Fantasy Warriors Fun (Being Thankful)

[dijit]

As always a pleasure seeing your set up, looks like a great game.

[DeafNala]

That is a FANTASTIC LOOKING game...I love the Mountain. GREAT WORK!
Having the now grown children of the gamers join The Group is a turning point...turning points = feeling OLD. That happened to my erstwhile AD&D Group; it made for renewed interest in the game. I hope Father & Daughter enjoyed their new share interest.

[Jevenkah]

Glad you enjoyed!

I really love seeing your battle reports and pictures.The scenery is great.I just wish i could have seen more pictures of the mountain fortress.

"...ask at the LAF..." Here is a slightly closer angle of the ruins on the mountain:



and a little more of the side facing the road:



The ruins are modular pieces Teshub made around when our youngest was a newborn (speaking of turning points- he's 8 now and was the one who drew the plans for the furniture for the Orc Hall)

They were the perfect entrance into a troll lair for our winter episode of Sagas of the Gautrian Kings #44:


Jevenkah

[Little Odo]

Fantastic scenery as always and a great bat rep. It is good to actually see ruined walls with a proper thickness to them - walls that were designed to stop an invading army still standing after decades of weather and neglect.

[manic _miner]

 Thanks for the extra pictures Jevenkah.The seperate wall pieces look great.I had seen other pictures of the hall and the internal work too.I must have a try at something similar.Looking forward to the next battle report.

[LotB]

He,
compliments, very good!
But it is precisely Fantasy Warriors? Or an homemade skirmish variant?
How come round bases? Fantasy Warriors don't use them bat square bases and rectangular for Cavalry.
What is the company that makes the Knights?

Cheers,
Sergio
Naran Team Turin
http://www.naran.it/

[Jevenkah]

He,
compliments, very good!
But it is precisely Fantasy Warriors? Or an homemade skirmish variant?
How come round bases? Fantasy Warriors don't use them bat square bases and rectangular for Cavalry.
What is the company that makes the Knights?

Cheers,
Sergio
Naran Team Turin
http://www.naran.it/

Thank you! It is almost entirely based on the Fantasy Warrior ruleset, with homemade rule variations. The major difference is we use d10s instead of d6s. We came to Fantasy Warriors as a more satisfying way of resolving mass combat in our role-playing game. We wanted a descriptive combat system that would help us tell our story. And rather than the Game Master making up the outcomes of all the battles going on around our characters, players get to come and dice some of the fights they may not be personally involved in. It is all for the sake of story and fun, we don't get overly argumentative about 1/8" worth of space in the infantry line. We do take our measurements counting the units as if they had 1" bases, for example in the last scenario the road was 7" wide, so 7 would be the most figures in the front rank after expansion.

Round bases work best for our variety of terrain and style of play. They give a little more flexibility and space, especially for interior scenes.

The blue and yellow knights are Normans and Saxons from Crusader, and the others are Foundry Vikings.

Fantastic scenery as always and a great bat rep. It is good to actually see ruined walls with a proper thickness to them - walls that were designed to stop an invading army still standing after decades of weather and neglect.

Thanks! We liked the walls with sturdy, man-sized stones in them. Also they stand up well at that thickness.

Thanks for the extra pictures Jevenkah.The seperate wall pieces look great.I had seen other pictures of the hall and the internal work too.I must have a try at something similar.Looking forward to the next battle report.

You're welcome! It was funny you asked as I had noticed the next day after we played I hadn't taken any shots of the table from the angle that would have allowed the best view of the ruins. I was too focused on the troops.

The hall was a real blast to work on. I can't wait to have a rumble in that!
Jevenkah

[LotB]

Thank you! It is almost entirely based on the Fantasy Warrior ruleset, with homemade rule variations. The major difference is we use d10s instead of d6s. We came to Fantasy Warriors as a more satisfying way of resolving mass combat in our role-playing game. We wanted a descriptive combat system that would help us tell our story. And rather than the Game Master making up the outcomes of all the battles going on around our characters, players get to come and dice some of the fights they may not be personally involved in. It is all for the sake of story and fun, we don't get overly argumentative about 1/8" worth of space in the infantry line. We do take our measurements counting the units as if they had 1" bases, for example in the last scenario the road was 7" wide, so 7 would be the most figures in the front rank after expansion.

Round bases work best for our variety of terrain and style of play. They give a little more flexibility and space, especially for interior scenes.

The blue and yellow knights are Normans and Saxons from Crusader, and the others are Foundry Vikings.

