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Warlords of Erehwon player review (fantasy warbands written by Rick Priestly)  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
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Made in us
Clousseau




Warlords of Erehwon - a player review

When asked what I think of Warlords of Erehwon, I wanted to put a good list of things that I consider when picking games to play and how I think that this one pans out.

I did a review on the five commercial fantasy warband games out right now (AOS, Middle Earth SBG, Dragon Rampant, Warmachine, and Warlords) that I am familiar with and gave a side by side comparison.

This post will be more about the system overall and how it operates as well as some things that I personally like about it and where I can see things possibly being a downside for players.

ARMIES
The game is warband scale. Its default point cost is 1,000 points, and for 1,000 points you get about what you'd get in Age of Sigmar for 1,000 points.

The undead army that I posted came out to be 33 models.

The game can be extended up to 2000 points per the book.

Armies have no real restrictions in terms of having to pay a core tax or anything like that. You are typically going to have one warlord (of which you must have one, and typically only one) which is the most powerful hero, and then anywhere around 1-2 extra heroes depending on the army list. The undead army as an example can only have one extra hero.

This prevents the game of hero hammer from happening largely as you will only have 1-3 heroes and the rest of your force will be composed of everything else.

It can be possible to get some overbearing lists put in place. Some of the more powerful monsters have a cap of one in the warband max, but other entries can be spammed. For example, the undead could take nothing but carrion beasts or artillery as there are no caps on those.

The balance overall remains to be seen as the game is brand new and minmax exploits have not yet hit the internet to be copied.

MODELS
The game has no official model line and openly embraces any model line that you may have. Bases also do not matter, so bring your squares or your rounds or anything in between.

GAMEPLAY
Scenarios typically last six turns OR when your army is deemed broken. A broken warband is when you have reached a point in the game where you have half of your starting units remaining on the table. At that point, unless you are in the sixth turn of the game and the game is over, you will roll a D6 to determine if you go to the next turn or not.

Broken armies can never score more points than unbroken armies. That means once an army is broken, it will be playing to break the other army to try to win on score in what little time it has left or it auto loses no matter what the score actually is (barring a scenario changing that win condition up)

TURNS
The game eschews the traditional IGOUGO mechanics of classic games and many modern games. Instead, for every hero or unit that you possess you will drop a colored dice or token into a dice bag, as will your opponent.

During a turn, you will draw a token from the bag. If it is one of your tokens, you will activate a unit that has not yet activated. If it is one of your oppoenents, they will do the same. There are some exceptions where you can keep orders activated on a unit and not put the dice in the bag, but ultimately the game will be bouncing back and forth between players activating different units as opposed to standing there for an entire turn (or two if you are playing AOS and fall prey to their double turn mechanic) taking it on the chin with no way to respond.

The orders you can give correspond to a facing on a D6. Warlord games sells special order dice for Bolt Action and Antares, which uses the same system.

You can choose to Advance with a unit, where they can move and shoot any missile weapons. You can choose to fire with a unit where they shoot without moving (some larger weapons or artillery can only receive this order to fire for example). You can choose to run which lets you move double or even triple your movement (unless you are wearing heavy armor which slows you down).

You can choose to issue a rally order which will help that unit and any unit near it remove "pins" from it to make it easier to stop fleeing and recieve orders. Pins are a mechanic where losing combats, taking damage, and exhausting oneself (or miscasting spells) add to a tally that is much like morale. Once you reach an amount of pins equal to the units command score, they flee the table. Rallying helps remove some of those pins. (pins also make issuing orders to those units more difficult)

You can issue a Down order which makes your unit hit the ground and make it harder to be hit.

Last you can issue an Ambush order which lets you put a unit's action in wait. They can then later activate in response to an enemy unit activating, as an Interrupt, provided they pass an initiative test.

This lets you weave more complex tactics and strategies into the game where units can lie in wait for an opposing action and then activate to spoil that action. Or perhaps just simply dive into cover with a Down command if they are being targeted by a nasty missile unit.

DICE
The game uses D10s as its primary random number generator though also uses D6 and D4s sparingly as well.

