Looking for testers/reviews for a new set of wargame rules!

[Charlie_]

Ok, here are my thoughts! Long post ahead!

Basic concepts, units etc
All seems very nice. Will power seems like a fun mechanic.

Movement phase
- Any reason why all units move on 4+, rather than having different 'discipline values' or something? All it would need to be is either a 3+, 4+ or 5+ for each unit. Surely that doesn't add much complexity, and 4+ could still be used for the majority of units.
- Running rates at 12" for infantry and 24" for cavalry. What sort of distance are you visualising armies starting apart? In my rules, I have these same distances and the armies normally start 36" apart. That means infantry advancing on a stationary enemy will contact them in three turns. How many turns are you expecting this to take in your rules (and thus how many rounds of shooting would the advancing infantry have to handle before contacting the stationary enemy?).
- Little typo in charge range distances, first paragraph?
- I like how you make calculating charge routes and distances simple - if they are in range, they can do it. It's the same in my rules. Terrain not slowing them down but giving them a combat penalty is an interesting idea... I like it! Keeping unit sizes all the same and thus making it so that only one unit can contact one facing of another unit is a nice, clear mechanism to avoid complicated situations.
 - Terrain. Simply not allowing units to run through terrain is a good solution, much more appealing than messing around with halving moves, quartering moves, etc... And being restricted to just moving 2" or something like that is always daft. I like the simple building rules.

Shoot phase
- Just a little thought on javelins, assuming they are to be used by mobile skirmishers.... Perhaps such units should be allowed to use javelins and run, but limit their range to 6"? Would keep such units mobile, but means they have to get dangerously close to the enemy - thus perfect for harassing flanks rather than the enemy front-on. Would mean moving 12" and shooting 6" (total 18" effective range) versus moving 6" and shooting 12" (still 18" effective range, but the unit hasn't moved much and will remain fairly static).
- It seems a little odd that the shooting player rolls 'to hit' needing to overcome the enemy's defence value with penalties, then the defending player rolls 'to save' needing a flat 4+ to save. Surely it would be a bit more logical if the 'to hit' roll was a flat 4+ plus penalties, and the defending player's 'to save' roll would be using their defence value? It would change the statistics a little bit, don't know for better for worse, but it does seem to just make a bit more sense in terms of gameplay.
[EXAMPLE - as it is currently, defending unit has defence 5, and is in cover, so shooter needs 6+ to hit. Defending player then needs a basic 4+ to save. So each shot is 1/6 x 1/2 = 8.3% chance of success. Alternatively, it would be... Shooter needs 4+ to hit, cover changes this to 5+. Defender then has a 3+ save to negate any hits. So 1/3 x 1/3 = 11.1% chance of success.]
[Another option is that cover could increase the defender's 'to save'/defence roll instead of being a penalty to hit. That would actually make the above statistics match up.... EXAMPLE - Shooter needs a 4+ to hit, defender has a 3+ save increased to 2+ by cover... so 1/2 x 1/6 = 8.3% chance of success]

Combat phase
- The document I'm reading still has the doubled and tripled attack dice for flank and rear attacks. If you have changed it to a bonus instead, it's not showing on the document I just downloaded.
- As I said above, I like the simple mechanism of hindering charges. Is this also used to represent targets in defended positions, behind a wall etc? What if its in a heavily defended or fortified position, possibility for a -2 penalty?
- Ah I see you have the 'to save' roll for combat being worse than against shooting, which perhaps messes up my idea above in terms of who rolls what and the statistics involved. However, if that system was used, you could always make combat more deadly in other ways though if that's what you wanted. For example rather than reducing the 'to save' roll, combat attacks could simply use more dice than shooting attacks... though that would require a separate stat, one for combat attacks, and one for shooting attacks, but I don't think that seems unreasonable at all, and will give more flexibility. Hold on... What about units that are strong in combat but weak at shooting, or vice versa? As it is now, all your units are apparently always going to be just as good at shooting as they are in combat.
For example, say you have a unit of english longbowmen with 10 attack dice. That might make them very effective at shooting, but also just as effective in combat. Surely if you had two stats, you could have something more realistic - 12 shooting dice and 8 combat dice, say.
- I like the move action after combat, depending on whether they pass of fail their command roll, representing unruly units surging forward / pursuing when it's not a good idea.

