Has anyone tried "Battle Troll" or "Outlaws of Sherwood"?

[epmoretto]

Hello ladies and gents; new poster here, hoping to be a part of the awesome community here!

Anyhow, I was wondering whether anyone here has any experience with Pulp Action Library's "Battle Troll" and "Outlaws of Sherwood". I think the rules look interesting, and they fit the bill for my sort of wargame wonderfully. The small game size, combined with fun little mechanics and a cool campaign seems to be a recipe for fun.

Also, what are your rules of choice for a very small "retinue" sized skirmish game on a similar scale?

Rico.

[Whitwort Stormbringer]

Haven't been able to play Battle Troll yet, but it does look like a lot of fun, and a good foil to SAGA, Dux Brit, etc. for even smaller skirmishes.

[epmoretto]

Interesting that you bring up SAGA, since part of the reason why I am shopping around for other systems is that I feel as though I want a game that is a bit different. Though I certainly adore the mechanics of SAGA, I also recognize that the size of the armies involved, whilst not large, is a touch too big for me. Also, though the battleboards are great fun (and ingenious to boot), I feel as though the focus on "units" makes it a skirmish game only in the sense of model count, not gameplay mechanics.

Though, at the end of the day, SAGA is of course a great game which has given new life to Early Medieval wargaming, and that can't be a bad thing.

Rico.

[TWD]

Have you considered Song of Arthur and Merlin?

I've not played this (though I have the rules) but I have played the Fantasy (Song of Blades and Heroes) and Napoleonic (...of Drums and Shakos) versions of the rules.
They use very small numbers of models (fewer than ten per side) but give a good fun game with mechanics that are simple but give some good tactical choices.

The Arthur variant has three different lists (historical, Welsh fictional and Knights in shining armour) and has scenarios and a campaigns.

[Whitwort Stormbringer]

Yeah, SAGA is interesting in that, by model count, it's clearly a skirmish game, but the gameplay emphasizes unit tactics rather than individual choices, which I associate with larger scale battle games. SAGA also abstracts individual combat quite a bit.  I do like it, but it's an oddball as far as games go.

I personally am a big fan of the "Songs of..." games, although the gameplay there is also fairly abstract.  It does emphasize individual fighters over unit tactics, though, and a model's "Quality" (discipline, experience, morale, etc.) is very important, since it influences how much he can do for the turn, and you won't necessarily get to activate every model every turn.  But other than that, it's pretty standard movement and combat.

If what you like about Battle Troll is just the individual actions and small-scale decision-making, then Song of Arthur and Merlin would be worth a look, but if it's the detailed game mechanics that you like then it's probably not for you.

[Bogdanwaz]

I've used Outlaws of Sherwood for a number of games and really enjoy the system.  The rules are simple but the use of tactic cards to resolve the hand to hand combat is quite fun because it really makes you try to read your opponent.  The tactics cards, 5 attack and 5 defense are fairly generic, like "Bash" or "Dodge."  Each player chose their respective tactic and the results are cross-indexed on a simple table that tells you how many dice you get to roll, the more successes rolled the better the result for you.  There are differentiations for weapons and armor.  While it does do well with individuals, it also has  streamlined rules for large bodies of "extras"

It is also very amendable to a role-play style of play that my group favors as well as flexible.  It was originally derived from Howard Whitehouse's Pulp rules  Astounding Tales .   I do have to say that I have not used it for it's original setting but for fairly odd mash-up.

For example, I used it for a game based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail/Spamalot:

http://bogdanwaz.blogspot.com/search/label/Spamalot

and also for a Crusaders vs. Aliens game based on the old scifi novel The High Crusade:

http://bogdanwaz.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-high-crusade.html

[epmoretto]

Having picked up Outlaws of Sherwood, I can certainly say that I appreciate such a system. The combat looks to be fairly interesting, and the idea of offering a choice of card to heroes (rather than a random card being selected for poorer units) gives melee an almost cinematic "duel" feeling.

Definitely one of the more interesting combat systems around, which does not simply rely on giving better warriors more dice to chuck about.

Rico.