COMBAT MECHANICS
To charge into combat, units must be issued a run command and they can run (double movement) or sprint (triple movement) into an enemy unit. There are no random charges, though terrain can spoil your charging as it has an impact in the game and can slow you down.

Shooting and combat both function off of the same mechanics. You roll a D10 for each model to hit based on either an accuracy score or their strength score, and all hits are allocated to the enemy unit. Hits must be spread out across the unit. There is none of the tanking shennanigans that other games employ where an indestructible front model soaks up all damage.

Once hits are assigned, the player taking the damage rolls a resistance dice (a d10) for each hit. Armor raises a resistance score, though some strikes ignore armor. Strikes also have a strike value which can lower resistance, and you will find an assortment of weapons that have various strength or sv boosts.

Models that fail to save are removed as casualties. Everything in the game has a single wound, except for heroes which can buy extra wounds.

A tough skill allows you to reroll a failed resistance roll, and heroes can buy several of these to use throughout the game (as they count game-wide, ex: if I have tough 2 that means I can twice in the entire game re-roll a failed resistance roll with that hero)

Units can run away and if they flee must be rallied or can run off the table.

There are a variety of modifiers to both shooting and combat. These are covered in the quick reference sheet in the back of the book and is worth copying and printing out for your games.

MAGIC
Magic is pretty straight forward. You can give magic levels to the heroes that can have magic. The higher your magic level, the more potent the spells can be. However you only cast one spell a turn with that hero so the power level of magic is nothing like in other games where it can easily tip the game over.

Spells can also be dispelled by enemy wizards. Its more of a utility than a primary tactic.

You get one spell for your caster free that you pick and additional spells cost more points (even though again you can only cast once a turn no matter how many spells you decide to take)

The timidity spell is pretty much a must-take since it is very powerful for what it does (stacks pins on a unit which basically lets your mage come close or actually auto remove a damaged unit once per turn) and this is probably the only negative I'd give the game at the moment.

MAGIC ITEMS
There is a small selection of extra magic weapons you can give your characters. It is not really a big list but gives you some extra options should you wish to take them.

There could definitely be an expansion that gave more magic armor, standards, potions, etc, but currently its just limited to a small handful of weapons.

MONSTERS
There are bound monsters in the game the same as existed way back in the day of 5th edition whfb. The monsters section is listed as player optional and requiring player permission to include, but gives you access to the classic beastiary of yester-decade with things like dragons, ogres, giant spiders and scorpions, etc, plus things like ghouls and swarms.

Monsters have their own reaction chart to damage, just like they did in 5th edition whfb, so you can have a monster hurt enough to be enraged and tear through everyone's forces, or it simply walks off the table.

CHARIOTS
Another key unit type are chariots, which many warbands have access to. Chariots have their own damage chart as well that they roll on and heroes in chariots can continue to fight on foot if their chariot is destroyed.

TERRAIN
Terrain matters in this game. Obstacles can stop you in your tracks, terrain can slow you down, and hills block line of sight. The game functions in an intuitive manner. If you have models in cover, they gain a bonus to their resistance as you'd expect.

OVERALL
Warlords of Erehwon obviously takes a lot of things from classic Warhammer of the 90s and early 2000s. The army lists remind me greatly of Ravening Hordes, which was seen as the golden age of Warhammer in terms of balance back when 6th edition came out in the fall of 2000.

Some of the paragraphs in the book seem lifted from my 5th edition WHFB rulebook, which is not surprising since Rick Priestly was part of that design team.

PROS (for me, in my opinion)
Intuitive gameplay that centers around maneuvering and playing the game over wombo-combo building and listbuilding skills. Your excel powers will not be as useful here as they are in 40k or AOS.

There are really no combos to exploit in terms of taking Unit A gives Unit B and C a boost. There are no free abilities to exploit like having more than 20 models in a unit gives you a free +1 to hit. There are no ways to really raise up double your points values with unbalanced summoning mechanics.

The initiative system alternating from player to player instead of the much outdated IGOUGO system means you aren't standing there for 30-45 minutes watching your opponent move while you just take guys off the table. It definitely means you don't have to suffer two turns in a row and up to 60 minutes of watching your opponent attack you while you take models off the table like in AOS.

