Not sure how much I'll be able to update the blog over the next couple of weeks as we do the hideous move and organise internet at the new castle. For now, be well. Dux out.
Showing posts with label Deus Vult. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deus Vult. Show all posts
Monday, June 17, 2013
Seljuks on D minus 6
A quick update. Just spent the whole weekend painting. Not fun painting, but painting with rollers and big brushes ready for the big relocation of the clan to our new house next Monday. I've been chipping away at some Seljuk cavalry over the past week though, and just got them finished, so here are a couple of snaps. These are Perry figures, and lovely they are, although the horses can be a little flimsy.
Not sure how much I'll be able to update the blog over the next couple of weeks as we do the hideous move and organise internet at the new castle. For now, be well. Dux out.
Not sure how much I'll be able to update the blog over the next couple of weeks as we do the hideous move and organise internet at the new castle. For now, be well. Dux out.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
No BGK today...but another project underway
The best laid plans of mice and men... Sadly my game of BGK didn't transpire today as my opponent had to pull out at the last minute, so the Batrep will have to wait.
However, the upside of this was that I managed to finish my first 16 figures of Islamic infantry for the Crusades. Paul of the Man Cave and I have a project to play some games of Deus Vult when he comes back from deployment, so I had better get cracking with some more.
The figures are Black Tree Design, the faces of which in particular are really nice. They come with a mix of shields, some of which are the classically Andalusian heart shaped design that I can't remember the name of right now. Adargas? I decided not to use any of them as I think I will use these chaps in a Seljuk army, so I added some left over kite shields from Conquest Games Normans instead.
The Islamic slogans on shields and tirazes are my attempt at Arabic after running some phrases through Google translator.
The movement tray is one of the special custom trays that the good people at Warbases made for me, in which the holes are placed as close to each other as possible and staggered a bit so as not to look too regular.
Next in the painting queue - some T-70s.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Yet More Fireforge Knights
Phew! Finally finished painting the three boxes of Fireforge Knights that I prepped just after Christmas. Here's the last batch of 12. I still have to do their banners and gonfanons, but I need a breather from the 13th Century.
The bishop on the right is the only figure not from Fireforge. I think he's from Gripping Beast? In any case, I've done him up as the Archbishop of Trier.
Well there we are. Don't forget my prize giveaway. Entries close Friday.
And in other news, I may have bought a copy of X-Wing (shhh!)
The bishop on the right is the only figure not from Fireforge. I think he's from Gripping Beast? In any case, I've done him up as the Archbishop of Trier.
Well there we are. Don't forget my prize giveaway. Entries close Friday.
And in other news, I may have bought a copy of X-Wing (shhh!)
Thursday, January 31, 2013
More Fireforge Knights
Thursday, January 17, 2013
First unit of Fireforge Knights
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Deus Vult! First Thoughts Part 2
Happy New Year Everyone! May this be a year filled with great hobby fun for you.
In Part 1 of this overview of Fireforge’s Deus Vult! rules I gave an overview of what’s in the book. In this post I am going to give a brief rundown of the rules, without going into too much detail but hopefully explaining something of their main features.
According to the authors, a game of Deus Vult! will take about 30-45 minutes when played between two armies of 750 points each, while a 1500 points battle will take a couple of hours (p. 91). I was surprised to read this, as it strikes me that players would have to be very familiar with the rules before it was possible to play in such a short time. In particular, I don’t think this estimate can include the Reconnaissance and Deployment phase of the game, explained below.
Figure basing is not covered until p. 160. The rules assume that units will be made up of stands measuring 60 X40mm for regimented infantry, 50 X 50mm for cavalry and 60 X 40mm for skirmishers. It is intended that the figures on the stands are based individually, or at least enough are to allow the removal of individual casualties, but the rules explain how tokens can be used if figures are based differently. As an example, basing cavalry on a mixture of 5cm wide bases and 2.5cm bases, with two or one figures respectively, would allow units to be made up for Deus Vult! and Impetus.
