as 1. When these
total to the number of units in your army you lose. This in itself is fine, a
clear simple rule.
However, a group of light skirmishers is equal in value to a
block of heavy pikemen or elite cavalry. The loss of the peasant javlin men is
the same as the loss of the Teutonic knights. This has a weird effect. It is
beneficial to hunt down enemy skirmishers and light troops, equally a wise
commander needs to invest a proportion of their command points keeping their light
troops out of danger. This doesn’t reflect
generalship in any era I am aware of. In the ancient world armies such as Rome
did not care about what happened to the velites, medieval armies were not very
concerned about their skirmishers either. Equally such light troops were
responsible for themselves, not micromanaged out of harms way.
 |
| My Spanish and Punic cav being their march around the Indian flank |
Micromanagement and manoeuvre is the second obvious issue.
These rules are an evolution of the WRG – DBX linage. And whilst they may be an
improvement (im not sure having not played the heritage) they are the same idea
and ethos. This is a tournament ruleset first and foremost.
To give an example from this evenings game. My opponent could
have double enveloped me using the slide rule. In any move a group may slide
sideways up to one base width. A simple rule designed to allow relatively small
moves without the faff of turns and wheels. His intention was to slide his
entire army to the left around the edge of the marsh to get a flank bonus on
both sides of my army (his line was longer than mine). In and of itself this
seems fair enough but from a historical perspective it is rather weird. If his
army represents a few tens of thousands of men and elephants he is effectively
asking them to side step in unison for a few hundred meters following the edge
of a swamp and then to charge. I can think of no army in history that manoeuvred
in such a manner. Maybe an army of horse archers might do such a thing.
In the game he rolled in sufficient command pips to do it,
and my skirmishers made it more difficult.
The lines close
The rules run around 80 pages. By volume this is hard to
internalise unless you are really into them. To play well you want to know the
rules well as mastery of the movement rules in particular confers a significant
advantage. When to slide, how to exploit the zone of control rules etc. It is
in the detailed application of these rules that you can tie your opponent down
or spring a surprise trap. Great for a detailed strategy game but unsettling
for the simulationist in me.
That’s enough grouching about it being a fiddley set of
tournament rules. Onto the positives.
The set up pregame is quite good. Having more light horse
and infantry confers a scouting bonus, this combined with a die roll allows on
side to choose the landscape to fight in (forest, plains, mountains etc). Further
rolls are made for terrain and then the players assemble their battle plan.
This plan at its most basic includes deployment but can also include ambushes
and flank marches. Its quite clever and allows for a lot of variability in set
up.
It is quite fast playing and the battles do look impressive.
DBX basing whilst cheap (a unit is 2-8 men) does look rather pathetic if you
only have a few units. L’Arts armies will typically be around 25 units or more.
It does feel epic once the lines get moving. Games seem to reliably finish in
around 2 hours.
 |
| My light cav couldn't fit an elephant, but did lock down units from charging |
It is also a fairly deep game. I’m not sure it’s a depth I
particularly want. Part of the depth is in list building. I do actually enjoy
this but it could get very expensive very quickly. It would appear that being
able to min-max out on elite units and cheap padding units is a good approach.
This would require one to buy the right mix and then buy more if the balance is
not quite right. I own about 30% more Carthaginians than I need for a given
list so I have some wiggle room, but already I could justify spending another
£40 to optimise my list in another direction.
That seems like a neutral point.
Overall I am happy with the games I have played but I don’t think
this is a blanket recommendation.
I learned a few things from this evenings defeat at the
hands of the Indians;
Ø
Cavalry can get around your opponents flank, but
it is too slow to hit home before your main line crumbles. If I were to go with
cavalry on one flank again I would hold my infantry back to buy more time for
the cav to have an impact. This could result in the cav being isolated and
killed however.
Ø
Light infantry should be minimised unless you
know how to micro them effectively. I had too much light cav and light infantry
in my force. They caused zero casualties (partly poor rolling) but more than
that gave away many points in losses (see comments above).
Ø
Using leaders to shore up the line by rallying
cohesion points off is not very effective. In the past I have played a lot of
the Great Battles of History series by GMT. In those games using leaders to
steady the line is a good strategy. Here it only works if you roll very well. I’d
go with cheaper leaders in future as there is little benefit to doing this.
The central melee spreads
In the medium term I will be looking for a more casual rule
set. I have not decided whether to pick up Age of Hannibal, or Sword and Spear
or Hail Caesar. The latter may by reputation be a bit simple. Sword and Spear
looks historically generic but quite fun and quite cheap.
Comments
Post a Comment