Cohesion
- I like the split stat for wavering and broken points.
- Perhaps I missed it, but what are the negative effects of wavering on a unit fighting in combat? Are there none? Surely it would be a nice idea to give a penalty to a unit that becomes wavering when they fight in combat? It could mean in the first turn they lose and become wavering, and in the next turn they are thus weakened and their opponent is able to finish them off more easily.

Characters
- I like the 'bolstering' stat, giving the opportunity for some characters to be good independent fighters but not add much to a unit they are leading, and vice versa.
- However, if you don't replace the doubling/tripling with a bonus, this could lead to a horrendous ammount of dice being rolled in some cases - 10 attacks, tripled for a rear attack, plus 10 from a bolstering character = 40 dice!!!! Though if you are doing away with doubling/tripling this probably won't be an issue.
- Typo? You seem to refer to 'characters' as 'individuals' instead for a few paragraphs.
- The ability to use will points to increase their dice roll when seeing if they are killed with a losing unit is very nice, lets fate intervene and save them from a sticky end!!!
- Again, I like will points. Giving them a choice between modifying a roll by 1 or re-rolling one dice for cohesion is a fun little thing.

Special rules
- Two-handed weapons. Should there be a penalty for these to balance out the bonus?
- Inspiring. Rather than 'the second result stands', should it instead say 'the best result is used'? Otherwise you could get a wavering result in combat, re-roll due to the inspiring character and get a rout result!
- Shieldwall. Yeah should it really give them +1 to hit as well? An increased defence roll is surely enough. Also, perhaps they only can be in shieldwall when receiving a charge, not when charging themselves?
- Elite and Raw. If you have variable command rolls like I mentioned earlier, these rules would just be replaced by units with 3+ or 5+ command rolls, rather than 4+ like everyone else. You could also have it as a 'command level' for every unit: either Elite, Standard or Raw, which pass command tests on 3+, 4+ or 5+ respectively. Might be neater?

Other ideas
- How about some sort of simple bonus for supporting units in combat? As in, having a unit directly behind another one which is fighting, forming an extra 'rank'. Could also be if supporting side-by-side. Could be extra dice, a bonus, or something?


OVERALL
Looks like a good solid set of rules! It's not exactly what I am looking for in my games, where I prefer a little more detail and thus individual basing - large skirmishes. But for future, larger games I may find myself playing, this seems like a pretty solid alternative to, say, Hail Caesar.
The two major things I would consider looking at are...
1) Having a separate 'melee' and 'shooting' attack value.
2) Perhaps alter the 'to hit' and 'to save' rolls, so that the latter isn't always 4+ or 5+. Though this will alter the statistics involved, and some maths will be required to see which suits your system better. There may be a reason you have done it this way that I overlooked.

[Gracchus Armisurplus]

Thanks for the detailed response! Lots of good food for thought there

Movement phase
- Any reason why all units move on 4+, rather than having different 'discipline values' or something? All it would need to be is either a 3+, 4+ or 5+ for each unit. Surely that doesn't add much complexity, and 4+ could still be used for the majority of units.

Good idea! This is why I like to get another persons view because as the only person reading/writing the rules, sometimes you don't see the forest for the trees!

- Running rates at 12" for infantry and 24" for cavalry. What sort of distance are you visualising armies starting apart? In my rules, I have these same distances and the armies normally start 36" apart. That means infantry advancing on a stationary enemy will contact them in three turns. How many turns are you expecting this to take in your rules (and thus how many rounds of shooting would the advancing infantry have to handle before contacting the stationary enemy?).

I'm imagining a 6x4 board with 8" deployment zones being pretty standard, so you COULD contact the enemy on the third turn but only if you spend every turn running directly ahead which would limit your tactical options significantly.

One thing I haven't really addressed at all yet is scenarios or deployment or army lists or anything like that, and I'm not sure if I should or if that's best left to the discretion of the players?

- Little typo in charge range distances, first paragraph?

Well spotted.