In my previous post, I explained how armies are organised and the way in which Battle Leaders have characteristics determined by dicing before the game. This then leads into the main rules section of the book, which covers pages 22-79.
Reconnaissance and Deployment
The deployment stage of a game of Deus Vult! looks fun, interactive, and quite time consuming. Indeed, the authors offer a simplified version of the rules for deployment on pages 157-8 for tournament play. If you have the time and inclination however, the main rules would considerably add to the game.
In brief, the battlefield is divided into six notional zones. When purchasing an army, points may be spent on scouts. The initial stage of the game involves the players alternating he placement of scouts in order to gain control of different zones of the battlefield. Once this is determined, the players alternate placing terrain in the zones they control. Scouts can also be withheld and traded for Subterfuge cards, which are drawn randomly and may allow the player to interfere with their opponent’s deployment.
This is an interesting way to manage the placement of terrain, and although highly abstract conveys something of the use of resources to secure the most advantageous terrain for your army. I like it.
Once terrain is placed, the armies deploy, starting with the Vanguards. There is a strong incentive to ensure that your army fields a Vanguard of skirmishers, as an unopposed deployment of skirmishers will seriously disrupt the opponent’s deployment, requiring Divisions to pass a test to avoid starting the game in disorder. If they fail the test catastrophically, Divisions in the Main Force may even find themselves lagging behind with the Rearguard. So spend points on skirmishers!
After placing the Vanguards, players alternate placing a card on the table face down representing each of their Battle Leaders. As they are revealed, each Leader’s Division is placed on the table within 8 inches of them. Rearguards are not deployed on the table, but may enter the battlefield once the game begins.
Turn Sequence
The turn sequence in Deus Vult looks quite interactive and tense – there will be no long tea breaks during the opponent’s turn in this game. Each player takes their cards representing each of their Battle Leaders at the start of the turn and arranges them in the order in which they wish to activate them. When both players have done so they roll for initiative. Both then reveal their top cards and the player with initiative chooses which Battle Leader will activate first, and so on through all the available leaders until the end of the turn. One suggested variation, which personally I like a lot, gives initiative to whoever orders their Leader cards first, which adds some nice pressure to decision making and hopefully speeds up the game.
When each Leader is activated they issue a number of commands to their Division depending on their command radius (8 inches) and Command Rating. Remember how the Battle Leader’s characteristics are diced for before deployment? Basically, Leaders with poor Command Ratings may find they are unable to issue orders to all the units in their Division, which is something to think about when recruiting your army. Battle Leaders when activated may also influence the Courage and Discipline of units proximate to them. It is worth pointing out here that one of the values every unit has is a score for Courage and one for Discipline, and these are used at different points in the game when a unit has to pass a test to avoid some negative consequence. This is a pretty typical game feature, but the mechanics in Deus Vult are a little more unusual. The scores on a D6 required to pass a test are always the same, with 6 resulting in a Resounding Success, 4-5 a Success and so on. What differs between units is the number of dice rolled by a given unit. For example, when trying to pass a Courage test a unit of Crusader Knights roll two dice, with the player choosing which score to use.
Duels
The authors have gone for a heroic flavour in Deus Vult by building in rules for Duels between Battle Leaders, while acknowledging that this didn’t actually happen very much historically. Duels may occur when an activated Battle Leader is attached to a unit in combat against an enemy unit that also has a Battle Leader attached, or a Leader may move into contact with an enemy counterpart and fight it out. The rules for this are pretty straightforward and detailed on pages 34-5. A Leader losing a Duels is humiliated, which has predictably embarrassing consequences for nearby friendly units (which may suffer Disarray).
Commands
The process for giving commands to individual units looks good. Each unit can be given up to 4 ‘Action Points’ worth of commands from a menu of 11 different types of commands. For example, Changing Formation costs 2 Action Points, Charging 4, Changing Direction one and so on. This seems like a good system, as it builds in limitations like the inability to change directions while charging the enemy without having to explicitly spell them all out. It may initially seem strange that any unit, regardless of quality, has access to 4 Action Points, but this makes more sense when you realise that different types of actions require Courage or Discipline tests, which will discriminate between better or worse units.
