We played another game of this on Sunday, this time with three players and 10,000 points a side. That equated to about 15 units a side (there were two players on each side), including plenty of big, beefy monsters. And it was great! A few thoughts follow ...
The game played out quickly - by the fifth and final turn, victory was clear, so we could have wrapped it up in four turns. And unlike in the previous game, all but one unit engaged in melee (or was otherwise destroyed). The one unit that didn't get to fight was a heavy-infantry unit with my general; it was screened from frontal attack by a group of three goblin tanks (war wagons with Tough 3) and protected in the flanks by the terrain.
Narrow units (the goblin tanks) showed their advantages during the game (Narrow is an upgrade for most troop types). The three tanks were able to bunch together and dominate a bridge while being protected from flank attacks by the river. This meant that to attack one risked an attack by all for units with Wide frontage.
We continued to enjoy the 'wheeling scrum' aspect of melee. Because the rules allow you to change position once engaged (under certain circumstances), there's a bit of jockeying for position, which is fun and feels quite realistic.
The Terrifying keyword had some interesting results. Basically, a unit with this rule exacerbates morale attrition ("Doom") among nearby foes, regardless if the Terrifying unit is actually fighting. So my orcish units were much more likely to break when fighting under the shadow of
Cthulhu's wings than on the other side of the table from the Great Old One (
Nyarlathotep was in the centre, so things weren't too cosy there ...). The rule's a bit different from other fear/terror effects that I've come across (which typically apply only to attacking or being attacked by the terror source), and it struck me as a great way to simulate winged Nazgul and the like.
The stacking Tough rule helped create big differences in the durability of units. For example, the Tough 3 goblin tanks were able to absorb a couple of cavalry charges and emerge virtually unscathed while some of the big monsters were best dealt with by a combination of spreading panic and attacks by other monsters: there's a nice 'Harryhausen' effect in which the best tool for dealing with a monster is another monster.
One slightly odd thing is the need for heavy cavalry (and others) to cross a gap of at least 6" when attacking to achieve the Devastating Charge effect. This sounds fair enough, but when you've had a unit of knights advance directly towards their opponents at full pelt for the entirety of the game, it seems a bit odd that the bonus depends on the final measurement. Equally, the rule becomes almost unusable for units with a 6" move (like war wagons). I wouldn't be surprised to see it brought into line with Kings of War's Thunderous Charge by final publication: that is, the rule would apply to a charge at any distance.
20 February 2012, 09:18:13 PM