- I like how you make calculating charge routes and distances simple - if they are in range, they can do it. It's the same in my rules. Terrain not slowing them down but giving them a combat penalty is an interesting idea... I like it! Keeping unit sizes all the same and thus making it so that only one unit can contact one facing of another unit is a nice, clear mechanism to avoid complicated situations.
 - Terrain. Simply not allowing units to run through terrain is a good solution, much more appealing than messing around with halving moves, quartering moves, etc... And being restricted to just moving 2" or something like that is always daft. I like the simple building rules.

Cheers. I drew inspiration from both KoW and WHFB for the movement and terrain rules, and I originally was going to have a range of unit sizes but found it much easier to just have a single size. Larger formations can be easily represented by units moving together on the battlefield, with a general or lieutenants nearby to ensure the formation stays tight.

Shoot phase
- Just a little thought on javelins, assuming they are to be used by mobile skirmishers.... Perhaps such units should be allowed to use javelins and run, but limit their range to 6"? Would keep such units mobile, but means they have to get dangerously close to the enemy - thus perfect for harassing flanks rather than the enemy front-on. Would mean moving 12" and shooting 6" (total 18" effective range) versus moving 6" and shooting 12" (still 18" effective range, but the unit hasn't moved much and will remain fairly static).

That's not a bad idea.

- It seems a little odd that the shooting player rolls 'to hit' needing to overcome the enemy's defence value with penalties, then the defending player rolls 'to save' needing a flat 4+ to save. Surely it would be a bit more logical if the 'to hit' roll was a flat 4+ plus penalties, and the defending player's 'to save' roll would be using their defence value? It would change the statistics a little bit, don't know for better for worse, but it does seem to just make a bit more sense in terms of gameplay.

I like keeping the combat and shooting mechanisms the same to make things less confusing

Combat phase
- The document I'm reading still has the doubled and tripled attack dice for flank and rear attacks. If you have changed it to a bonus instead, it's not showing on the document I just downloaded.

Yeah, it's been changed but I haven't uploaded it yet since I've been making changes based on the feedback in this thread. I'll upload the new document in the next day or two. Basically the doubling and tripling has been removed, and replaced with three modifiers:

-1 to hit if your unit is engaged to the flank or rear.
+1 to hit if you have engaged to the flank of the enemy.
+2 to hit if you have engaged the rear of the enemy.

At the moment, I have these modifiers apply to ALL attack dice rolled by either side. So if you have charged the enemy in the front and the flank, then ALL your dice get +1 to hit and ALL the enemy dice get -1, similarly if you have charged the enemy in the rear and flank then ALL your dice get +3 to hit (+1 for flank and +2 for rear) while all the enemy dice get -1 to hit. I'm not sure if I'll keep this universal aspect of the rules or if I'll change it so that modifiers only apply to the unit in question, so only the unit in the rear would gain +2 and only the unit in the flank would gain +1.

Basically, I think if you've managed to isolate and surround a unit in combat, then you should be rewarded significantly.

- As I said above, I like the simple mechanism of hindering charges. Is this also used to represent targets in defended positions, behind a wall etc? What if its in a heavily defended or fortified position, possibility for a -2 penalty?

Any charge crossing terrain would be hindered (changed to Impeded, same rule just a different name, in the latest revision). Anything that would be heavily defended or fortified such as a fort or tower or pallisade I would consider it to be a building, and use those rules.

- Ah I see you have the 'to save' roll for combat being worse than against shooting, which perhaps messes up my idea above in terms of who rolls what and the statistics involved. However, if that system was used, you could always make combat more deadly in other ways though if that's what you wanted. For example rather than reducing the 'to save' roll, combat attacks could simply use more dice than shooting attacks... though that would require a separate stat, one for combat attacks, and one for shooting attacks, but I don't think that seems unreasonable at all, and will give more flexibility. Hold on... What about units that are strong in combat but weak at shooting, or vice versa? As it is now, all your units are apparently always going to be just as good at shooting as they are in combat.
For example, say you have a unit of english longbowmen with 10 attack dice. That might make them very effective at shooting, but also just as effective in combat. Surely if you had two stats, you could have something more realistic - 12 shooting dice and 8 combat dice, say.

Well, for English Longbowmen as an example, they would have the Piercing rule, and have a Def of only 3 or so, so in shooting they're quite dangerous but in combat they're quite vulnerable.

A split combat/ranged stat is something I've considered but haven't quite decided on yet. It definitely deserves more thought.