Movement and Combat
The movement rules seem pretty straightforward, and I won’t go over them in any detail. There are all the usual rules one would hope for covering moving through friendly units, the need to test the courage of Cavalry charging infantry, aligning units and so on. One minor feature that struck me was that units simply pivot on their centre when changing direction, rather than performing a wheel that requires the arc of movement to be measured. Again, I see this as an abstraction that would result in a faster and cleaner game than others I’ve played.
Combat is ‘buckets of dice’, with 6 resulting in a ‘Killing Strike’, 4-5 a Strike (a Killing Strike in melee if the target is disordered or against a missile attack if within the weapon’s Killing Range) and 1-3 a Miss. Killing Strikes can be saved by rolling against the unit’s Defence rating, otherwise an individual figure is removed for each. The total number of Strikes can then do bad things to the unit as a whole, depending on how the defending player goes when testing against the unit’s Resilience.
Obviously it’s all more complex than that, especially once you take into account terrain, skirmishers and such that I’ve only skimmed, but this might give you an idea of what’s involved. If it helps, there is a nice example of the steps involved in a melee in the margin on p. 51 that helped me understand the basics pretty clearly.
Traits and Reactions
Finally, Chapter 6 (pages 70-79) deals with all the specific characteristics (‘Traits’ and ‘Reactions’) possessed by different units. This aspect of the rules reminded me a bit of SAGA, and not in a negative way. Like SAGA, the differences between different types of troops are built into the characteristics of units in the army lists, rather than being built into the core rules through loads of exceptions or modifiers and so forth. The array of different Traits and Reactions looks a bit overwhelming at first, and I’m sure that inexperienced players using a diverse army would find themselves forgetting to apply various characteristics, to their subsequent chagrin.
Just by way of an example, I’ve picked a unit from the army lists to serve as an example of their different stats, Traits and Reactions:
Dismounted Knights
Move – 8”
Discipline – 1 (ie roll one die)
Courage – 2
Resilience – 6
Defence – 3
Shield – yes Traits – martial prowess
Reactions – shielding
(I’ve left out other information such as the equipment of the unit, and the option to give them two handed weapons etc).
So in this example, Dismounted Knights have the Trait of martial prowess, which increases their melee score against various opponents and makes them reluctant to evade an enemy. The Shielding Reaction allows the unit to improve its protection against shooting, at the expense of some of its ability to move during the unit’s next turn.
That’s just one example, and I chose it because it was simple. It isn’t unusual in the lists for a unit to have five or more Traits. This feature of the rules will either strike you as fiddly, or as a good way of achieving the flavour of different historical opponents.
So there we are – some first thoughts on Deus Vult. The verdict at the moment? Beautifully presented rules that promise a strong flavour of the period they are designed to cover, rather than a core game engine with period ‘fluff’ bolted on. I have reservations about the length of games, but if it is indeed possible to play a modest game of Deus Vult in less than an hour, I’m quite excited. The diversity of specific traits looks confusing, but if you are the type of person who loved poring over Saga battle boards to really grasp how to use each faction, you’ll probably love it.
I’m left thinking that I would love to play a game of Deus Vult, and I spent an hour last night looking at Seljuk Turks on the Perry website and comparing prices with Gripping Beast. God wills it!
In Part 1 of this overview of Fireforge’s Deus Vult! rules I gave an overview of what’s in the book. In this post I am going to give a brief rundown of the rules, without going into too much detail but hopefully explaining something of their main features.
According to the authors, a game of Deus Vult! will take about 30-45 minutes when played between two armies of 750 points each, while a 1500 points battle will take a couple of hours (p. 91). I was surprised to read this, as it strikes me that players would have to be very familiar with the rules before it was possible to play in such a short time. In particular, I don’t think this estimate can include the Reconnaissance and Deployment phase of the game, explained below.
