'Orrible Little Men Large Skirmish Rules

[KarwickWingmaker]

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/529524/Orrible-Little-Men

PDF available for £5 on Wargame Vault

‘Orrible Little Men is a multi-period large-skirmish wargame, where you can create armies from 20 to 100 models (or even beyond!)

The aim of the battle is to crush the enemy player’s army morale, rather than to wipe their army from the field (though this is still a possible path to victory!). Characters and army leaders are vital for keeping your units from crumbling and are useful combatants in their own right.

The game doesn’t require tokens at all (if you have a pen and paper, you can note down wounds taken by units that have multiple wounds, though these are not common) so your table isn’t going to be cluttered with unsightly bits of plastic or mdf.

The game uses as much terrain as you wish, so you can have a skirmish in a densely forested area, or a large battle across fields, or even an attack upon a fortified area. ‘Orrible Little Men does not get in the way of you playing the style of battle that you wish!

The 68 page rules manual includes all of the core rules (spread over the first 15 pages) as well as the following Thematic Settings:

Hannibal at the Gates (2nd Punic War)
Faith, Blood and Steel (The Crusades)
Torn Liveries (The Wars of the Roses)
Veiled Sorceries (Fantasy)
Rise and Fall of the Cavaliers (Pike & Shot, including Sengoku period Japan)
Also included in the rules manual are 20 scenarios, a campaign system, a system for solo play and quick reference sheets.

There will be smaller supplements coming soon with extra Thematic Settings & Scenarios.

I hope you enjoy playing ‘Orrible Little Men!

[KarwickWingmaker]

https://www.wargamevault.com/m/product/532673

PDF available for £0.50

'Orrible Medieval Men is a two-page supplement, adding 13 new army archetypes to be used in addition to those provided in the "Faith, Blood and Steel" & "Torn Liveries" chapters in the 'Orrible Little Men rules manual.

The second page of the supplement provides rules for pavises, carroccios, barding, and heavy bombards.

This supplement requires the 'Orrible Little Men rules manual

[TheDaR]

So this appears to be in my potential wheelhouse. Mid to large size skirmish, the promise of some potentially innovative victory conditions and lack of tokens/markers, the possibility of making a "my guys" force.  I've been shopping for such a system in the fantasy/historical space, as none of the others I've read really completely tickles my fancy.

However, I have to admit a psychological aversion to pulling out my card to buy a rule set with barely more than a back cover blurb, no matter how little the relative cost.  It's about overcoming the inertia for the ceremony of having to enter my card details and clicking "pay".  And I'm probably not the only one.  In this day and age, there's a lot of competition in this space, from large established properties like Age of Sigmar, Lion/Dragon Rampant and SAGA to dozens upon dozens of freely available rule sets that fell off the proverbial truck in all manner of internet gaming back alleys.

It would be a huge boost to people's confidence in purchasing if there were some more in depth descriptions of what makes this rule set worth spending for.   Some quick google searching found a blog site with no actual content.  The WGV and BGG entries have nothing more than the same back cover blurb here; WGV does a have a quick preview, but sadly with the new revamped UI, it's almost unreadably tiny and doesn't really give any more sense of how the game plays.  There's only really one or two lines in your blurb that might differentiate this game from any other.  That's not enough to help people get over that hurdle of "why should I pay for that when I already have this?" and answer if it has their ideal combination of rules or is just another that fills the same niche for them as any other given rule set.   Is this a game system suitable for replaying a Lord of the Rings battle?  A Game of Thrones one?  Something even more fantastic?  Given the page count of rules, I can probably guess it's not meant to be an in-depth simulation type game, but maybe it could be?  Is it meant to be a more abstract tourney-type "water tight" chess-style rule game set or something more beer and pretzels and giving a good laugh and a narrative story? How long does a typical sized game take?  What does a unit stat profile look like, or do units even have something like a stat profile?

So show us.   Give us a a blog post, youtube video or a post here with an action report covering at least mechanical highlights.  Maybe get your playtesters to do the same.  Drop a full sized preview on WGV with a few of the more meaty pages.   Throw up the quick references pages on BGG or your game blog.  Write some articles on the design philosophy that drove the decisions on why you are throwing your hat into a very busy ring and how your entry is different from the others (Ivan Sorensen of Nordic Weasel Games and Nic Wright of Irregular Wars fame are two of my go to examples for this).

[KarwickWingmaker]

Thanks for the feedback!

What you are looking for may be found in this thread https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=149095.0

This is where my wars of the roses campaign is being written up. Though it is mostly narrative in focus, it does provide some details on how the game works.

Yes this system could easily cope with Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones style fantasy battles within the rules set there are the example thematic settings, though these are already being expanded on by the supplements (such as 'Orrible Medieval Men).

One thing that makes the rules different is the army morale system, where your forces losing their will to fight decides the battles rather than just purely causing the most casualties. It also removes the need to end the battle after 6 turns as so many systems force you to do, while also removing any maths required to determine which side won the battle, you will be absolutely aware if you have won or lost.

Games of 'Orrible Little Men are often closely fought, with both sides struggling to maintain any advantage they can get, leading to tense battles right to the end. Sometimes, like in history, one side will take the advantage early on and, under the right player, be able to press this advantage to victory, though only a few setbacks can give your opponent the momentum to defeat you.

The second thing that is relatively unique to 'Orrible Little Men is that it does not use special rules for units as such. Every player has access to the same profiles. However, if the players choose, they can use the Army Archetypes from the thematic settings in the rules manual, or the supplements, which provide the players with a single special rule that affects one of their units.

Other than that, the things that make 'Orrible Little Men fun are not necessarily unique, but I did not find them all together in one rules set. For example, both players act during each phase of the turn, rather than one player watching their opponents army move, charge, shoot and fight in melee, which I found pretty tedious in other games  Also, units make "impact strike rolls" immediately when they charge, which gives every unit in the game a reason to charge rather than be charged. The fact that these are immediate means that they happen, then the players move on, rather than having to keep track of every single unit on the battlefield that charged when it comes to the combat phase.

These are some of the reasons why I designed the rules this way, and why I love using these rules. They can also handle armies from 20 to over 100 models with ease. The easiest way to predict the average length of time it takes to play a game is to add 30 to the points value of your army, this gives you how many minutes to expect the game to last (eg. a 60 point game would take roughly 90mins usually).

Hope this helps! There will be more posts about how to play the game very soon but it's very new to the market and it is my first release. It is my hobby and it will take time to form content.

Thanks again