Sword & Spear Review . To quote the Polkovnic Productions page, Sword & Spear is a big battle ancient and medieval wargame. Sword & Spear is a flexible rules system allowing battles to be staged from a multitude of time periods, using various scale miniatures. The Sword & Spear support and forums are quite active, with rules questions being answered in a timely manner. There is a large range of army lists ready to be used, all provided for free, with an additional point calculator to help design your own armies. The time periods covered so far are: Biblical. Warhammer le jeu des batailles fantastiques (souvent appel Greek and Mecedonian wars. Rome and her enemies. The Dark Ages. Byzantium. The Middle East & Crusades. Medieval. This covers a huge range from 1. Century BC, through to 1. Century AD, enough to cover most ancient/ medieval gaming requirements! The rulebook is available in both electronic format (PDF) and hard copy. A nice touch is the PDF being available in both full colour, and printer friendly version to save ink/ toner. The book contains almost all the rules needed to play in any period covered by the army lists, and I don. The rules are well laid out and easy to read, as well as logically ordered. This makes finding and checking rules easy. Something that aids in the understanding of the rules are the frequent and informative diagrams and pictures. The one thing missing from the rules is how to use the army lists and the point allocation system. This is, however, easily found (again as a free download) from the Sword & Spear PDF for Using the Army Lists. Sword & Spear uses a . Whilst every unit may have an opportunity to activate, not every unit may activate every turn. This may either be due to poor command rolls, or by forgoeing one units activation in an effort to bolster the ability of another. A dice is placed in a cup or bag for each unit, different colours for each army or side being represented. A select number of dice are drawn per phase of the turn. Warmaster is a ruleset for tabletop wargames written by Rick Priestley, published by Specialist Games (a division of Games Workshop), and set in the Warhammer Fantasy. Sword & Spear Review. Sword & Spear is a wargame rules set for ancient and medieval (large scale) battles. A big battle ancient and medieval wargame. 15mm Ancients Miniatures Suppliers (This page is a bit of a monster, as it has loads of photos, and voting buttons. To see a faster, picture-free page click here). DBA 3.0 - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. De Bellis Antiquitatis v 3.0.
These dice are then rolled and assigned to units. The way dice are assigned dictates whether a unit can act, what it can do (basic or advanced actions), and when the activation occurs. This all boils down to a very tactical activation system that is both fluid in its use and engaging to both players, through the duration of each turn. The system also allows for larger battles, being comprehensively covered in the rules, up to 3 players v 3 players. Movement is very simple to come to grips with quick yet intuitive, and solving a lot of problems I have had in the past with Ancients period games, unit manoeuvres. Units can either advance (with a little room for lateral movement) or manoeuvre, allowing the unit to move how they like as long as their total movement isn. This gets rid of my dreaded rule, the unit wheel, and as such makes me very happy. Add in to this the regular terrain and obstacle rules along with reforms and movement for special units like skirmishers and the movement rules remain comprehensive yet quick and easy. Charges are handled in a manner similar to other Ancients style games, with the movement process again being intuitive and simple (in part thanks to the general movement rules). There are plenty of diagrams and pictures in this section, along with rules on how to tidy up messy charges. Like the movement rules, these seem to make sense and are easy to follow and use. One thing we questioned was the range of shooting, it is something I am still researching, however it felt a little too short range in the game we played. We often could advance units the same distance as we could shoot, however perhaps that is due to the ranges involved being effective ranges. Again I am still investigating this, and I am sure there is a simple answer. Along with moving and manoeuvres, combat is at the heart of all ancient/ medieval battle games and here we come to a system I haven. Each unit has a strength, which equals the number of dice rolled in combat. This amount is modified by a fairly standard set of modifiers (for impetus, assisting units, flank/ rear attacks etc). Both sides roll their dice and the top 4 are lined up against each other, in a manner similar to the boardgame Risk. These dice are compared as a pair, with armour and certain weapons being able to modify the result of a dice allowing you to possibly gain an edge over your opponent. The result is an interactive, engaging, combat system that gives benefit to powerful units, but not at the expense of making them all powerful. The way armour, weapons and unit strength work allows for a large variety of unit types that appear to show how their differences, well, make a difference. Armoured units can take more punishment, whereas