Figure basing is not covered until p. 160. The rules assume that units will be made up of stands measuring 60 X40mm for regimented infantry, 50 X 50mm for cavalry and 60 X 40mm for skirmishers. It is intended that the figures on the stands are based individually, or at least enough are to allow the removal of individual casualties, but the rules explain how tokens can be used if figures are based differently. As an example, basing cavalry on a mixture of 5cm wide bases and 2.5cm bases, with two or one figures respectively, would allow units to be made up for Deus Vult! and Impetus.
In my previous post, I explained how armies are organised and the way in which Battle Leaders have characteristics determined by dicing before the game. This then leads into the main rules section of the book, which covers pages 22-79.
Reconnaissance and Deployment
The deployment stage of a game of Deus Vult! looks fun, interactive, and quite time consuming. Indeed, the authors offer a simplified version of the rules for deployment on pages 157-8 for tournament play. If you have the time and inclination however, the main rules would considerably add to the game.
In brief, the battlefield is divided into six notional zones. When purchasing an army, points may be spent on scouts. The initial stage of the game involves the players alternating he placement of scouts in order to gain control of different zones of the battlefield. Once this is determined, the players alternate placing terrain in the zones they control. Scouts can also be withheld and traded for Subterfuge cards, which are drawn randomly and may allow the player to interfere with their opponent’s deployment.
This is an interesting way to manage the placement of terrain, and although highly abstract conveys something of the use of resources to secure the most advantageous terrain for your army. I like it.
Once terrain is placed, the armies deploy, starting with the Vanguards. There is a strong incentive to ensure that your army fields a Vanguard of skirmishers, as an unopposed deployment of skirmishers will seriously disrupt the opponent’s deployment, requiring Divisions to pass a test to avoid starting the game in disorder. If they fail the test catastrophically, Divisions in the Main Force may even find themselves lagging behind with the Rearguard. So spend points on skirmishers!
After placing the Vanguards, players alternate placing a card on the table face down representing each of their Battle Leaders. As they are revealed, each Leader’s Division is placed on the table within 8 inches of them. Rearguards are not deployed on the table, but may enter the battlefield once the game begins.
Turn Sequence
The turn sequence in Deus Vult looks quite interactive and tense – there will be no long tea breaks during the opponent’s turn in this game. Each player takes their cards representing each of their Battle Leaders at the start of the turn and arranges them in the order in which they wish to activate them. When both players have done so they roll for initiative. Both then reveal their top cards and the player with initiative chooses which Battle Leader will activate first, and so on through all the available leaders until the end of the turn. One suggested variation, which personally I like a lot, gives initiative to whoever orders their Leader cards first, which adds some nice pressure to decision making and hopefully speeds up the game.
When each Leader is activated they issue a number of commands to their Division depending on their command radius (8 inches) and Command Rating. Remember how the Battle Leader’s characteristics are diced for before deployment? Basically, Leaders with poor Command Ratings may find they are unable to issue orders to all the units in their Division, which is something to think about when recruiting your army. Battle Leaders when activated may also influence the Courage and Discipline of units proximate to them. It is worth pointing out here that one of the values every unit has is a score for Courage and one for Discipline, and these are used at different points in the game when a unit has to pass a test to avoid some negative consequence. This is a pretty typical game feature, but the mechanics in Deus Vult are a little more unusual. The scores on a D6 required to pass a test are always the same, with 6 resulting in a Resounding Success, 4-5 a Success and so on. What differs between units is the number of dice rolled by a given unit. For example, when trying to pass a Courage test a unit of Crusader Knights roll two dice, with the player choosing which score to use.
Duels
The authors have gone for a heroic flavour in Deus Vult by building in rules for Duels between Battle Leaders, while acknowledging that this didn’t actually happen very much historically. Duels may occur when an activated Battle Leader is attached to a unit in combat against an enemy unit that also has a Battle Leader attached, or a Leader may move into contact with an enemy counterpart and fight it out. The rules for this are pretty straightforward and detailed on pages 34-5. A Leader losing a Duels is humiliated, which has predictably embarrassing consequences for nearby friendly units (which may suffer Disarray).
