Using The Men Who Would Be Kings for (science) fantasy

[Hobgoblin]

It's perhaps an inevitability of Christmas shopping that you see something that you would like. Yesterday, I came across a slightly crushed and thus slightly discounted copy of Dan Mersey's The Men Who Would Be Kings and duly snapped it up. I don't have any historical miniatures (at least not painted as such), but it struck me that the big batch of orks that I recently speed-painted for a game with friends would split nicely into red-coated/armoured regulars and scruffier irregulars. And of course, we've got plenty of primitive orcs and lizardmen kicking about.

My son and I played a first game yesterday, using the 'Skirmish Kings' rules for cut-down units and then a full-strength game today. It's excellent. I really like Dragon Rampant, but I think this might have the edge. The 'one die/one man' principle and the more sophisticated pinning/rallying system give it more of a heroic feel, and the random customising of each unit's leader is just terrific. I like the variety and flexibility in unit sizes, too. Also, the game's got less inevitability than Rampant, as small groups of soldiers can recover themselves and return to the fray; in the medieval and fantasy rules, routed units can very quickly become unrecoverable or almost so.

I generally prefer games in which an orc is equivalent to an elf or a dwarf or a man, and in which unit organisation, armament and discipline make the difference, rather than humanoid species. So TMWWBK slots happily into fantasy games for me; I don't mind if it just takes a single bullet, arrow or musket ball to take out a lizardman rather than two (or whatever).

That said, I'm already thinking about ways in which Dragon Rampant units can be fitted into this game's framework. I think Bellicose Foot, Elite Foot and the rest might work OK as they are, at DR unit sizes and with armour ignored. So Bellicose Foot would cost a point more than standard Tribal Infantry unit, but would have four fighters less, Wild Charge and no missile attack to balance out the (much) harder hitting in melee. They might keep their weak defence and counter-charge too.

Has anyone tried playing around with this?

Oh, and Merry Christmas all!

[DivisMal]

Merry Christmas, Hobgoblin!

That’s a brilliant idea. Especially when I think about all that great old Rogue Trader / Star Wars feeling with a handfull of „boys in red“ fight tribal warlords....in spaaace!

I don’t have the rules, but liked DR/LR well enough to play it from time to time.

Only thing, I see as problematic is larger Creatures, the rules for which I didn’t really like in DR, and vehicles.

[Silent bob]

I can't see how it would not work. The combat system is quite simple and generic.

If you go on the TMWWBK Facebook page, they have some dinosaur mods that may give you some ideas for larger critters (if you need them)

[fred]

My first game of TMWWBK was Royal Naval Division vs Lizardmen - with both sides using the stats for the Zulu war, worked great.

We haven't gone back to this, as the rules were a good reason to get some colonial figures on the table.

I like the activation mechanism better than in DR or LR - with a failure only affecting that unit, not the whole force.


The rules are straight forward enough that you could play around with unit strengths and stats easily enough - for the future warriors you could drop the figure count, but give each 2 (or more) shots and a better save.

[DivisMal]

I can't see how it would not work. The combat system is quite simple and generic.

If you go on the TMWWBK Facebook page, they have some dinosaur mods that may give you some ideas for larger critters (if you need them)

Thanks...sadly I don’t do Facebook. Is there any other way to get to the stats?

[Silent bob]

Yeah, I send them to you, by email or PM tomorrow.

[Gibby]

I have my issues with The Men Who Would Be King*, but I think those would be mitigated by using it for fantasy. Very good idea indeed! I always enjoying seeing your approach to the hobby, and you have all too often caused me to be tempted to pick up some Mantic figures just to mess about with (because you make them look great).


* https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=119319.msg1495358#msg1495358

[Ethelred the Almost Ready]

Thanks for your thoughts around these rules.  I might be tempted to get a copy.

I will link to a new topic where I have used a different approach to DR.

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=121778.0

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, all, for the replies!

Silentbob - I'd love to see the dinosaur mods too. Could you post them here (if the authors are OK with that)?

fred - yes, there's lots of room for easy modifications. The 'two hits' rule for cavalry in melee could be used for heavily armoured sci-fi troops - or the DR-style Armour stat could just be imported wholesale for space marines, etc. And, as above, I wonder if you could import Fierce/Bellicose Foot wholesale: splitting Fighting into Attack 3/Defend 6, keeping Wild Charge and Counter-Charge, etc., giving Move as the free action and also keeping the 12-strong unit - but losing Armour 2, of course. I think the smaller troop number, lack of missiles and lack of Go To Ground might nicely offset the greater combat effectiveness.

