Horn of the Dragon (1)

Last night Eddy and I playtested my new set of fantasy wargaming rules. Originally, there would be 5 of us, but due to various personal circumstances, three of my friends had to cancel, so this left the both of us with plenty of time to test out some rule concepts.

It has become a running joke in our gaming group that one day I would design "the ultimate set of fantasy rules". That is of course a moving target. Rules ideas and fads in wargaming come and go, so any ruleset will only reflect the preferences of the wargamers at that point in time. But it is fun to tinker with one's own rules (at least I think so). So we had a first playtest of "Horn of the Dragon". The title is a playful reference to a fantasy roleplaying campaign I played many, many years ago, but I think it sounds cool. Wargaming is an industry of cool, after all.

But anyway, for this first game I dug out some old fantasy collections. One is a Barbarian army, mostly old Citadel and Grenadier figures, and the other a Lizardmen army, mostly Harlequin figures. I also wanted to add some fun elements, and hence I introduced the "Behemoths": elephants for the Barbarians, and giant reptiles/saurians for the Lizardmen. I set the game in an Egyptian desert. It's a fantasy game, after all!

The rules were inspired by well-tested mechanisms that I particularly like:

1. Roll for activation on a per-unit basis;
2. All combat is done by units (no individual figures);
3. No figure removal (keep as many figures on the table for as long as possible, that's the whole point of miniature wargaming), so that means keeping track of the status of each unit by markers;
4. Combat must be fast enough such that it doesn't become a slug, after all, movement and manoeuvre is the fun part in wargaming, not the endless rolling of dice.
5. Hex-based, so that movement is quick. No fiddling around with tape measures.

As I mentioned before, I also added "Behemoths", and the mechanisms for those were inspired by an article in Wargames Soldiers & Strategy issue 97, "Elephant Archos", written by Jeff Jonas. It describes a game featuring elephants, and based on the battle of Raphia, and apparently one of the few ancient battles in which there was actual elephant-elephant combat (didn't check that, though). Behemoths could be hesitant to move forward, or get into a rage  making them stronger, but also more prone to stampeding.

During and after the game, we had some good discussion about what worked and what didn't, and how we would tune the rules towards the next playtest.

I won't bother the reader with a detailed battle account, so here are some pictures (more pictures in Eddy's battlereport on BGG):