Commands
The process for giving commands to individual units looks good. Each unit can be given up to 4 ‘Action Points’ worth of commands from a menu of 11 different types of commands. For example, Changing Formation costs 2 Action Points, Charging 4, Changing Direction one and so on. This seems like a good system, as it builds in limitations like the inability to change directions while charging the enemy without having to explicitly spell them all out. It may initially seem strange that any unit, regardless of quality, has access to 4 Action Points, but this makes more sense when you realise that different types of actions require Courage or Discipline tests, which will discriminate between better or worse units.
Movement and Combat
The movement rules seem pretty straightforward, and I won’t go over them in any detail. There are all the usual rules one would hope for covering moving through friendly units, the need to test the courage of Cavalry charging infantry, aligning units and so on. One minor feature that struck me was that units simply pivot on their centre when changing direction, rather than performing a wheel that requires the arc of movement to be measured. Again, I see this as an abstraction that would result in a faster and cleaner game than others I’ve played.
Combat is ‘buckets of dice’, with 6 resulting in a ‘Killing Strike’, 4-5 a Strike (a Killing Strike in melee if the target is disordered or against a missile attack if within the weapon’s Killing Range) and 1-3 a Miss. Killing Strikes can be saved by rolling against the unit’s Defence rating, otherwise an individual figure is removed for each. The total number of Strikes can then do bad things to the unit as a whole, depending on how the defending player goes when testing against the unit’s Resilience.
Obviously it’s all more complex than that, especially once you take into account terrain, skirmishers and such that I’ve only skimmed, but this might give you an idea of what’s involved. If it helps, there is a nice example of the steps involved in a melee in the margin on p. 51 that helped me understand the basics pretty clearly.
Traits and Reactions
Finally, Chapter 6 (pages 70-79) deals with all the specific characteristics (‘Traits’ and ‘Reactions’) possessed by different units. This aspect of the rules reminded me a bit of SAGA, and not in a negative way. Like SAGA, the differences between different types of troops are built into the characteristics of units in the army lists, rather than being built into the core rules through loads of exceptions or modifiers and so forth. The array of different Traits and Reactions looks a bit overwhelming at first, and I’m sure that inexperienced players using a diverse army would find themselves forgetting to apply various characteristics, to their subsequent chagrin.
Just by way of an example, I’ve picked a unit from the army lists to serve as an example of their different stats, Traits and Reactions:
Dismounted Knights
Move – 8”
Discipline – 1 (ie roll one die)
Courage – 2
Resilience – 6
Defence – 3
Shield – yes Traits – martial prowess
Reactions – shielding
(I’ve left out other information such as the equipment of the unit, and the option to give them two handed weapons etc).
So in this example, Dismounted Knights have the Trait of martial prowess, which increases their melee score against various opponents and makes them reluctant to evade an enemy. The Shielding Reaction allows the unit to improve its protection against shooting, at the expense of some of its ability to move during the unit’s next turn.
That’s just one example, and I chose it because it was simple. It isn’t unusual in the lists for a unit to have five or more Traits. This feature of the rules will either strike you as fiddly, or as a good way of achieving the flavour of different historical opponents.
So there we are – some first thoughts on Deus Vult. The verdict at the moment? Beautifully presented rules that promise a strong flavour of the period they are designed to cover, rather than a core game engine with period ‘fluff’ bolted on. I have reservations about the length of games, but if it is indeed possible to play a modest game of Deus Vult in less than an hour, I’m quite excited. The diversity of specific traits looks confusing, but if you are the type of person who loved poring over Saga battle boards to really grasp how to use each faction, you’ll probably love it.
I’m left thinking that I would love to play a game of Deus Vult, and I spent an hour last night looking at Seljuk Turks on the Perry website and comparing prices with Gripping Beast. God wills it!