DivisMal - yes, vehicles are a problem. I don't mind the DR large-creature rules, and I think they might work well here with the incremental loss of Strength Points. But they'd probably have to start at 12 SP rather than 6, with Armour 2 instead of Armour 4 for a Greater Warbeast.

Gibby - thanks! That's an interesting thread. So far, we haven't found pinning to be much of a problem, for three reasons. First, the Tribals have the numbers (2:1 vs Regular troops), so they're not all getting pinned at once. Second, a lot of them pass their initial pinning tests. And third, if I'm reading the rules right, pinning is MUCH easier to recover from than being 'battered' in DR/LR. That's because you don't count the casualties when making the recovery roll the next turn. So, while DR units become unsalvageable very quickly, TMWWBK units can get back into the action several times in a given game. I think we've just had one unit driven off the table from accumulated pins so far (as opposed to being routed immediately from heavy casualties). But it's early days yet, so perhaps more problems will emerge.

Ethelred - I'd say the rules are well worth a look - not least because they have a full set of rules for solo play (or multiple players against "Mr Babbage").

I've been so impressed with the rules that I'm now thinking of putting together some dedicated Tribal forces to face the Mantic "redcoats" (who have just acquired a field gun ...). Inevitably, my first thought was to get a lot more Frostgrave snakemen or even Tribals (perhaps with blue skin and masks worn). But, realising that it would cost a hundred quid or so to get a decent-sized force, I thought about all those old Slann that I've got kicking about. They might fit the bill nicely - and they could have some snakemen or lizardmen auxiliaries ...

[Hobgoblin]

One other thought on TMWWBK vs DR for fantasy: the man-by-man (or die-by-die) counting in TMWWBK is intrinsically more "skirmishy" than DR's 12/6 or 6/3 abstraction - as is the characterisation of each unit by its leader.

An idea I've had in this regard is for a "I'll go myself" rule whereby a leader can detach from a unit (leaving it Leaderless, so activating on 8+) and can therefore function as an individual to perform tasks and achieve scenario objectives. The mechanics are more or less there already; I'd allow a leader to detach immediately (so he could announce the detachment and move with one action) and the unit to activate on 8+ in the same turn. The leader's combat abilities are already clear (one die, or perhaps two or none, depending on rolled characteristics). He might get the Go To Ground ability as a result of detachment (if he didn't have it already).

Meanwhile, DR seems more of a mass-combat/large-skirmish game, in that you could imagine it working perfectly well with a figure scale of 1:10. I don't think flanks and rears would really come into play in medieval(ish) warfare with groups of 60 or 120 men (I could be wrong ...), so I think it works fine on that sort of assumption - and the full-strength/half-strength principle works better in that case, I reckon.

[Gibby]

Flanks and rears at that level of combat would probably only come into effect if those being flanked were already busy engaging enemies to their front. That's something prohibited by the "Rampant Engine" games so as you say, not something to worry about for gameplay purposes. You make a very good point about the more man-to-man combat/shooting resolution rather than the abstract unit strength feel of the other games. I hadn't considered that aspect, but it's another way in which using the game for sci-fantasy will excel.

As for my pinning woes, what we had trouble with was units permanently being shut down, rather than destroyed by the pinning. The 2:1 ratio thing works well, but in the genres we played (Zulu and Boer War) this only swung the game the other way! We tried many games and kept getting similar (and unsatisfying results). I think, to be fair, the Zulu War has this issue regardless of ruleset. It's all down to luck of the British firing stopping the Zulus making contact, which if they fail will usually result in the British being hacked to bits. I've seldom seen any Zulu War game that offers much in the way of interesting decisions for either player, beyond terrain hopping for Zulus. I don't know much about the Boer War, it's more my mate's interest, but I have since read that the points values for the Boers are messed up in the rules, so that could've caused us some problems.

At the risk of going off topic, I'll reiterate that I can really see TMWWBK working for this sci/fantasy genre because, as you've said, you can add a lot more unit types and traits and such to keep things interesting.