Yesterday, Chris, Dave, and I ran our first play test of Look, Sarge, No Charts: Fantasy, Ancients, and Medieval (LSNC: FAM) rules. We were assisted by Tommy. As this was our first test of the rules, we hadn’t even had time to affix the data labels to the bases.
I built a point system for the game. We don’t intend these for tournament play; however, fantasy is so broad that we felt a point system was needed in order to give game masters a first-order approximation of the “value” of forces in order to help design interesting scenarios. For this game, we basically just used the point system to total the points for the forces we have painted. It turns out that a good player’s worth of figures was about 1000 points. The play test helped us refine the point system a bit, but considering that this was our first game and the first use of the point system, the forces were surprisingly well balanced, and the scenario turned out to be very even.
Most of my forces are from two Games Workshop Battle of Five Armies sets. Those two sets allow you to create a lot of units of Eagles. I added a set of Eureka Miniatures elves riding on eagles. It turned out to be a formidable force. We are going to increase the point cost for flying units. Despite their very light armor, and the fact that skeletons have better protection against edged weapons (like eagle talons), my eagles were able to defeat the skeletons after several turns of fighting.
For this first play test, we kept the group small. This allowed us to stop and make changes along the way. It worked well enough that we think our next game can be at a club meeting. In early play tests in which you are making changes on the fly, it is counterproductive to have a large group. Four players were the right amount.
We were happy with the overall look of the battle. This picture is from near the beginning of the game. While most of my figures are Battle of Five Armies, you can see my “tree trolls” from Eureka Miniatures in the foreground of this picture. Eureka has some nice 10mm fantasy figures.
This picture is from late in the game when Tommy’s high elf cavalry had worked its way around the flank of the evil forces and were preparing to fall on their rear.
I am still working on getting the Napoleonic rules written and off to the publisher. I have to be careful not to get too distracted by this new project. I hope to have the Napoleonic book written by the end of September so they can be released in time for the HMGS East Fall In convention. That means we’ll probably be ready to start public play tests of LSNC: FAM by Cold Wars in March 2013. Keep your eyes out for them!