Next Battle On Hold, Dinosaurs, Genies Character Types and dice modifiers on characters, moves and units.

 My worthy wargaming opponent, Mathew, was bitten by his dog. He was trying to extract the dogs' leg from the fence when the dog, in unthinking reaction, bit its owner! So that delayed our next game, but probably just as well as I am still clearing the second wargame table and assembling troops.

  Mathew came over today and we did some dice rolling to work out the qualities of his characters.
We weight the results for different types. Wizards and priests, for example have no weightings for combat and battle qualities but SHOULD be religious but wizards are expected to have at least medium intelligence. So, we either re-roll or add more to unintelligent wizards! The wizard's level and lore of magic are also important. Higher level wizards get greater chances of casting spells. Unlike my own armies, Mat has not bought any priests or High Priests for his army. I am glad I included priests and High priests in my Beersteiner army as they already played a role in limiting Undead magic and hurting the skeleton warriors. On the other hand some priests and wizards do end up having good combat and battle skills. I once even had a wizard commanding a human (Beersteiner) army.

  The Heroes have a weighting in combat and Boldness ratings as we expect them to have at least basic fighting skills! Nevertheless, we did have a few ordinary ones and some stupid ones! With generals we expect them to have reasonable leadership and Battlefield Intelligence but still got a few duds and a few so cautious that they could be accused of cowardice and some others so Bold they could be psychotic nutcases. They also have an intelligence rating which might stop them from doing suicidal stuff. We use the percentage dice to resolve such sticky situations. We have a kind of qualified 'activation'. We don't role for all units to see if they do anything. I consider that too limiting. The limitations are the following: 1/ Set up and First Move - a leader with better Battlefield Intelligence gets his opponent to re-roll successful setup and First Move roles. In other words, if Mat's general has better BI he can make me reroll my 6 over his 5 and if I lose, he can make my army set up first. The same goes for first move. 2/ Boldness - if a general has low boldness, say under 50% he must roll under that to behave in a bold manner. So, we decided last battle and the one before (both involving Beerstein and Necrolia) that as both sides had cautious leaders, they could not advance their armies past a certain spot until a Boldness roll was passed.  The germ of these ideas came to me from reading of Frank and Ross Perry's )of First & second Books of Wargaming) fantasy campaigns. I just made a formula to 'enforce', it but it still relies on the good nature of the players to allow characters to do annoying or stupid as well as heroic things. (We don't have an umpire).

On the other hand, some particular units like knights, fanatics and perhaps some Heroes, might ignore the general and do their own thing! In fact, knights have to roll on leadership NOT to attack a close by enemy. 3/ Charging. A unit has to pass a Leadership test to charge (unless they are certain troop types already mentioned). If the enemy is supernatural or monstrous then it might cause fear or terror (as in Warhammer rules) and must do an ADDITIONAL Leadership test. Elite troops will usually do what they are told but militia and peasants much less so.

  Characters also have percentages for Kindness, Religion, Loyalty and Health. They have between 1 and 3 lives (the number of times they can be killed and come back in two map moves time). Of course they might awaken from consciousness to be captives. They also have skill levels for strength, Toughness, Ballistic Skill, Weapon Skill, leadership as well as degrees of armor. We don't always use all of those but in our present games we include them all, borrowed from GW.

  Our next game is going to be a big one as two of Mat's Fezian armies battle two Aztec ones. I have given these Aztec armies two dinosaurs, one a large tyrannosaurus type and the other a triceratops with howdah. Mat's army includes a genie which can grow from man sized to giant dimensions - all he needs to do is roll a six. The genie is thus potentially a monstrous opponent plus a wizard. Both of us have wizards (Mat has an ordinary one as well as the genie) but my Aztecs also have some priests. Mat has a total of four cannons, one which comes from reserve. We also have large wagons trains that can remain in the adjoining hexes, at risk of raiders or come from reserve. Most of our troops are lights reinforced with bowmen and some elite troops. We both have heroes to fortify our units. There are some magic weapons present. The Aztecs lack long range weapons. Last I looked Mat somewhat outnumbers my Aztecs. I am thinking that the Aztecs need to make a bold initial attack to keep the enemy on the back foot before it can deploy its advantages, but we will see.

   BELOW: Fezian Army 3

This army was initially present in the hex so gets to have its three cannons already deployed.

Seen here are the general, a wizard (actually he could be from his other army not featured here), the general and two heroes in heavy armor. Also seen are regular cavalry (mamelukes) and lights with halberds (yes, they are Chinese Boxers - it was those or Beefeaters after Mat indicated that he had chosen a light unit so armed).

                                              

                    Also shown here are Hillmen (traditionally resembling Vikings) mercenaries and the genie in his giant form.

                                                               An Aztec triceratops.

The photos show only a quarter of forces that will be in action
Mat's work commitments have also delayed the battle but when it happens the wargame table will witness some interesting actions.

  FANTASY VS HISTORICAL

Although I strive to simply replicate the performance of certain troop types and weapons, I have become increasingly drawn to fantasy situations rather than trying to recreate a particular historical battle. I find this quite liberating as well as creative as I invent countries, maps and characters. 

  You won't believe it but so far, I have been relatively restrained; there are no Tiger tanks or Daleks rampaging around battlefields with 18th century and earlier troops. That would be too much of a lopsided game although wizards could, possibly take them on and a giant might squash a tank or Dalek!

  However, when Mat and I get to map move 4 (after this coming battle) we role on the random event chart for 100 possible outcomes and they do include some far-out options (just not with tanks or Daleks). I decided to do this roll half way through the battle (if there is one that move) as some results are immediate.