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Deus Vult! First Thoughts Part 1
Around the time Fireforge Games released their Templar Knights, I decided that resistance was futile and bought a box each of the Teutonic Knights, Templars and then the Mounted Sergeants. I’ve always loved 13th century knights, and had a great time painting some in 1/72 scale. The lure of being able to put together a sizeable force in 28mm, made up of affordable figures in a coherent style proved too strong. God truly did will it.
Although my main intention is to put together an army for Impetus, I also preordered a copy of Deus Vult, the set of wargames rules from Fireforge, written by Dylan Owen, Alessio Cavatore and Fabio Spieza, and have been gradually reading my way through the rules. Paul of the Man Cave asked for a review, so here are some initial thoughts, bearing in mind that I haven’t actually played a game.
1. Presentation and Layout
The Deus Vult rule book is really quite superb. It is hardback, 192 pages, and sumptuously illustrated with photographs of beautifully painted figures, Fireforge’s magnificent box artwork and a number of diagrams to help explain the rules. It is nice to see that Fireforge haven’t just taken the opportunity to advertise their own miniatures, with the book also featuring photos of figures from Gripping Beast, Conquest Games, the Perrys and many other manufacturers. The book has been extremely well edited and proofread. Despite being a pedantic bugger I have yet to discover any errors.
The layout of the book is very clear and accessible, with clear and numerous subheadings. One feature I quite like is the use of margins to pick up on points made in the text. Sometimes the margins just contain some inspiring ‘fluff’, such as quotes from various chronicles, but often the authors have used the margins to give tactical advice or to justify some point of game design. There are also suggestions aimed at assisting game play, such as the salutary advice about how to resolve rules disputes without resorting to bloodshed on p. 8, or a guide to making an instant protractor on page 9.
2. What's In the Book?
The subtitle of Deus Vult is ‘Wargaming in the Time of the Crusades’. The rules and army lists focus particularly on the first three crusades in the Holy Land, up to the end of the 12th century, although the authors make it clear that the Deus Vult game will be developed into different Medieval contexts with the release of future supplements.
The first chapter of the book deals with ‘General Conventions’, explaining fundamental concepts in the rules such as morale and so on. This section also sets out to pin down various points that can cause disputes in games, such as exactly how to measure distance or resolve line of sight. I get the strong impression that the authors are aiming this game partly at tournament play, and are seeking to make the rules as clear and unambiguous as possible.
Chapter 2 (‘Anatomy of an Army’) explains how forces are organised in Deus Vult I particularly like the fact that army organisation closely mirrors the historical reality, with armies made up of Main Force and Rear Guard Divisions, with a possible Vanguard Division, usually of skirmishers, leading the army. An army could consist of a single division, with up to one Rearguard Division added for each in the Main Force. One Rearguard Division can also be designated as an Outflanking Force, which is left off the table when the army deploys. Divisions are made up of a number of Units, which can fight in Line or Deep formations.
Each Division is led by a Battle Leader, and the first task for a player is to determine each Battle Leader’s profile. This involves rolling dice to determine the Leader’s Discipline and Courage, Command ability, their prowess in Duels, and the possible Virtues or Flaws and Strategies they may possess that will influence the game.
Chapters 3-6 cover the actual rules for fighting tabletop battles, so I’ll come back to those shortly.
In Chapter 7, we have seven different scenarios, which all look well thought out and enjoyable, and certainly fire my imagination. Generally they present fairly familiar situations as are found n different rule sets, which is natural enough as they reflect typical situations in Medieval warfare. For example, we have scenarios such as Seize the Baggage (pretty self-explanatory), or others involving river crossings, holding objectives, fighting while encircled and so forth.