At 1000 points and roughly 30-50 models a side, the game also should play out really fast.

The ambush system where you can set up interrupts is also a huge positive for me as it creates layers of interaction that can weave a powerfully tactical tapestry where you can set up traps and responses (and which can fail!) as opposed to knowing your turn will always go off without any interruption at all.

The fact that you can use any models you want is also positive, and the fact that bases are listed as not relevant means that someone wanting everyone on the same base or getting angry has no leg to stand on. Rebasing entire armies to try and keep up with the latest base size is quite frankly annoying, especially if you put any work into your models appearance and don't want to destroy a finished base to put a bigger circle on it to appease someone that gets upset because 7mm extra is to them a huge advantage.

Thats personal taste I realize.

Also a big pro for me is that this game does not give you the ability to really alpha strike someone off the table. You can't get engaged in turn 1, you have to position for it and risk falling in opposing traps. There are no teleporting into combat units here nor are there units that are going to charge across the table in turn 1 (though speed can still get you close!)

CONS
The game has no fluff or narrative. For some thats also a huge PRO and that may even be for you. For me, the lack of story means that every game is set somewhere different. I like persistant stories and settings, so thats just a niggling issue for me.

For pick up gamers though that don't care about such things, the gameplay alone is more than enough to stand on in my opinion.

Additionally, there are some key armies missing here. The skaven, lizarden, and chaos warriors especially will find it hard to proxy their models in for one of the existing warbands.

Also, much like the cons levied against Ravening Hordes in 2000 by the warhammer community back then, you pay for the balance with lack of flavor. It would be nice to see a supplement really flesh out these army lists with their own spells and some magic items of their own. Games Workshop really does a good job at giving each faction its own place in the world, and I think that would go a long long way with Warlords of Erehwon.

Now the book states in the beginning that things that may be missing can easily be added as you wish. Rick encourages you to be creative. I know that come summer if we are still missing some skaven or demons or chaos warriors that I'll likely put my own in the game for campaign sake. He even has posted in their facebook explaining the design principals that he used to help you design your own units, but hopefully those formulas make it to a publication to help us tinker with the game more in a better and more knowledgeable way.

For a lot of players also the lack of the wombo-combo list building is a huge CON. Fans of popping synergies off and combo chaining with units that feed off of each others' abilities may be turned off by that lack of ability here.

Additionally players that enjoy alpha striking and dictating how a game is played by virtue of bringing an alpha strike list that gets stuck in on turn 1 will also likely be turned off by having to employ maneuver to get where they want.

FINAL SCORE
For me this is one of my favorite systems at the moment. Its rules are solid, and what weaknesses it has can be remedied by the community should Warlord Games not pursue the game much past the initial rulebook.

I look forward to writing some material in this game universe and getting some campaign time in with Mr. Priestly's work.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/03/23 15:42:25


 
   
Made in it
Enemy of the DĂșnedain



Italy

Great review many thanks.
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Maryland

Cool, so it's very much the Gates of Antares system adjusted to run fantasy warbands.

I like the Antares ruleset, and this might be faster to play, since I can't imagine it having all the little fiddly modifiers and weapon stats that a scifi game can have.

I may try to get my hands on it.

How are the army lists themselves? Do most factions have a number of units to chose from, or are we looking more at 3-4 units types per army?

   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User





I like what I hear! I have played Bolt Action and VERY MUCH enjoy the Orders Dice game mechanic in place of turn initiative

I have been planning to pick up the book, and your review has the detailed information I needed to finalize my decision.

 
   
Made in us
Clousseau




There are a number of units. It looks like they mostly come from the old days of 4th ed whfb but there is a variety of unit types.

