"Bear Yourselves Valiantly" at Cold Wars '13

Cold Wars was this past weekend and we ran the first public playtests of our upcoming "Bear Yourselves Valiantly" rules (aka Look, Sarge, No Charts: Fantasy, Ancients, & Medievals).  I ran a fantasy game on Friday night, and James 'Tank' Nickle ran a Punic War game on Saturday afternoon.
  I had a full compliment of players for my Friday fantasy game, entitled "The Desperate Defense of the Elvish Kingdom".  The figures were 10mm, and the  scenario featured two forces of High Elves supported by a force of Wood Elves, guarding two bridges from an attacking army of two Skeleton forces, and one Goblin force.
(Click on any photo to see it bigger.)

  The players seemed to pick up the rules quickly and had a good time too.  The game was a close fought thing, with the Elves narrowly able to squeeze out a victory and maintain control of both bridges by game's end, despite hard attacks from the enemy.

   On the Elven right, repeated Skeleton attacks had them forced back and badly battered, but they never broke. Likewise in the center, where the Goblins hurled themselves at the Elves' line again and again doing heavy damage, but in the end the Goblin force was shattered by the rank of Elven archers supporting the infantry and the Elven infantry held. Things might have turned out differently as a Skeleton force in the center was going to finish what the Goblins started, but the unlucky player failed his morale roll for his skeletons (The skeletons can only fail morale by rolling a 1 on a d10), and the force retreated before it could land the killing blow

   And on the Elves' left, where a column of Wood Elves was marching to assist their brethren, the Goblins committed their Wargs, Giant Spider, and Bats, all of which were virtually destroyed or routed, though the Goblin forces did hold the Wood Elves back and kept them from reaching the main Elven lines.

  In the end, with the attackers spent, and the Elves still holding on by their fingernails, we ended the game and declared it a Elven victory.

  The rules worked very well, and we were pleased with how the game went, and the players' ability to pick them up.  We got a few suggestions for improvements, which we are already working on incorporating.

Saturday afternoon was Tank's Punic Wars game called, "Look, Sarge, the Punic Curse". It featured three Roman legions attacking Hannibal with a mixed force of Carthaginians, Spanish, and Celts. The Roman's goal was to capture the Carthaginian camp, located at the rear edge of the Carthaginian deployment area.  The figures were 10mm.

The battle was fiercely fought with the Carthaginians forcing the Romans back on the Roman left, while the Carthaginian left was being hammered itself.

In the end the Carthaginians eked out a narrow victory with the Roman center being shattered, and the camp still in Carthaginian hands.

Just as with the Fantasy game, the players seemed to pick up the rules quickly and had a great time.

 

I'm already looking forward to Nashcon in May now, where I will get a chance to run the rules again for a new group of players.