- I like the move action after combat, depending on whether they pass of fail their command roll, representing unruly units surging forward / pursuing when it's not a good idea.

Thanks, I was thinking of Anglo-Saxons breaking their formation at Hastings when I added that bit in

Cohesion
- I like the split stat for wavering and broken points.
- Perhaps I missed it, but what are the negative effects of wavering on a unit fighting in combat? Are there none? Surely it would be a nice idea to give a penalty to a unit that becomes wavering when they fight in combat? It could mean in the first turn they lose and become wavering, and in the next turn they are thus weakened and their opponent is able to finish them off more easily.

The penalty is that they can't attack in their own turn and must go on the defensive. It's possible that on the turn you charge you could whiff your attack rolls and become wavered (I have changed Wavered to Shaken, same mechanism just a name change) but that usually means the dice gods have failed you and you deserve whatever's coming to you. I feel like for the most part, warriors would still fight strongly even if their formation is disordered and confusion is setting in, right up until the moment some started to turn and run, so I think fighting shouldn't really be affected by being Shaken.

Characters
- I like the 'bolstering' stat, giving the opportunity for some characters to be good independent fighters but not add much to a unit they are leading, and vice versa.
- However, if you don't replace the doubling/tripling with a bonus, this could lead to a horrendous ammount of dice being rolled in some cases - 10 attacks, tripled for a rear attack, plus 10 from a bolstering character = 40 dice!!!! Though if you are doing away with doubling/tripling this probably won't be an issue.
- Typo? You seem to refer to 'characters' as 'individuals' instead for a few paragraphs.

Doubling and tripling is done away with

The nomenclature is a legacy naming issue that I have been rectifying as I see it.

- The ability to use will points to increase their dice roll when seeing if they are killed with a losing unit is very nice, lets fate intervene and save them from a sticky end!!!
- Again, I like will points. Giving them a choice between modifying a roll by 1 or re-rolling one dice for cohesion is a fun little thing.

Cheers

Special rules
- Two-handed weapons. Should there be a penalty for these to balance out the bonus?
- Inspiring. Rather than 'the second result stands', should it instead say 'the best result is used'? Otherwise you could get a wavering result in combat, re-roll due to the inspiring character and get a rout result!

Two handed weapons will generally be found on units like viking hirdmen or anglo-saxon huscarls, and when given the two handed weapon rule they will not have access to the shieldwall rule.

- Shieldwall. Yeah should it really give them +1 to hit as well? An increased defence roll is surely enough. Also, perhaps they only can be in shieldwall when receiving a charge, not when charging themselves?

I don't want to encourage players to stand around for several turns because they have defensive bonus, but you're right that the +1 to attack should probably go. The intent was for it to represent the increased fighting ability of highly specialised and trained 'professional' warriors but I think that can be adequately done by modifying unit profiles to have more attacks and add rules like Vicious.

- Elite and Raw. If you have variable command rolls like I mentioned earlier, these rules would just be replaced by units with 3+ or 5+ command rolls, rather than 4+ like everyone else. You could also have it as a 'command level' for every unit: either Elite, Standard or Raw, which pass command tests on 3+, 4+ or 5+ respectively. Might be neater?

This is a very good idea I think

Other ideas
- How about some sort of simple bonus for supporting units in combat? As in, having a unit directly behind another one which is fighting, forming an extra 'rank'. Could also be if supporting side-by-side. Could be extra dice, a bonus, or something?

I really want to include some kind of supporting mechanism, but I'm not entirely sure how to do it. If nothing else, supporting units already provide natural protection through numbers and physically preventing flank and rear charges, but I'd love to add maybe a +1 to Cohesion values if you're supported by a friendly unit, or add X number of dice or something, but I haven't been able to come up with a system of deciding exactly what constitutes a supporting unit, that is simple and intuitive but also not prone to abuse. It's definitely something that I'm still working on!

OVERALL
Looks like a good solid set of rules! It's not exactly what I am looking for in my games, where I prefer a little more detail and thus individual basing - large skirmishes. But for future, larger games I may find myself playing, this seems like a pretty solid alternative to, say, Hail Caesar.

Thanks very much, high praise indeed!