Thanks! We liked the walls with sturdy, man-sized stones in them. Also they stand up well at that thickness.

You're welcome! It was funny you asked as I had noticed the next day after we played I hadn't taken any shots of the table from the angle that would have allowed the best view of the ruins. I was too focused on the troops.

The hall was a real blast to work on. I can't wait to have a rumble in that!
Jevenkah

Hello,
many thanks for the explanations and clarifications.
Then, using different dice, you were forced to completely redo all the parameters of the various tests. Was it worth it?
Why not use the original ones?
With respect to the bases:
how do you behave in the combat phase? And to determine if a unit is disorganized? And for the overlapping?
How do you decide if an Individual has joined or only close to a unit?

Cheers,
Sergio

[Jevenkah]

Hello,
many thanks for the explanations and clarifications.
Then, using different dice, you were forced to completely redo all the parameters of the various tests. Was it worth it?
Why not use the original ones?
With respect to the bases:
how do you behave in the combat phase? And to determine if a unit is disorganized? And for the overlapping?
How do you decide if an Individual has joined or only close to a unit?

I'll answer the easier questions first regarding the bases: If an individual has joined a unit, we line him up as if they would be touching bases. To prevent confusion, an unattached individual must be 2 inches away from any friendly unit. "What you see is what's there" is a favorite saying of ours so terrain and miniatures (and Teshub!) are the final judges of distance, line of sight, worth in contact and other game mechanics of that nature. Our main gaming table is an 8 foot long table which the 4x6 foot Fantasy Warriors Table sits on top of. That leaves 2 feet of space for dice boxes and 2 sheets of paper taped to the table, one for each armies' side. On the paper are empty boxes labeled first unit, second unit, etc. In there we put condition and order cards and sometimes write in pencil any identification of the unit (red shields, pikemen, elite unit). I think the biggest battle we've had so far was "only" 8 units a side and that worked fine with this method. (We also wanted to remove the cards from the tabletop since our cards are black & white and were just showing up as white blobs in the pictures.) So if a unit is disorganized, we put a disorganized card in the appropriate box, and also make the line of miniatures a little out of order.

As for why we made rule changes: our sword-and-sorcery game is based on Bronze-Age mentality. Warriors rule. And Warchiefs don't lead from the rear. Teshub has read many accounts of ancient battles and worked to bring combat on our table in line with the methods and tactics of those times. The changes we've made to the Fantasy Warriors rules we run reflect that. One of our main characters is now a jarl looking to become a king. The politics we were playing became more and more about what our jarl (and party) accomplished on the battlefield and the RPG rules were too cumbersome to resolve skirmishes. Thanks in a large part to positive reviews from your team on the LAF, and in smaller part the love we already had for the Lund orcs, Teshub decided to try Fantasy Warriors for this purpose.

The change to d10s was an easy way to convert a wargaming system to match up with the d20 RPG rules. We do have shorter game nights with just Fantasy Warrior battles, but mostly we work the battles into the over-all (4-6 hours long) game session. The changes we made are tailored to our world and miniatures. We kept most of the modifiers in the game intact, and simply looked at statistic charts and did some math to keep the odds similar to the original rules. It was certainly worth it for what we do, but Fantasy Warriors as written was very fun and easy to learn. It's challenging to play with plenty of room for strategy and luck.

Thanks for the interest, feel free to ask more questions if you have them!
Jevenkah

[Jevenkah]

Another Fantasy Warriors battle brought family together over our gaming table last week as my daughter and her friend fought against myself. The girls each had a unit of Gautrain heavy cavalry and a unit of heavy infantry (Red banners and Blue banners). I commanded 4 units of blue-and-yellow Kildarians, 2 of heavy cavalry and 2 of heavy infantry.



I deployed my cavalry on the hill to meet the Red Gautrains, and lined my infantry up on the right, ready to slowly move up the field against the Blue. (The large landscape piece in the middle of the table isn’t really there.)



Blue put her cavalry on the attack and charged into my infantry line. Next to them, her Gautrian infantry became mired in the swamps. Red started the march down the hill with her infantry, while her cavalry waited to pick their target. My heavy infantry and Blue’s cavalry took slight losses. Blue’s infantry slogged through the swamp. Red attacked my center cavalry with her cavalry. On my left flank, Red’s infantry approached my cavalry.



