Still reeling from a great World Cup! Visions of the beautiful game still fill my head but it is time to get back to wargaming. Paul and I decided to dip our feet a little further into the shimmering depth of hex and chit gaming by pulling out Warriors of God by Multi-Man Publishing, a member of their International Game Series. This game, created by Makoto Nakajima and Adam Starkweather, is of low complexity with a play time of about 2 hours (if you are conversant in the rules.) It attempts to simulate the Hundred Years War between the French and the English. The rules are 16 pages that are clear and well laid out. It only took me an evening to read the rules and follow along with the examples before I felt as though I had a good grasp of the important concepts. The components and map are high quality and sturdy but I would still recommend using a piece of plexiglass over the map to help keep it flat so you don't upset the counters during play. The game uses a number of battle dice (d6) to determine the outcome of battle. Not a lot of die modifiers to deal with so combat was fairly straight forward and clear. The game uses an impulse system and initiative to determine who goes when. Not hard to understand at all.
To the right is an example of one turn from the game. I don't quite
remember at what turn but this photo was taken but it gives a good example of what the map territories look like and a peek at the turn chart laid out on top. In this game leaders are THE thing, without them your troops will evaporate into the hinterlands with nary a whiff back. Each game turn is equal to 10 years so you can't count on leaders being around for more than about five turns so it is helpful to continue to look ahead to see what leaders are coming up in the following turns and position your existing leaders and troops in such a way as to allow the new leaders to enter the board and take command of troops as leaders can die from old age, battle or taken from the game by being captured.
This is basically an area control game where victory points are awarded for control of territories and captured leaders. The first to 30 (or 35) points is the winner. Territories have different victory point values which are informed by the roman numerals in the territories. The roman numerals do double duty as they also indicate the number of troops that can be raised from that area. The main type of troop is standard infantry but there is also knights, gunners and longbowmen but these are restricted in number, unlike the foot soldiers. Each turn more leaders enter the board and placement of them is critical especially if you have unassigned troops on the map. Each side has their own leaders but there are also unaligned leaders that can be used by either side. The assignment of the unaligned leaders is based on who didn't have initiative as they get first choice of any new, unaligned leaders.
Movement is simple enough and easy to understand and your troops can get around the board fairly easy. Stacking is allowed and each leader can command a number of troops corresponding differing numbers of stars on the leaders chit. Basically, they vary from commanding three to nine troops. Overall pretty simple mechanics that don't take a lot of page turning to apply, whether in movement, combat or game turns.
We started the game and within the first couple of turns the French were taking great expanses of the countryside due to fantastic dice rolls. The same couldn't be said of the English as there wasn't many options for movement and some terrible dice rolling. Due to the amount of territory controlled by the French their buildup of troops was quick and efficient unlike the English. The other thing that skewed the game is that the French kept getting the initiative and that is huge when it comes down to the number of leaders and troops that you can move. Basically if you win the initiative you get to move first and last in that turn. Kind of a big deal if you have a lot of troops to move. It also allows you to react more efficiently to your opponents movements or to move troops as a feint. In addition to the French's domination of the continent they were blessed with some good combat results that rocked the English not to mention the loss of the English king and no one to pick up the royal banner among the English leaders. In the end it came down to the French king taking a bunch of troops and knights as well as another leader with his compliment of troops invading England from Normandy and wiping out the English royal line. The victory point disparity was giant.
Couple of thoughts: There is a need to really plan ahead in this game. Leaders come and go and you need to be positioned to take advantage of their deaths or capture. The English really need a foothold in the continent early in the game or there is no way they can thwart the French land-lust. The English also need to really figure out how to leverage their longbowmen as they can make a huge difference in battle. Overall a fun game and one that I would like to revisit sometime soon. For those who are looking for a historical reenactment this might not be the game for you as the low complexity doesn't really allow for much granularity and it might seem a little simple. It was good for me to play this game especially as it gives me another perspective on wargaming and a different mode of play from my previous experiences.
Can you tell who Paul was representing?
