Shadow Storm aka Hail Caesar Fantasy Rules and my blog

[ady2650]

I am a firm believer in the newest version of rules, because *usually* this indicates a more polished version (glares at GW  ). I am also a sucker for the next shiny thing, so the two usually work out quite well!

HC arrives in the mail tomorrow. Looking forward to it, and I've been studying your lists - no promises, as my armies are still being assembled, but soon!

Any questions on how Hail Caesar plays , please fire away. You will enjoy 

[ady2650]

A few years ago me and my mate switch from WM to HC, some of the reasons were:
Endless multi rounds combats in WM - if you have a slight advantage you can grind away an enemy unit
Fiddly combats - stand removal follow ups etc
Supports not very effective in WM
Cavalry too good in WM
Very easy movement in WM (though only partly fixed in HC)

HC felt like a v3 of WM

Nice review Fred, Hail Caesar does move the genre on

ady

[ZeroTwentythree]

I agree with what's been said above about WM vs. HC. I also loved WM, but HC is a more refined evolution of many of the ideas.

As far as HC vs. WFB, I was never thrilled about the way that heroes grew in power over the years in WFB, nor the "death stars" of more or less unstoppable killing machine units. I enjoy heroics and monsters and fantasy elements in games, but I don't like when rank & file troops become almost irrelevant, nor when it comes down to a game of rock-paper-scissor.*  So I gave up on WFB before GW did, and have been looking at other games that suit my tastes better.

I've read through most of your fantasy adaptation and hope to put it to use at some point in the future. Also started passing the link to your site around to some friends, hoping to get a little interest.


* For example (older game, I haven't played in a few years,) I had an Empire army, opponent had a kitted out Bloodthirster that accounted for a huge portion of his points. Game came down to one thing: if my two cannons could bring down his beast, I would win because he didn't have a large enough army to put up a fight. But if he could take out my cannons first, then there was nothing else I could do to stop the beast from tearing my army to shreds. We could have saved the trouble of setting up all the figures and just made a few dice rolls and called it a game. Games like that seemed to become the norm, so I quit playing WFB.

[CaptainHaddonCollider]

Thank you for this. I was heartbroken when they killed off my beloved warhammer game for good (though, to be honest, I had been seeing other fantasy games since 5th edition). This will hopefully prove to be a revitalization of the game in my old group.

[ady2650]

Thanks very much Gents your comments and spreading the word are appreciated

ady

oh I am on with a Kingdom of the Lizard men and a Chinese mythology list :-)

[Kealios]

HC arrived in the mail today - wow, hardback, color, with a sleeve....so fancy!

I've got all the Fantasy stuff printed out and put in a binder. As I read the HC rules, I'll decide if I want to print a second copy of the rules to put into the nice pretty book...I dont actually play historicals, after all

[ady2650]

Chinese mythology list going onto the site tonight if anyone is interested 

ady

[Kealios]

Ady,

I've been really studying HC and your mod, and I have some thoughts.

In the HC main book, army list entries have their unit type listed in their name inside a parentheses:

"Awesome unit of Death with Swords (Heavy Infantry)"

Your unit types are sometimes in the Special Rules section, but sometimes not (the first "Knight" entry on the Quassi-Bretonnian list has nothing). If you adopt the above-mentioned format, that would rock.

As previously mentioned, less abbreviations in the Special Rules would be cool.

Now - I think you've done a great set of work, and redoing some of this could be cumbersome. Therefore, I volunteer to do some of the grunt work, including an editing runthrough on the main rules. I'd just need the original files.

If interested, send me a PM.

Also, I wrote a bit of a comparison of WM and HC here:
http://kealios.blogspot.com/2015/08/how-warmaster-compares-to-hail-caesar.html

Thanks,
Kealios

[ady2650]

Ady,

I've been really studying HC and your mod, and I have some thoughts.

In the HC main book, army list entries have their unit type listed in their name inside a parentheses:

"Awesome unit of Death with Swords (Heavy Infantry)"

Your unit types are sometimes in the Special Rules section, but sometimes not (the first "Knight" entry on the Quassi-Bretonnian list has nothing). If you adopt the above-mentioned format, that would rock.

As previously mentioned, less abbreviations in the Special Rules would be cool.

Now - I think you've done a great set of work, and redoing some of this could be cumbersome. Therefore, I volunteer to do some of the grunt work, including an editing runthrough on the main rules. I'd just need the original files.

If interested, send me a PM.

Also, I wrote a bit of a comparison of WM and HC here:
http://kealios.blogspot.com/2015/08/how-warmaster-compares-to-hail-caesar.html

Thanks,
Kealios

Hi Kealios, Thanks for the feedback, I will take you up on the offer as I have several things going on at the moment and would appreciate the help

ady

[ZeroTwentythree]

Question. Some troops have short ranges of x/y, where one is a 0. My guess is that those are cases where the unit type either gets only support attacks or only ranged attacks, and not both. Is that correct? And if so, which is which?

Thanks!

[ady2650]

Question. Some troops have short ranges of x/y, where one is a 0. My guess is that those are cases where the unit type either gets only support attacks or only ranged attacks, and not both. Is that correct? And if so, which is which?

Thanks!

Hi, thanks for the question,  you are correct the x/ is the support attacks and the /y is the ranged attack so 3/0 would be three support attacks but 0 range attacks

hope this helps , get back to me with anything else

ady

[ZeroTwentythree]

I hope there is still interest in this project. I haven't had a chance to play yet (nor any other games...) but I'm still looking forward to giving it a try. Continuing to paint figures with this in mind, and continuing to cobble together my own lists using yours as a starting point. I've got another question:

What is the impact of Bestial Infantry & Bestial Cavalry on gameplay? Is it just that they get the Bestial "Useful Rule?" If that is the case, the two (unit type and useful rule) seem redundant. I understand there is a basing difference defined in the Shadow Storm rules, but I think the original basing rules could just be fudged a anyway, since fantasy accommodates a wider variety of figures anyway.

I hope that doesn't sound like nit-picking -- though maybe it is? I'd prefer "streamlining." 

[Luc]

Hello
We've discover HC and its HCF version on the french forum (wher we've post an aar http://hailcaesarfrance.forumactif.org/t987-hcf-la-bataille-des-4-armees ) and we'd like to transform clan war list to HCF (we've lot of miniatures to play...  ).
Is there a website / forum where we can find the element to calculate the army cost for fantasy skill?

[blacksmith]

I'm interested in reading and trying your rules but I cannot find them in the link you provided.

[Luc]

All the army lists and special rules
http://hailcaesarfrance.forumactif.org/h3-telechargements-hc-fantasy

Basic rules
http://hailcaesarfrance.forumactif.org/h2-telechargements-hc

(all in french  ).