New Skirmish Game: Anthems of War

[Warren Abox]

This title just released yesterday, and so I'm probably one of a few people to have played it.  The author was kind enough to send me an advance copy to review on the channel, and with a game under my belt I can safely say it's worth a look.

The book itself is gorgeous.  The art is about a 50/50 mix of generic fantasy line art (meh) and clear shots of the author's collection of figures in action shots.  The layout is clean, and the writing concise, with a nice collection of army lists, spell lists, and scenarios.

As far as game play goes, Anthems of War uses an interesting combination of an order pool for activations, with each order allowing you to activate a figure on your turn or interrupt your opponent's figures on his turn.  Because you only get as many orders as figures, you have hold back a few of them on your turn, and that means leaving a few figures behind.  You are in a constant state of deciding how far to push your luck, and how much to hold back "just in case".

It reminds me a bit of the activation system in "Tomorrow's War", but the explanation of how it works, how you declare actions, and when and how reactions work is so much cleaner that Anthems of War becomes its own thing.  The combat and morale systems are happily the usual fare in these games.  They are tight enough and familiar enough to have allowed me to spend more time thinking about the novelties in the orders and activation systems.

I need to do more play on the 'expert' side of things, like magic and using formations, to form a full opinion on the game.  But I like what I've seen so far.

[craigjonwoodfield]

Size of forces? Number of units/factions?

[Warren Abox]

Size of forces? Number of units/factions?

Duh.  Good question.  A handful of figures.  A standard 300-point game should need 8-12 figures.

And on further review, reactions don't cost an order.  I got that wrong in my quick start game.  It means a lot more motion and activity for each side, but the orders do still allow you to focus on one small corner of the fight at a time, if you really want to.