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Author Topic: Review: One-Hour Ancient and Medieval Skirmish Wargaming  (Read 780 times)

Offline Easy E

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  • Just some guy who does stuff
    • Blood and Spectacles
Review: One-Hour Ancient and Medieval Skirmish Wargaming
« on: January 29, 2025, 03:16:28 PM »
Well, the title tells you exactly what this is.  That is a bit of a lost art in today's modern world.  It is no surprise that seeing this made me interested in buying it.  There is not a lot of content out there for Ancient skirmish.  I can think of only a few titles, but it always seems to be an area of perpetual interest, but can never quite grab the market share.  Ancient players seem to want to play the "big battles" of history.  This is a true "Skirmish" game in that the operational unit is one model is one combatant.  I tend to call these Model-vs-Model games.  Naturally, this was of interest to me!



You can read the full review on my blog here:
https://www.bloodandspectaclespublishing.com/blog
Support Blood and Spectacles Publishing:
https://www.patreon.com/Bloodandspectaclespublishing

Offline has.been

  • Galactic Brain
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Re: Review: One-Hour Ancient and Medieval Skirmish Wargaming
« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2025, 04:17:14 PM »
Thanks for posting.
I have purchased these rules, but not yet played them.

Offline Mikai

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Re: Review: One-Hour Ancient and Medieval Skirmish Wargaming
« Reply #2 on: January 29, 2025, 08:50:58 PM »
Thanks for the review!

Offline fred

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Re: Review: One-Hour Ancient and Medieval Skirmish Wargaming
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2025, 08:13:34 AM »
Good review.

Any thoughts on how One Hour Skirmish compares with Songs of Blades and Heroes (SBH) or Fistful of Lead (FFoL)?

Offline Easy E

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Re: Review: One-Hour Ancient and Medieval Skirmish Wargaming
« Reply #4 on: January 30, 2025, 03:55:39 PM »
I am not a great person to ask, because I am not a fan of the Song Of  system at all. Too many special rules doing too much of the heavy lifting.  Based on my preferences, I like this better as there are very few special rules to recall.   

Fistful of Lead is on my list of games to try in 2025.

I will say this.  This is pretty rules light, and my perception is the card draws can leave it a bit swingy on resolution.  Also, the sample "lists" and "Scenarios" are not that great in my mind.  However, I think it will do the job pretty good and do it in 1-hour.       

Offline zemjw

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Re: Review: One-Hour Ancient and Medieval Skirmish Wargaming
« Reply #5 on: January 30, 2025, 04:25:23 PM »
I am not a great person to ask, because I am not a fan of the Song Of  system at all. Too many special rules doing too much of the heavy lifting. Based on my preferences, I like this better as there are very few special rules to recall.   
I have this issue with Song Of... as well, not helped by the fact that I kept on forgetting to apply them. It's good to hear that the One-Hour rules have very few special rules.

I bought the One-hour book after Christmas, but haven't done much more than read the introduction.

Offline has.been

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Re: Review: One-Hour Ancient and Medieval Skirmish Wargaming
« Reply #6 on: January 30, 2025, 04:54:08 PM »
Quote
not helped by the fact that I kept on forgetting to apply them.
lol lol lol
With our first game of GAAS aka Great Adventures in the Age of Steam,
i.e. Fistful of Lead for Victorian Sci-Fi (I got it right Wiley Games! :D).
I did not give anyone 'Negative traits' That way, as they only had positive ones,
they were only hurting themselves by 'forgetting' them. :D 

Offline Storm Wolf

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Re: Review: One-Hour Ancient and Medieval Skirmish Wargaming
« Reply #7 on: January 30, 2025, 04:56:11 PM »
Neither of these books has as many special rules and so on as songs of .... or Fist full of lead... etc.,
but I know what you mean. This Is why I like an old fashioned stat line. :D
Only the insane have strength enough to prosper. Only those who prosper may truly judge what is sane.

Offline fred

  • Galactic Brain
  • Posts: 4775
    • Miniature Gaming
Re: Review: One-Hour Ancient and Medieval Skirmish Wargaming
« Reply #8 on: January 30, 2025, 06:06:44 PM »
lol lol lol
With our first game of GAAS aka Great Adventures in the Age of Steam,
i.e. Fistful of Lead for Victorian Sci-Fi (I got it right Wiley Games! :D).
I did not give anyone 'Negative traits' That way, as they only had positive ones,
they were only hurting themselves by 'forgetting' them. :D 

This is a very good approach!

I suppose with SoBH and FFoL you can go light on special rules - it will just make the game a bit more vanilla. I seem to recall that with SoBH you can vary the 2 stats quite a bit, so you don’t need special rules to represent basic troops.

I think with any set of rules, there is a constant addition of special rules, especially when supplements come out for periods or eras. Which is fine for experienced players as they get something new, but for anyone coming new to the game (or flitting around between lots of rules) it just becomes hard work to remember what does Tough mean in this rule set.

Offline traveller

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Re: Review: One-Hour Ancient and Medieval Skirmish Wargaming
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2025, 07:02:16 PM »
I have played a number of games both with the original(gunfire) rules as well as this medieval version. I am very fond of the first set. The only problem I have with this medieval version is that the melee are a bit tedious and goes on for too long. If you have light armor you can use more cards to evade a hit. If you have heavy armor you are easily hit but can use more cards to avoid any damage. This together with the ZOC rules tends to lock you in the melee for too long. This can of course be fixed by tweaking the rules a bit and apart from this, these card-driven fast rules are my absolute favourite ruleset

 

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