Horn of the Dragon (2)

After a first playtest of my homebrewn fantasy rules, I decided to set up a second battle. When testing new rules, I always like to go for what I would call "unusual situations". After all, most wargaming rules operate within a specific set of assumptions: density of troops, density of terrain, etc. But they also operate under scenario assumptions - whether the game is a straight battle or whether roleplaying and other story elements are part of the scenario.

So for a second playtest I decided to set up a classic scenario, based on Thistlewood, an article that appeared many decades ago in White Dwarf (issue 45) for Warhammer 1s edition, and written by Joe Dever. It is the type of fantasy battle that drew me into fantasy wargaming: a combination of battle and certain elements of roleplaying, which is also something I would like to see  in my own Horn of the Dragon rules.

(There is a whole series of blogposts on Thistlewood on the BroadSword and Beasts blog).

But first, the original article. I still have a complete run of White Dwarf 1-84, so it was easy for me to look it up.

 

Then, the setup. I do have a decent collection of late 80s fantasy figures and scenery, so to remain in the spirit of Thistlewood, these were drafted once again in service.

An overall view of the battlefield. I tried to recreate the original map as close as possible, but some interpretation is always necessary. It doesn't make much sense to recreate maps to the millimeter, but it's more important to capture the spirit of the scenario.

The Village of Thistlewood. The houses are cardboard houses from the old Warhammer Townscape set, and originally made available through the Warhammer 2nd edition scenario packs.

The Wizard's Tower. It's a resin model by Gedemco, and 80s Belgian wargaming company.

Since my rules are unit-based rather than figure-based, I had to translate the figures given in the text to a number of equivalent units. Nothing too complicated ...

Orc units and Pack Wolves.

More Orc units, the Wyvern, and Ugrash Ka, the hill giant leader of the Orcs.

The King's Army.

More units of the King's Army. I used some of my old chaos centaurs for the Royal Centaur unit.

More units of the evil forces. Trolls as well as undead.

Another view of the troll and undead units.

Now the only thing left to do is to play the game :-)