Getting some demo games in this weekend and I'm looking forward to it.
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut





Good read, looking forward to getting into it more. I ordered a copy of the rulebook a couple of weeks ago but it has yet to ship :/
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Maryland

Found this over on the leadadventure forum:


Barbarians

Chieftain|Mounted|Chariot, Hero|Chariot, Shaman, Warriors, Archers, Horsemen, Berserkers, Chariot, Warhounds, Brats (i.e. levy), Mammoth, Stone thrower

Beastmen

Chieftain|Chariot, Shaman|Chariot, Minotaur lord, Centaur Lord, Guard, Warriors, Low (levy), Archers, Minotaurs, Hounds, Centaurs, Harpies, Bolt thrower

Dwarves

Lord, Runesmith, Hero, Guard, Warriors, Archers, Handguns, Pony riders, Rangers, Trollslayers (spade is a spade), stone thrower, cannon, bombard, fire cannon, bolt thrower, gyrocopter, steam juggernaut

Elves

Lord|Mounted, Hero|Mounted, Mage, Guard, Warriors, Archers, Rangers, Cavalry, Knights, Eagle, Chariot, Bolt thrower, Stone thrower(!)

Gnolls

Chieftain, Shaman, Champion, Guard, Warriors, Archers, Scouts, Trackers, Chariot, Stone thrower

Goblins

Chieftain|Chariot, Shaman, Guard, Warriors, Archers, Fanatics (spade), Wolf Riders, Chariot, Snotlings (spade), Squig herd (spade), Trolls, Stone thrower, Bolt thrower

Halflings

Chief Sheriff|Cart, Fortune Teller, Clan Chief|Mounted, Sheriffs, Militia, Archers, urchins (swarm), donkey riders, stone thrower, bolt thrower

Knights

Lord|Mounted, Wizard, Champion (always mounted), knights|mounted, retainers|mounted, archers, crossbows, arbalestiers, peasants (levy), flagellants, bolt thrower, stone thrower

Olympians

Lord|Chariot, Hero|Chariot, Seer, Guard, Warriors, Peltasts, Amazons, Amazon archers, amazon cavalry, centaurs, harpies

Undead

Necromancer, Liche|Chariot, Wraith|Mounted, Champion, Guard, Warriors, Archers, Zombies, Wights, Riders, Knights, Chariot, Carrion beast (flyer), Bolt thrower, screaming skull catapult (spade)

Monster list

Basilisk, Chimera, Cockatrice, Cyclops, Dragon, Ghouls (wtf in monsters?), Giant, giant rats, giant scorpions, giant spiders, even gianter spider, golem, griffin, hippogriff, hydra, manticore, ogres, various swarms, Wyvern, treeman, dryads (big sort), trolls, cave bear, various dinosaurs

   
Made in us
Rogue Daemonhunter fueled by Chaos






Toledo, OH

I really like the army size for this game. It seems like you can build an army from a box of plastic core, maybe some metal elites, and then some characters, with war machines and monsters to taste. I completely love the bolt action mechanic, so porting it to fantasy is right in my wheelhouse.
   
Made in se
Fresh-Faced New User





Thank you for the review Auticus, this game seems to be an interesting alternative for me. Are there any rules for psychology, like fear and such?
   
Made in us
Clousseau




There are special rules that are for terrifying things, but they don't operate like whfb fear.
   
Made in us
Using Inks and Washes





San Francisco, CA

Nice, thanks for posting this!

I play...

Sigh.

Who am I kidding? I only paint these days... 
   
Made in gb
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Dorset, England

I've read reviews for this game in both Wargames Illustrated and Wargames: Soldiers and Strategy this month and it has peaked my interest.

I think the size does seem quite nice, as long as you realise it isn't WHF mk. II with ranks and facings and things. The gnoll vs hobbit battle in WI was pretty cool!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/03/25 19:59:32


 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





Armpit of NY

There is another battle report online on Warlord's site that featured Skeletons vs. Halflings -
https://www.warlordgames.com/frontline-report-moot-point/
   
Made in gb
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Dorset, England

Wow nice, I'll give it a read when I'm not a work :p

The halfings are getting a lot of attention, are they the Ultramarines of Erehwon?

One thing that is missing for me is horse archer rules, considering they were so important in real life why do they always get left out of fantasy?!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
OK so I've reviewed the battle report from Warlord games, it's not the best advert as it is done entirely through crudely drawn MS paint maps!