The two major things I would consider looking at are...
1) Having a separate 'melee' and 'shooting' attack value.
2) Perhaps alter the 'to hit' and 'to save' rolls, so that the latter isn't always 4+ or 5+. Though this will alter the statistics involved, and some maths will be required to see which suits your system better. There may be a reason you have done it this way that I overlooked.

Definitely things to think about, I really appreciate you taking the time to give me such detailed feedback!

[Jericho]

Firstly, thanks for giving it a shot! Much appreciated!

No problemo 

Did you spend Will for anything else?

Sadly, no. We were too focused on the very basics and on getting everybody to move that we forgot its other uses.

I hadn't anticipated putting Standard Bearers with skirmishers, but it makes a certain amount of sense in a smaller game, to provide some autonomy.

That was also more of an accident. We started out on the wrong assumption that we could only give will points to units inside the character's command range; so since the standard bearer didn't have a command range we figured that it needed to be attached permanently to a unit to influence it with Will points.
Only later on did we notice our mistake. But yes, it would be weird for an army to stash its army banner with a group of skirmishers. Or a priest for that matter, well, any character really.

The intent with the Shieldwall rule was to provide a distinction between heavily armed and armoured, close order fighting troops and other troops that might fight in close combat but not with the same ability or motivation. I'm not entirely sold that the +1 to hit is a good idea, and I'm thinking that the difference in troop quality and equipment could be adequately represented through unit profiles, so the +1 to hit is definitely in my sights for the next revision.

Thinking about it further and reading the discussion between Charlie_ and you, might I suggest another option to your Shieldwall rule.
You speak of these units as highly trained soldiers so they defend better and fight better than others. (Maybe only Hearthguard?)
So what about splitting that rule for these units; for example, they get +1 to hit when they're attacking on their turn and get +1 defence when getting attacked in the enemy's turn? And call it differently than Shieldwall; Veteran maybe?

And you could make two seperate rules out of that one;
like an ordinary shieldwall (+1 def) for warriors and two-handed weapons (+1 to hit) for your axemen and such.

Cheers, I try and pick them up as I go, spellchecker is a bit of a pain since there's a lot of words that don't fit into the various language filters and I'm often working on the document in different locations on different networks so simply adding words to the dictionary doesn't always help

I found one in your descrition of the size of Infantry Units. You speak of square bases of 40x40 made up to a frontage of 160. That would make 4 such bases and not 3 as you have written it now.
Another one was on the piece of Exeptional Morale. This is nitpicking really but wouldn't that read better if the sentences start with 'When' instead of 'If'? 'If' sounds like it speaks only of nigh impossible theoretical situations, while with a 1 in 36 chance to roll double 1s or 6s 'when' sounds a lot better.

Thanks again for trying out the rules! How did you find the size of the game? How long did it take? How were your models based and did you run into any problems that the rules didn't cover? Do you think the rules would handle a larger game easily enough?

We started our first game over after we figured out that we had the command system wrong but the second game was played in around two hours. That's with looking at the rules, forgetting about other rules, etc. Nice and quick, which is a plus for me. At the club here most of us play Dux Brittaniarum, while a fun game on its own, it sometimes takes way too long to play out.

We played with seperately based figures on 25mm bases on six-man-sabots, so a total of 2 Characters, 24 Infantry and 3 Cavalry per side.

And I think it would definitely work on larger games. If only I had the models 
Apart from a longer playing time, I don't believe a lot will change. Apart from maybe the loss of freedom of movement on the flanks for Cavalry if the table is too small or crowded.
I think it would work great with two lines of Infantry, so the secondary line could fill up any breaches made by the enemy.

I'm thinking about giving Skirmishers some kind of bonus to command rolls so that they don't become a liability out in no-mans-land between the armies, but I don't want them to become super troopers and I'm worried about creating a super unit in skirmishing horse archers...

Following your discussion with Charlie_ on skirmishers can I suggest another thing;
When a skirmisher unit moves it is able to shoot during any part of its movement. So that it would be possible to advance a couple of inches towards the enemy, release a volley, and fall back a couple of inches.
That looks skirmishery (if that's a word?) and for Horse Archers that looks like a variation on the Parthian Shot.


All in all, a fun game. And I'm interested in where you're going to take this.