By This Axe in action

The other day Chris was kind enough to give me a hardcopy of his fantasy miniature wargame, By This Axe.  As you can see, it looks good in print, both front and back.  That reminds me, I need to post pics from our battle of last month.  I went over to  Chris's to play a quick game.  He had the forces set up, including judicious use of dungeon tiles as movement trays.

I had mostly humans, and some hobbits, against the lich's evil guys and monsters.

I had plenty of knights, along with a nice band of archers.  Each side also had a number of characters (leaders), including paladins, fighters, wizards, and clerics.

Several times our forces met, and retreated from each other.  It requires a leader to rally a fleeing unit, otherwise it proceeds off the battlefield.

There were some fantastic units, like this band of giant lizards that my knights managed to flank.

My band of elite gladiators fell to the group of  ghost minotaurs, summoned from the Hall of the Mountain King in the wilds of the Hill Cantons.

In the end, my band of warriors drove off the forces of evil, keeping the land safe until the next game of By This Axe.

My thanks to Chris for the copy of the rules and for hosting.  We're thinking of starting a campaign using these rules.  I'm looking forward to it.

Buy "By This Axe"

Chris, that Weird-invoking author of the wild & wonky Hill Cantons blog, has announced the release of his midieval wargame rules, By This Axe.

By This Axe is a short booklet with rules for playing battles with or without miniatures. It includes a subsystem for fighting battlefield duels between champions (I like the idea of dirty tricks), as well as an abstract magic system and a method of converting D&D characters to battlefield leaders.  Scale is slightly abstracted, other than one figure can represent 5 or 20 individuals on the battlefield.  In addition to fighting, morale is an important part of the game, and can influence the outcome of a battle.

It may not be very groundbreaking, but I had a good time when I helped playtest this game way back when:  The battle seesawed back-and-forth to make for a thrilling match, and the rules are simple and straightforward.  The game plays very quickly, and Chris's conversion will make it easy to integrate into your roleplaying campaign if you ever need to fight a major battle.

He's charging eight bucks for hardcopy, and two-and-a-half for electronic, with all proceeds going to charity.  I'm looking forward to playing this again, and I encourage you to check it out.

My new castle

Over the weekend, I saw a kids castle playset on sale for half-price at the neighborhood drugstore.  Ten bucks for some buildings/terrain for my 28mm skirmish gaming?  I'm in!

Ok, it's pretty crude work--very soft plastic pieces with visible mold lines--but it does go well with heroic 28s like this Heroscape figure.

Not only that, but the castle came with a spring-loaded catapult that actually shoots plastic "rocks" (not pictured).

With a new paint job, some drybrushing, and a wash, these walls will look a lot better.

FYI, the set also includes two more walls (one with a working drawbridge) and corresponding towers, which I didn't feel like setting up for this photo shoot.  It also has decals for the structure's windows, but I doubt I'll use them.

Test-driving the Axe

I think every wargame has tried to design a minis game at least once in his gaming career.  As I had Monday off for the New Year's holiday, I paid a visit to Chris of the Hill Cantons to help playtest his own fantasy miniatures ruleset, By This Axe I Rule, which he refereed. My opponent was Brad of Skull Crushing for Great Justice. 

ByTAIR uses individual miniatures grouped into units, where each figure represents either five men (or other creatures) or an individual hero-type character.  Combat is resolved using the Games Workshop buckets of dice method, which can be viscerally satisfying.

The battlefield

Unfortunately, the battery on my new camera died before I could snap more than a handful of photos of the setup.  Don't worry, though--ckutalik took plenty of pictures, and you can see them in his playtest report of By This Axe I Rule.   You can also read his report for details about the game, which I thought played quickly and didn't really bog down anywhere (although we found the initial dueling rules too simple and repetitive, Chris quickly whipped up a new version of handling character-on-character fights). 

Inspired by my house rule that all spaceships must be named, our host required us to name our generals and heroes (including magic-users and clerics).  I christened my general Gump, with my two champions Bubba and Lt. Dan (I can't remember what I named the magic user or clerics).  The army name was entirely Chris's, however, which I hadn't seen till I read his blog post (I do like it).

The Knights of Bradd

Since this was a game using lots of individual figures grouped in rank and file, it called out for movement trays.  Although Chris didn't have any on hand, his improvised use of heavy cardstock dungeon tiles filled the role admirably, allowing us to quickly move our forces across the tabletop.  I recommend this substitution if you don't want to spend money on dedicated movement trays.

Much like my Texas Aggies this season, I started off strong but ended up pissing it all away at the end of the game.  My mistake was taking my toughest unit, the half-dozen giant snakes, and essentially removing them from the battle by sending them around impassable terrain toward the edge of the table.  The snakes took out a champion and her wereleopard buddy and routed a unit of halflings off the board, but were unable to get back in the battle before my opponent had chased two of my other units off the board.  Still, I don't blame the designer for my tactical errors.

The Scarlet Scribes of Set

ByTAIR is a fun set of rules that feels like Warhammer Fantasy but plays a lot quicker.  I look forward to playing it again, perhaps in the context of a campaign (note to the designer: you might want to include a list of scenario objectives).  Not only that, but it's inspired me to work on my own miniatures rules, a starship combat game.  I'll share more details on my game soon.