Couple of things left me feeling a bit less excited,
It has the 'break' mechanic so you only get to play half a game :-S Also if your opponent breaks before you destroy the static objective that's a draw rather than a win!
You can just walk out of combat (although I think I read in WI that you get some free swings before they walk away).
Magic seems a bit overt and powerful, Granny Weatherwax wouldn't approve!



This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/03/26 18:25:02


 
   
Made in us
Clousseau




Magic isn't really that bad other than the timidity spell. That spell is bonkers.
   
Made in gb
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Dorset, England

That's good to hear, I think I'm just biased against magics! Easy to ban or alter the power of that timidity spell I'm sure.

I think I'll take a cue from Field of Glory II and look to change the break test to only happen if 50% of your force has gone AND the difference between the two remaining forces it at least 25%.
That way a close game will grind away to the bitter end, whilst spankings will end fairly quickly!

   
Made in us
Clousseau




Rick is pretty open in the rulebook about how you should feel free to houserule to meet your needs.

Overall the game mechanics are pretty fantastic in my opinion and it is one of my favorite fantasy rulesets to date, spanning almost thirty years of playing these games
   
Made in gb
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Dorset, England

Nice endorsement! I did try to buy it the other day but it is 5 squid for delivery from Warlord!

I suppose you get a free necromancer figurine as well but I was planning to use an old liche priest I had lying around...
   
Made in tw
Fresh-Faced New User




Can someone please post a link to the auticus article comparing WoE to ten other fantasy game systems? Was also wondering how this system compares to king of war which to me represents the ideal for simplicity and efficient play?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/04/06 04:02:27


 
   
Made in us
Clousseau




I posted it on my facebook regional group, there is no way for you to view it without being in my regional facebook wargaming group.

There is no direct correlation to kings of war. Kings of war is a rank and flank game. Warlords is skirmish based and is more akin to lord of the rings, age of sigmar, dragon rampant, etc.

   
Made in us
Powerful Pegasus Knight





I found it for ya. Lazy auticus

"The fantasy warband games - comparing the new Warlords of Erehwon to whats currently out there.

With the release of Warlords, I was able to gouge through the rulebook and get my take on how the rules operate. The biggst questions I had were how does this game compare with the other warband games?

There are five commercial warband games that I'm going to use here:

Age of Sigmar, Middle Earth SBG, Dragon Rampant, Warmachine, and Warlords. All of these operate under the same basic scale of operation, that being an average of around 30-50 models (though AOS can have upwards of 150 to 200 models depending on if you want to play hords, though it is still sharing in th movement style that all five possesses)

Other games are also similar such as Saga, but these are games rooted more in fantasy whereas Saga is largely historical and thus can have a different appeal to different people.

When I get into a tabletop game there are largely six main factors that I consider. I am scoring these on a value of 1 to 5, where 3 is a median value. We all have differing likes and dislikes when it comes to games, and where I enjoy more military science in my game, others really enjoy building wombo-combos that maximize synergy like a card game. Neither is wrong. This is just how I see where the five games above fall in line.

1) Model line. First, is it required that I use a game's models to play. Second, are those models high quality? Appearance and immersion are huge things for me.

The only real game that I have played that absolutely required the company's model line was Warmachine. All of the other games you can run whatever models you wish. Warlords of Erehwon is no exception, in fact Rick Priestly discusses that you can use any type of base you want as well, from square to round to pill shaped, and it doesn't matter.

I leave no score here because you really have liberty to use whatever models you find attractive and one man's awesome model is another's trash.

2) Narrative. Does the game have its own fantasy world? How immersive is it? How supported is it? I prefer telling stories with my tabletop games, so I am naturally more drawn to games with a huge depth for telling tales.

AOS: 3
LOTR: 5
Warlords: 1
Dragon Rampant: 1
War Machine: 4

Lord of the Rings has probably the largest in depth narrative you can find right now. Everyone has seen the movies, and there are volumes of information that Tolkien wrote that can be used.

This is also the game's weakness. Most games focus on the events in the movies, so deviating from that can be a difficult chore for many groups.

