Battlesworn, Knights & Knaves and 'fixed-profile' games

[Hobgoblin]

My son and I played a couple of games of Battlesworn on holiday in France last week (putting my 'travel kit' to good use). We'd taken the stuff primarily for rainy-day Song of Blades, but actually ended up playing Battlesworn more on the couple of days it did rain. We hadn't played for ages, so it was the first time that we'd used the Knights & Knaves supplement, which has a load of new character classes.

Battlesworn offers both an intriguing 'meta-game' (outfoxing your opponent through bidding) and a good simulation of a skirmish. The unlimited-unless-intercepted movement is a great concept, as it allows characters to sprint about the table but yet remain vulnerable to slings, arrows and assaults as they do so. That means that characters actually move at the speed at which you'd expect dashing warriors to move. And there's almost no book-keeping - although we used my daughter's loom bands to record wounds (which move along an unwounded-green-yellow-red spectrum).

Knights & Knaves is mainly a set of new character classes. We used one of these - berserker - and have used another - giant - since returning, but there's lots of intriguing stuff there: acrobats, beasts, chaos warriors and witches (complete with familiars). There's also the bard class, with the ability to inspire friends and taunt foes. Initially, I filed this under "I'll never use". But then I thought, "Ah - what about all those regimental musician figures?".

And that's one of the great things about Battlesworn: it makes you look at a collection of miniatures anew and think, "What could this one be?". Since returning from holiday, I've been digging through some old Citadel chaos stuff and sorting out "tanks" (heavily armoured warriors), "brutes" (especially dangerous warriors), mere fighters, shooters and various specials - berserkers, witches, sorcerers, etc. The multi-classing options allow for all kinds of interesting combinations - cavalry/brutes for chaos centaurs; assassin/rogues for ratmen; assassin/brutes for poisonous snakemen and so on. And with the giant rule from K&K, you can make some interesting big monsters through multi-classing: dragons (giant/shooter/tank/brute?), hydras (tank/brute/assassin/healer?) and the like.

I think that's something in favour of of fixed-profile games (e.g. Havoc, Hordes of the Things, Battlesworn): they give you a "fixed palette" to work with, which means that overall forces, rather than individual profiles, reflects the theme. So, while an elf warband is the same as an orc warband in HotT, and a hobgoblin and a beastman might both be brutes in Battlesworn, the overall composition of the forces gives them a very different flavour. Someone made this point well on the HotT discussion group: what determines the 'flavour' is how the different elements in an army combine, not how they perform individually. So, your orc warband elements will play a different role in an army otherwise consisting of hordes and beasts from your elf warband in an army made up of shooters and knights.

Anyway, I reckon Battlesworn is an undeservedly undersung game. It has a unique element (as far as I know) in that melee combat involves a mind game as well as dice rolling: bid low to get a quick stab in first or high to do more damage - or try to second-guess your opponent so that the combat round is drawn. Also, games are very quick - 40 minutes, perhaps. It's well worth a look.