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Yesterday I was finally able to play new Medieval skirmish ruleset by Footsore Miniatures - The Barons' War, aimed at depicting 13th century small-scale warfare. While original rules primarily deal with, well, English The Barons' War and have multitude of historical characters from this conflict, I think they're universal enough to suit any theatre from this period. The game's engine is pretty flexible so it's entirely possible to field unique army compositions by giving new abilities to pre-existing unit types or customizing your force commander. We decided to hastily convert basics to suit Crusades theme.



Both warhosts were 500 points, a minimal possible army size (with 1000 being recommended), and we decided to make pretty different forces to test multiple mechanics at once: Saracens were present with heavy infantry, a lot of archers and slingers and mounted sergeant serving as command group, while Crusaders deployed fabled heavy knight cavalry (and also upgraded them with "Fear" ability which forced anybody willing to attack them from close range to pass Morale test first), heavy crossbowmen and turcopole auxillaries.



We randomly chose to play the first mission from the rulebook (gain control over enemy point of interest while holding your own), but since both forces were quite small, commanders decided to abandon their objectives and focused on destroying opposing warband.



Early game began with both sides exchanging fire, killing one Saracen horse archer. Archers managed to miraculously withstand crossbowmen's shooting and got lucky with critical hits, utterly destroying Turcopoles in return.



Seeing this, heavy Hospitalier cavalry sprung to action, aiming to smash Arab infantry and encircle the skirmishers.


Dismounted Saracen nobles, however, were first to engage knights in hand-to-hand combat by virtue of rolling high enough value to suddenly attack them on the march. Charging hrough the fence, attackers managed to push enemy back somewhat, although with no casualties.



Knights regrouped and counter-charged in the beginning of next turn. They were pretty unlucky with hits and only managed to kill two. Despite this blunder, heavy infantry was left shocked and was essentially defenceless until they could regroup the next turn. Archers once again came to the aid of their comrades, rolling a lot of lucky hits and destroying majority of enemy group in a single volley.



After enemy commander panicked and started retreating, there wasn't much Hospitaliers could do this game. Crossbowmen managed to utterly annihilate my slingers, but it didn't matter: heavy infantry reformed after shock, charged the last remaining turcopole and kicked him off the horse, scoring another penalty on enemy lord's Morale and forcing him off the table completely.


With no leader to guide them, crusaders had to retreat. Holy Land's defenders emerged victorious today, although only by few lucky dice throws.


My thoughts on the game after one playtest is that it's fun if a bit too random at times (which is seemingly Footsore's signature selling point), and 500 points is really low to experience proposed gameplay in full, so we will probably try it out again soon with bigger armies.

Nice write up! Thanks.