Warmachine actually has quite a solid set of narrative, with a full series of RPG books in the Iron Kingdoms that really delve deep into the lore. Its a shame that most of the players are more tournament focused and didn't care about the lore, but if you are requiring some deep story telling, don't let the tournament focus of the Warmachine crowd fool you. You can find it in this game.

AOS has the support of Black Library. And while they have a number of novels, I gave it a 3 because the lore and stories are disjointed and all over the place. There are no real set places, because the realms are infinite. While this does give the authors quite a bit of leverage in being able to do pretty much whatever they want, it also means that battles taking place wherever have very little emotional impact on the players or readers because an important city falling somewhere to chaos means nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Both Warlords and Dragon Rampant have no world and no narrative. They are designed to be able to pick up any model collection at all in any setting at all and have at it.

The plus is that means you can use the rules in the realms, the old world of WHFB, Middle Earth, or a world of your own devising. The downside is that ... you have to use a setting that is set somewhere else, which can be a downer if you are into narrative and fluff and want something more than just plopping down models and fighting in a pickup game.

3) Game balance. If I show up with 2000 points and you show up with 2000 points, are we going to have to make a social contract to not be cheese weasels? Is 2000 points really not indicative of power at all and the min/maxers among us can take 2000 points and turn it into effectively 4000 points? This demonstrates in my opinion a game's abilities to be min/maxed and require a social contract with my opponent to get a decent game in without a one-sided tabling on either side of the table.

AOS: 1 or 3*
LOTR: 3
Warlords: ?
Dragon Rampant: 5
Warmachine: 3

Balance is a sticky subject, because its word means different things to different people. I gave my opinion on what balance means to me above and the scores I give are relative to that definition.

AOS is the worst balanced of the bunch which is why I gave it a score of 1. It really requires a social contract between you and your opponent, and it is all too easy to get a pickup game and have one side have a tournament optimized netlist facing off against a casual list and having the game end in a turn or two. Those aren't very fun games.

The 3 astericked is that if you are following the social contract, and playing either at a casual level together or a powergame tournament level together, the game can be at least somewhat balanced enough for a score of a 3 ("ok").

There are still a lot of false choices and traps in AOS and if balance is your gig then you will be annoyed with AOS.

Middle Earth I gave a 3. Its balance is for the most part ok. As is Warmachine. There are definitely wombo combos in either game that will trash casual lists, so with a score of 3 that still means you need to follow a form of social contract to have an enjoyable game.

Dragon Rampant I scored a max of 5 because everything is so generic in that game and built off of the same pieces that its a lot like chess. You aren't playing Dragon Rampant to be cunning in the list building phase for the most part.

Warlords I can't give a score to because simply I have not really seen it played in person. On paper there aren't too many things that scream broken like you can find when opening up certain AOS books which leads me to believe that the score will fall between a 3 and a 4, but until I have played I will not be able to comment on this.

4) Complexity of rules. How simple are the rules? Do they require a lot of reference material?

AOS: 2
LOTR: 3
Warlords: 4
Dragon Rampant: 2
War Machine: 4

Things have changed in the past 20-25 years, where once games were for the most part always complex, the push now to make things streamlined and very small has been a rallying cry by the current main generation of gamers.

AOS and Dragon Rampant both lead the way in these games as having the simplest set of rules. AOS would actually score a 1 here, being very simple, if not for the fact that you have to own like 3-5 books to play a game and have to bounce between books to find a paragraph, which is highly annoying.

Middle Earth is a step above AOS in complexity but really once you get the heroic actions down, the core mechanics are also pretty easy to remember.

Warmachine and Warlords both hail from a more complicated time. Warlords was definitely written with that 5th edition WHFB flair, to the point where I noticed a lot of paragraphs in Priestly's work very similar to the same paragraphs in my WHFB 5th and 6th ed rulebooks.

Warlords takes some reference material to remember a lot of smaller fiddly rules. That can be annoying if you are used to something basic like AOS.