more offensive units are able to inflict more damage when they hit. The combat system does a nice job of highlighting the differences between units, without making them overpowered. It keeps all the players engaged, as overpowering units are still capped at the amount of dice they can . This does mean better units will have an advantage, but the combat is not a forgone conclusion. Shooting is resolved in the same method, but the unit firing may never take hits. Finally the morale and hit system is very well tied into the base rules, and gives meaning to character figures. All units are deemed . This allows them to be commanded as normal. Penalties apply if units are out of command range, with benefits applying to a unit which has been joined by a character. Units are controlled via their discipline stat, this represents in how much disarray the unit is in. Too much disarray and the unit will be routed, their morale broken. Morale is represented by . A unit can take a number of hits equal to its strength before it breaks (there are some modifiers based on special unit rules). As a units discipline is directly affected by both being in command, and how many hits it has received, the positioning of characters becomes very important. The importance of Characters comes . Combining the rally ability with increased unit discipline can be a game changer. In Sword & Spear, rallying removes all the hits a unit currently has. Each unit in the army has a points cost and a value. The cost simply assists in creating an army to a set value. It is this number that helps determine the effect of morale on army. As an army begins losing units, it will become more disarrayed and vulnerable (at 1/3rd total army value), finally breaking from the field of battle if they lose . This simple decision to split the cost of the unit, from the value of the unit to the army, gives a larger variation of army composition and arrangement and allows for more strategic decisions. Record keeping is minimal in Sword & Spear. Tokens are required to keep a track of unit hits and that is about all. The army lists and stat sheets are minimal and simple to follow. As a first time player, we completed our first 3. Sword & Shield (Picts v Roman Legions) inside two and a half hours. That gave us the complete game, from running through terrain deployment to Troy routing my army from the field. We fielded 1. 0mm miniatures and arranged them as units with 4. We adopted 1 DU to equal 1 inch (as opposed to 2. This does give a good indication of the systems flexibility. After the regular teething problems that playing any new games has, we quickly adopted the majority of the rules and the game was very free flowing. Any problems we may have encountered stemmed more from our lack of knowledge of tactics for that period than rule issues. We both enjoyed the game upon its conclusion, and the game generated a deeper discussion about the system and its working, and how we could improve our gameplay in future battles. Opinion: Matt. I found Sword & Spear breathed new life into a period I am not overly fond of playing in. The game we played was engaging, with innovative mechanics which kept their consistency across actions. In this case a simple system means ease of playing, not a lack of depth, and it was enjoyable to discover the subtle nuances built in to the rules. Even though I am not an expert in ancients/ medieval battles, and it is not one of my core wargaming periods, I would consider this to be my system of preference for gaming in that era. The most intriguing thing, for me, is the authors move into adapting this set of rules into a fantasy ruleset. I am very keen on this and the Sword and Spear Fantasy forums have the work that has been created to date. With the rules being flexible, the game should be able to work with both 1. This may see some of our old Warhammer and Warmaster miniatures dusted off, though it remains to see if it will be able to capture the . For instance, in our battle I would like to have concentrated more on an interesting little archer battle we had going on my right flank, but the dice rolls meant I often only had enough activations to focus on the main battle at the core. Without the randomness in many of the rules this game would quickly fall into . Even with this, though, I. I like a bit of whizz, bang and zap to my games, perhaps the fantasy addon to this will bring that to the table. Until then, a good, solid little filler for a night that doesn. D6 dice system, both roll to beat target number, and opposed rolling. Some pictures of our game in progress are below. I would like to do a battle report next time we play. We used our old Warmaster miniatures for this game. The Undead playing the part of the Picts, with the High Elves subbing in as Roman Legionaries. Sword & Spear – View from the Pict right flank. The tokens represent hits the units have taken. Sword & Spear – Overview of the battle. The Roman’s are well and truly becoming surrounded at this point. They would go on to rout shortly after. Sword & Spear – The Roman General rides along the rear ranks rallying his troops. Sword & Spear – A view of the . The back of the Roman army has been broken. Their General signals the retreat.
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