I have tried in the last couple of months to get a project off the ground, without success. A couple of weeks ago I brought out "The Battle of Five Armies" from Games Workshop from 2005. The game uses Warmaster rules with 10mm figures. I always liked the look of the Warmaster units, but couldn't get into the rules.
Fast forward 18 years. On my job I do a lot of driving. I will play YouTube videos (no I don't watch them) while driving. For two weeks I listened to one poster explain the rules, different armies, and battle reports. One thing about the battle reports was the fact that 4 turns could take up to over 2 hours of play. As time is limited, that would not work for me. I then went on my Kindle and brought up my copy of "The Portable Wargame Compendium". In it it has rules rules for " Swords, Sorcery and Squares: A fantasy variant of the Portable Wargame " by Justin Barrett. I thought these rules could work with the BoFA game pieces. For a trial game I ended up using Bob Cordreys' Portable Wargame Ancients rules.
My wife went out with one of her nieces for a couple of hours. I decided to use one base of figures for each unit, as the board wasn't large enough for multiple bases. The game at first was going well, but then I started fumbling with the dice that marked the unit's SP. Then the wife came in and started to talk about her night, distracting me from the game. The game fizzled out, but has me thinking of using individual figures to represent SPs.
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| The armies deployed. The goblins on the left, the humans on the right. |
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| The goblins slowly forced the humans back. |
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| The end. The goblins defeated the humans, destroying most of the human units. In the end I screwed up with the break points and the game should have ended sooner. |
At least you made a start and you have some ideas about “the way ahead”. It’s always good to have a plan about how you want to progress things, what you need to change etc… You might want to consider dice of different colours (red, say, for one force and white for the other) as that helps to differentiate the opposing armies.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Geoff
I really don't like to use markers if I can help it in my games. I prefer to have removable stands. In the end my goal was to find a way to finally use 18 year old figures. Certainly I could use a larger playing area, but that would mean playing in my basement, which right now is too cold for wargaming.
DeleteGreat start John. I much prefer a set of rules I can condense to one page.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I prefer one page rules for my games. When playing solo with limited time, I don't have time to be a wargame lawyer and waste time on complicated rules.
DeleteA very enjoyable battle report! I’m not a great lover of fantasy wargaming … but your report has made me realise that I might have been missing out on something. I have suitable figures from the LOTR RISK games and could easily put a couple of armies together in a matter of minutes. All I need now is time!
ReplyDeleteAll the best,
Bob
Like you, I really don't get into fantasy gaming much. I do have several sets of Caesar Fantasy figures that I occasionally like using, just because they are nice figures. Actually your Ancients Portable Wargame report using LOTR Risk figures continue to get me back using my LOTR Risk figures. Unfortunately, I believe there were two different sets of the LOTR Risk games with different pieces. I think the game with the elephant and swordsmen playing pieces was produced in the UK. I have looked for those playing pieces, without success. I do like your rules, as they only have light and heavy troops. I was going to use Peter Laing armies using your rules, before getting distracted by the BOFA figures.
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