5) Immersion and Intuitive rules. If my models go behind a wall, and they don't get any form of cover, that is not immersive. Indeed, if I can blow dragon fire onto a swirling melee and only hit my enemies, that is not immersive, nor is it intuitive. This scores how much the rules make sense during game play, with very intuitive rules borderlining simulation on one end and very gamey CCG style mechanics on the other.

AOS: 2
LOTR: 3
Warlords: 4
Dragon Rampant: 3
War Machine: 4

AOS being very simple also has the least intuitive ruleset of the bunch. This is hailed as a huge strong point by the community. AOS is a paradox, wanting to cater to the cinematic, but also giving rules that are the most non intuitive. It attracts largely those that are more interested in gamey elements over simulation elements. If you enjoy tapping your warrior card to do 5 points of damage to your opponent without needing to mess with things like maneuver to get to do that, then AOS will feel right at home because many units can either teleport to where they want and charge in on turn 1, or can cross the entire table in a single turn and engage in combat in turn 1 with terrain and the like offering no hindrance at all.

They threw a bone in 2.0 by doing things like letting forests block line of sight and adjusting how cover works a little. However there are still a lot of WTF moments in AOS where intuition would say a situation would do one thing, but AOS embraces the gamey Collectible Card Game backbone that its built off with another. As I mention above, that is a huge plus to the people that love AOS (and those people are not a minority by any means).

Middle Earth takes that one step up and actually has some terrain rules that feel better. However, with Middle Earth you can sometimes have situations where five guys are striking at one and that one just happens to have a better melee skill by a point and rolls a 6 on the dice and beats all five down with that one roll. It does emphasize things you'd see in the movies a lot, so its totally in character with Aragorn or Legolas beating down a troop of orcs single handedly, but it also can rankle if you are more of a simulationist and expect a gang of five orcs to get a bone thrown to them.

Dragon Rampant also has very basic rules which can lead to some very odd moments where they expect you to just figure it out on your own with your opponent. Unfortunately when you have to figure things out on your own with your opponent, disagreements can arise.

Warlords and Warmachine both have more complexity which gives them more intuitive rulesets. If guys are in cover, they indeed get a bonus.

Warlords also has the ability to actually have a form of overwatch that isn't just a waste of time, and lets you create traps and ambushes where you cannot do that in the other games.

So in this department, the more realism is going to go to warlords. The more gamey is going to reside with AOS and to a degree Middle Earth.

6) Listbuilding. How important is the listbuilding in the game? Is the name of the game to out build your opponent and come to the table and win by virtue of a superior list? Or do you need to actually play the game most of the time?

AOS: 5
LOTR: 4
Warlords: 3
Dragon Rampant: 2
Warmachine: 4

AOS is largely all about listbuilding. As mentioned above, if you enjoy games where you solve puzzles by finding the most effective combos, AOS is king, and Warmachine close behind (I consider AOS to be brother systems to Warmachine, it is apparent to me that the designers of AOS were huge fans of warmachine and games like it when they rewrote the whfb system)

Middle Earth's list building is also pretty heavy. There are some pretty slanted trap units and false choices present within the system that you have to either avoid, or social contract with your opponent to not exploit if you like certain units.

Warlords the system appears on the surface to be pretty generic. The unit choices share a lot of similarities so it would seem (again without playing the game yet) that the game is going to reside more in how well you play on the table over how well you use Excel to figure out your power coefficients, but I'd say its definitely going to have mismatches if you build poorly. Enough to rank it a 3 where listbuilding is somewhat important, but playing the game is equally as important.

Dragon Rampant takes the generic and turns it up to max. As such, the lists are really secondary to playing the game.

Neither Warlords nor Dragon Rampant really have the wombo combos in them that you are trying to chain off and exploit. They are games that rely on your ability to out think and out maneuver your opponent.

AOS and Warmachine can and often are won at the excel spreadsheet level, and Middle Earth can be that way as well. Walking through Adepticon and seeing the Middle Earth lists showed me that.

So in summary Warlords is a game with no narrative or fluff that requires you and your friends to either play in a world that is already made, or not care about the setting at all and focus on just gameplay. The rules are fairly complex and will require a few read throughs and reference sheets to master, which can be a turn off in this day and age of simple is better.

