Soldiers of God AAR

[Osmoses]

We recently gave Warwick Kinrade's 'Soldiers of God' rules a try. It's probably a set that requires a few plays to get the hang of it, and our first go resulted in a rather low-intensity game, which didn't fully explore the rules' potential. But they seem to be worth persevering with.

Anyway, there's a report of the game here: https://wargamesasp.wordpress.com/2016/09/16/soldiers-of-god/

[Harry Faversham]

Good collection of nicely painted figures there matey.

 

[Codsticker]

Sounds like an interesting system. The emphasis on the battle plan sounds historically realistic, but I could see how some players might balk at the lack of flexibility once the game gets rolling. In any event a very good AAR and overview of the rules.

[Phil Portway]

Wonderfully painted figures, and nice to see a non crusader bundle! 

[monkeylite]

Yeah, good stuff.

I've played a few games of SoG and you seem to have found it similar to me. The 'God says get rid of all your disorder' card is particularly maddening.

[Osmoses]

Yes, it's always a concern with card-driven games. Some cards can be so powerful that they have a massive impact on the game. The usual defence is that a fluke dice roll can do the same thing, but the difference is that the card will show up every game. It's a tricky thing to get right. I had the 'get rid of all disorder' card which took off 6 disorder, so that was quite a big swing.

Did you find that the initial battle plan significantly influenced the conduct of the battle? I was thinking it may have just been because we picked low intensity battle plans.

[monkeylite]

Yes, it's always a concern with card-driven games. Some cards can be so powerful that they have a massive impact on the game. The usual defence is that a fluke dice roll can do the same thing, but the difference is that the card will show up every game. It's a tricky thing to get right. I had the 'get rid of all disorder' card which took off 6 disorder, so that was quite a big swing.

Did you find that the initial battle plan significantly influenced the conduct of the battle? I was thinking it may have just been because we picked low intensity battle plans.

Yeah, I did. We played several games with a Double Envelopment against an Advance and Harry or a Hold and Harry. And really (as you might expect from those plans) the centres didn't interact very much at all. There always seemed to be stuff going on on the flanks so that we couldn't really spare the resources to get stuff moving in the centre.

Another thing we found, especially with two charges being used up on the Double Envelopment, was that there weren't enough charges in the deck, which you touch on in your review.

The biggest thing we found, I think, is that it was always more reliable to chuck cards to slough Disorder than to risk using them for something attacking. So we kept some pretty fierce key melees goings throughout the battle by pouring so many cards into them to make sure we never routed. This sucked cards away from the rest of the game.

One game I tried to force the issue a bit more, not worrying about losing units and investing cards in attacking, I was massacred, coz my opponent was always able to slough the Disorder, coz that method is so reliable. And I was sacrificing units to certain death in exchange for just the chance to inflict losses, which didn't seem to be a fair exchange.

So, I was thinking of some tweaks (which I haven't tried yet).

Don't use cards for the Battle Plan. Just write out the orders on a piece of paper. That way you don't lose those cards, and unbalance the deck.

Have any Battle Plan you like. ie write down any three orders you want.

Dump the automatic mass Disorder loss special orders.

For Pass and Discard you must make a Morale check to slough the Disorder; it's not automatic.

All (or some) of these should make sloughing Disorder more difficult and lead to more decisive melees.

Having said all that, I really like the game and feel it is very close to being an excellent game for us.

[Osmoses]

I like the idea of not actually taking cards out for the battle plans. There's only 6 of any one order card, so taking 2 out is a pretty big reduction to the 'pool.' And ultimately it might be worth nerfing the auto-rally cards. I also had a few instances where I discarded a rally card to rally a unit because 1 certain success was better than 2 goes at rolling a 5 or 6.

But overall, it seemed like a good game. I guess it'd be better with crusaders v 'Saracens,' so it might have to wait until I've painted some. I'll probably try out 'Deus Vult' in the meantime.