Chapters 8-10 explain how to go about recruiting your army, providing army lists for Early Crusader States 1100-1128 and Arab Dynasties 945-1150. A fairly cursory perusal suggests that these are detailed and well thought out, and although based on a points system are constrained by various limitations that avoid power gaming by forcing the player to field an army that reflects its historical composition. The cut-off dates on the lists is a little surprising given the focus of the rules on the first three Crusades, but this is explained somewhat by Chapter 11, which provides a list of ‘Sample Units’ allowing the player to raise forces for Deus Vult! outside the main focus of this book. For Example, statistics are provided for ‘Generic Western European Troops’ as well as for Templars, Hospitallers, Seljuk Turks, Teutonics, Russians and Baltic Pagans. These would certainly allow the formation of later Crusading armies in the Holy Land, but only provide a skeleton of units for those, for example, interested in the Northern Crusades. As the authors point out, we can expect to see the later crusades, the Northern Crusades and other conflicts such as those involving the Mongols covered in future supplements.
Chapter 12 ‘Fighting for God’ gives an overview narrative of the history of the 1st-3rd Crusades, running to 16 pages. This is well written and gives a good overview of the period, and I am very impressed that Fireforge went to the effort of including such a good section on the historical background to the game. Nice one.
This is followed in Chapter 13 by an after battle report of a game of Deus Vult, involving none other than Alessio Cavatore, one of the authors, and perennial swords for hire Rick Priestley and the Perrys. This is quite a good read, and does help to explain the flow of a game.
Chapter 14 is great, giving some good suggestions about how to customise Deus Vult to different situations such as tournaments, or how to use figures with different basing conventions or in different scales, how to play multi-player games and how to design new scenarios. Perhaps surprisingly there is nothing here about campaigns, but perhaps we can expect that in a later supplement. There is some nice advice on p. 159 about how to organise a tournament, including suggestions about how to avoid the problem of plyers with hangovers or pushy girlfriends (!)
Finally, Chapters 15 and 16 provide a number of Gaming Aids, such as cards to keep track of the attributes of different Battle Leaders and tokens and cards for use in the game. An overview reference section completes the book, which makes good use of the margins by providing page references to different rules. At first glance this looks well designed, but you would have to use it in the heat of battle to really assess this.
Right, well that pretty much gives my initial thoughts on most aspects of Deus Vult! except for the rules themselves, which I will cover in my next post. Overall impression so far? This book is clearly a labour of love, presenting an ambitious new gaming system with a clear strategy for expansion lying behind it. I can’t fault the presentation, and frankly think it would be worth the price just for the army lists, historical section and inspiring eye candy. The introduction does refer to a painting guide in the book, but I couldn’t find any trace of one, but that minor quibble aside, this is an impressive piece of work.
Although my main intention is to put together an army for Impetus, I also preordered a copy of Deus Vult, the set of wargames rules from Fireforge, written by Dylan Owen, Alessio Cavatore and Fabio Spieza, and have been gradually reading my way through the rules. Paul of the Man Cave asked for a review, so here are some initial thoughts, bearing in mind that I haven’t actually played a game.
The Deus Vult rule book is really quite superb. It is hardback, 192 pages, and sumptuously illustrated with photographs of beautifully painted figures, Fireforge’s magnificent box artwork and a number of diagrams to help explain the rules. It is nice to see that Fireforge haven’t just taken the opportunity to advertise their own miniatures, with the book also featuring photos of figures from Gripping Beast, Conquest Games, the Perrys and many other manufacturers. The book has been extremely well edited and proofread. Despite being a pedantic bugger I have yet to discover any errors.
The layout of the book is very clear and accessible, with clear and numerous subheadings. One feature I quite like is the use of margins to pick up on points made in the text. Sometimes the margins just contain some inspiring ‘fluff’, such as quotes from various chronicles, but often the authors have used the margins to give tactical advice or to justify some point of game design. There are also suggestions aimed at assisting game play, such as the salutary advice about how to resolve rules disputes without resorting to bloodshed on p. 8, or a guide to making an instant protractor on page 9.
The subtitle of Deus Vult is ‘Wargaming in the Time of the Crusades’. The rules and army lists focus particularly on the first three crusades in the Holy Land, up to the end of the 12th century, although the authors make it clear that the Deus Vult game will be developed into different Medieval contexts with the release of future supplements.