You gain a lot more immersion and intuition with those rules, at the expense of gamey combos and gamist elements, and have a game where your maneuvering and playing is just as important as your ability to calculate power coefficients in Excel.

Next: a summary of Warlords of Erehwon - how it plays - what I find cool about it. What I find that could be offputting."

   
Made in de
Primus





Palmerston North

Nice review, but I think Dragon Rampant is praised too much.

Its as if Auticus never encountered reduced model units.
   
Made in gb
Stone Bonkers Fabricator General




We'll find out soon enough eh.

TBH reading that review, Warlords sounds like sheer heaven to me. A hint 5th/6th WHFB? Less focus on listbuilding and "gamey" CCG pish? Not oversimplified pap? Lovely. This may well replace Dragon Rampant as my "I can't be arsed to collect full-size WHFB armies any more" ruleset.

I need to acquire plastic Skavenslaves, can you help?
I have a blog now, evidently. Featuring the Alternative Mordheim Model Megalist.

"Your society's broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No, lets blame the people with no power and no money and those immigrants who don't even have the vote. Yea, it must be their fething fault." - Iain M Banks
-----
"The language of modern British politics is meant to sound benign. But words do not mean what they seem to mean. 'Reform' actually means 'cut' or 'end'. 'Flexibility' really means 'exploit'. 'Prudence' really means 'don't invest'. And 'efficient'? That means whatever you want it to mean, usually 'cut'. All really mean 'keep wages low for the masses, taxes low for the rich, profits high for the corporations, and accept the decline in public services and amenities this will cause'." - Robin McAlpine from Common Weal 
   
Made in us
Clousseau




I'm not really a fan of dragon rampant. Its too...lacking for me. Warlords is definitely not as synergy CCG based.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I found it for ya. Lazy auticus


lol I have no access to facebook mostly other than at home so had no way to dig it up from here. But thanks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Warlords balance I'd give a 4. There are a few things that are nasty, like the timidity spell, but every faction has access to it so there are no situations where you don't have access to the tools you need because you happen to like a faction that is the butt end of the balance spectrum.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/04/09 11:39:18


 
   
Made in gb
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Dorset, England

Yo auticus, I'm painting up some skellies for when I get this game but I notice they all have spears in the preview games. Can they also use hand weapons or am I going to have to start pulling off arms?
   
Made in us
Clousseau




Skeletons have quite a few options. Hand weapons are definitely a thing you will be fine.
   
Made in gb
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Dorset, England

Thanks for the tip off, I've done 10 with spears and 10 with hand weapons just for variety.
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




thanks for that repost sledgehammer and great review auticus! i hope warlord games comes out with a free quickstart pdf. i don't want to pay $40 for the PDF lol
   
Made in us
Clousseau




We have a narrative campaign kicking off on May 18 - July. I will post about that.
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




Many, many thanks, auticus. Just a well done review and also a good comparison of existing warband/skirmish games. I am in total agreement with you about the quality of the game and its sheer utility. I have upwards of 6k tyrannids, 8k Ultramarines all nicely painted and gathering dust. GW rulesets and policies just wore out my patience, though I think they are trying harder now...they still manage to mangle codices and rulesets and make you pay for it.

On to Warlords. I have an enormous 8th ed. Warriors of Chaos army and was able to build four unique competitive warbands at 1000 points, even added in some Mierce barbarian archers and some 3D printed rock throwers. In two days I taught four 11 to 13 year old grandsons the game and we had a massive 7 hour battle based on The Rogue Beast scenario. I even built two gnoll armies with chariots and war machines for around $200 paint included and used one of them as random factors in the boys' game. It was about the most fun I have had wargaming since I left behind my old wargaming group a decade ago to move north. There was an added bonus that the boy whose birthday It was carried away the magic sword and won the game!

People can play what they want, but this game, Bolt Action, Gates of Antares and A Song of Ice and Fire will keep me occupied for some time to come. In fact, SIF will provide all the models for my Knightly Retinue for Warlords of Erehwon.

I hope the game continues to grow in popularity
   
 
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