Blue’s infantry charged into the fray, displacing and disorganizing her own cavalry but decimating my first infantry unit. My second unit closed ranks and continued the fight as Blue’s cavalry crashed forward into the infantry. Both sides’ cavalry units in the center lost riders. My cavalry on the left held strong and dealt many blows to Red’s infantry unit.



more pictures and report on the website:
http://swordandsorceryrpg.com/gautrian-games/

Jevenkah

[LotB]

I'll answer the easier questions first regarding the bases: If an individual has joined a unit, we line him up as if they would be touching bases. To prevent confusion, an unattached individual must be 2 inches away from any friendly unit. "What you see is what's there" is a favorite saying of ours so terrain and miniatures (and Teshub!) are the final judges of distance, line of sight, worth in contact and other game mechanics of that nature. Our main gaming table is an 8 foot long table which the 4x6 foot Fantasy Warriors Table sits on top of. That leaves 2 feet of space for dice boxes and 2 sheets of paper taped to the table, one for each armies' side. On the paper are empty boxes labeled first unit, second unit, etc. In there we put condition and order cards and sometimes write in pencil any identification of the unit (red shields, pikemen, elite unit). I think the biggest battle we've had so far was "only" 8 units a side and that worked fine with this method. (We also wanted to remove the cards from the tabletop since our cards are black & white and were just showing up as white blobs in the pictures.) So if a unit is disorganized, we put a disorganized card in the appropriate box, and also make the line of miniatures a little out of order.

As for why we made rule changes: our sword-and-sorcery game is based on Bronze-Age mentality. Warriors rule. And Warchiefs don't lead from the rear. Teshub has read many accounts of ancient battles and worked to bring combat on our table in line with the methods and tactics of those times. The changes we've made to the Fantasy Warriors rules we run reflect that. One of our main characters is now a jarl looking to become a king. The politics we were playing became more and more about what our jarl (and party) accomplished on the battlefield and the RPG rules were too cumbersome to resolve skirmishes. Thanks in a large part to positive reviews from your team on the LAF, and in smaller part the love we already had for the Lund orcs, Teshub decided to try Fantasy Warriors for this purpose.

The change to d10s was an easy way to convert a wargaming system to match up with the d20 RPG rules. We do have shorter game nights with just Fantasy Warrior battles, but mostly we work the battles into the over-all (4-6 hours long) game session. The changes we made are tailored to our world and miniatures. We kept most of the modifiers in the game intact, and simply looked at statistic charts and did some math to keep the odds similar to the original rules. It was certainly worth it for what we do, but Fantasy Warriors as written was very fun and easy to learn. It's challenging to play with plenty of room for strategy and luck.

Thanks for the interest, feel free to ask more questions if you have them!
Jevenkah

O.K., many thanks for the very exaustive explanation.
Cheers.

[DeafNala]

HURRAH another Addicted Generation joins the fray! I hope they enjoyed The Game.

[Jevenkah]

They had a blast. And now that our friend's daughter has a couple battles under her belt she has started to translate Naran Team Turin's Siege Rules for Fantasy Warriors:
http://www.naran.it/FantasyWars/Assedi/Assedi.htm for us since this year she placed 3rd in the country on the high school national Italian test!

I think we can all see where this is going: towards that fortified stone orc hall in the background!

Jevenkah

[LotB]

They had a blast. And now that our friend's daughter has a couple battles under her belt she has started to translate Naran Team Turin's Siege Rules for Fantasy Warriors:
http://www.naran.it/FantasyWars/Assedi/Assedi.htm for us since this year she placed 3rd in the country on the high school national Italian test!

I think we can all see where this is going: towards that fortified stone orc hall in the background!

Jevenkah

He Jevenkah,
Commendable initiative, congratulations.
Of course it makes us very happy.
We have implemented the policy of giving free, putting it on our site, everything that we do for our own use, so that the fans can, if they wish, use it.
When you have finished translating our rules for Siege based on Fantasy Warriors, which we have made (in italian languace, of course), please let us have a copy or make sure that we can download it (eventualy also from this forum), so we'll put it on our website, of course quoting the Author of the translation, so that it can be also available to those not familiar with the Italian. Thank you.
If you need any explanations during the translation,  you can safely contact us (you may find our e-mail at our website).
 
Sergio
Naran Team Turin

[Jevenkah]

Sergio- You will be the first to know, outside of our gaming group! Our translator is working with pen and paper right now, but we told her we would help her type it up when finished so we could get a digital copy back to you. I'm not sure how long it will take her. Your ruleset looks pretty extensive!

We're looking forward to playing with it, and will pass along your comments to our translator.

Thanks!
Jevenkah