The first chapter of the book deals with ‘General Conventions’, explaining fundamental concepts in the rules such as morale and so on. This section also sets out to pin down various points that can cause disputes in games, such as exactly how to measure distance or resolve line of sight. I get the strong impression that the authors are aiming this game partly at tournament play, and are seeking to make the rules as clear and unambiguous as possible.
Chapter 2 (‘Anatomy of an Army’) explains how forces are organised in Deus Vult I particularly like the fact that army organisation closely mirrors the historical reality, with armies made up of Main Force and Rear Guard Divisions, with a possible Vanguard Division, usually of skirmishers, leading the army. An army could consist of a single division, with up to one Rearguard Division added for each in the Main Force. One Rearguard Division can also be designated as an Outflanking Force, which is left off the table when the army deploys. Divisions are made up of a number of Units, which can fight in Line or Deep formations.
Each Division is led by a Battle Leader, and the first task for a player is to determine each Battle Leader’s profile. This involves rolling dice to determine the Leader’s Discipline and Courage, Command ability, their prowess in Duels, and the possible Virtues or Flaws and Strategies they may possess that will influence the game.
Chapters 3-6 cover the actual rules for fighting tabletop battles, so I’ll come back to those shortly.
In Chapter 7, we have seven different scenarios, which all look well thought out and enjoyable, and certainly fire my imagination. Generally they present fairly familiar situations as are found n different rule sets, which is natural enough as they reflect typical situations in Medieval warfare. For example, we have scenarios such as Seize the Baggage (pretty self-explanatory), or others involving river crossings, holding objectives, fighting while encircled and so forth.
Chapters 8-10 explain how to go about recruiting your army, providing army lists for Early Crusader States 1100-1128 and Arab Dynasties 945-1150. A fairly cursory perusal suggests that these are detailed and well thought out, and although based on a points system are constrained by various limitations that avoid power gaming by forcing the player to field an army that reflects its historical composition. The cut-off dates on the lists is a little surprising given the focus of the rules on the first three Crusades, but this is explained somewhat by Chapter 11, which provides a list of ‘Sample Units’ allowing the player to raise forces for Deus Vult! outside the main focus of this book. For Example, statistics are provided for ‘Generic Western European Troops’ as well as for Templars, Hospitallers, Seljuk Turks, Teutonics, Russians and Baltic Pagans. These would certainly allow the formation of later Crusading armies in the Holy Land, but only provide a skeleton of units for those, for example, interested in the Northern Crusades. As the authors point out, we can expect to see the later crusades, the Northern Crusades and other conflicts such as those involving the Mongols covered in future supplements.
Chapter 12 ‘Fighting for God’ gives an overview narrative of the history of the 1st-3rd Crusades, running to 16 pages. This is well written and gives a good overview of the period, and I am very impressed that Fireforge went to the effort of including such a good section on the historical background to the game. Nice one.
This is followed in Chapter 13 by an after battle report of a game of Deus Vult, involving none other than Alessio Cavatore, one of the authors, and perennial swords for hire Rick Priestley and the Perrys. This is quite a good read, and does help to explain the flow of a game.
Chapter 14 is great, giving some good suggestions about how to customise Deus Vult to different situations such as tournaments, or how to use figures with different basing conventions or in different scales, how to play multi-player games and how to design new scenarios. Perhaps surprisingly there is nothing here about campaigns, but perhaps we can expect that in a later supplement. There is some nice advice on p. 159 about how to organise a tournament, including suggestions about how to avoid the problem of plyers with hangovers or pushy girlfriends (!)
Right, well that pretty much gives my initial thoughts on most aspects of Deus Vult! except for the rules themselves, which I will cover in my next post. Overall impression so far? This book is clearly a labour of love, presenting an ambitious new gaming system with a clear strategy for expansion lying behind it. I can’t fault the presentation, and frankly think it would be worth the price just for the army lists, historical section and inspiring eye candy. The introduction does refer to a painting guide in the book, but I couldn’t find any trace of one, but that minor quibble aside, this is an impressive piece of work.
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