Today, after about a year of work (on and off with other BG projects), my Crusades game is finally off to the printers. 'Soldiers of God' is a full battle game, utilizing units of between 8-16 models (cavalry is 4-8 models), in either small fast moving Raids, Field Battles (the standard line-up and fight) or Siege Assaults (one sides gets the castle walls to defend, the other attacks it).

It is card-driven, using an action card deck (which will come with the rulebook), to give orders to each of your army's 'Battles'. A 'Battle' is a sub-division of the army, a third of it, either the left, centre or right Battle. These can all act together on the same action card.

The way action cards and Battles interact is governed by your overall Battle Plan, which is a pre-chosen plan of attack (or sometimes defence), which dictates which cards your Battles get for this engagement. These set cards are then added to with random drawn ones, so each game gets an entertaining level of unpredictability, and the cards will never allow a game to be played the same way twice - even if you you used the same forces, over the same terrain, with the same battle plans, the game would still play-out differently.

Picking a force is from one of the two army lists in the game, Crusaders and Saracens, in a familiar way, except the scenario being played adds restrictions to this. So, Raiding forces look very different to castle garrison forces or those deployed for a field battle. Siege Train equipment, ruses and tactics are also available, but only in Siege Assault games.

The rules aren't scale specific, they will be playable at all scales, because the players pick the ground scale and measurements based on their collection and table-size.

Here is the cover and couple of preview spreads from the book. Enjoy. The books should be available from various retailers, including Warlord Games, Perry Miniatures and Northstar Figures in 6 weeks-ish (fingers crossed).

 Easy E wrote:
I'm not sure how I feel about this trend in Cards over Dice for games. Of course, I also have a hatred of custom dice, so maybe that make sme a grognard now?

Shotgun wrote:
Most interesting. Looks like something I will be doing in 10mm.

 infinite_array wrote:
One of the guys in the area uses playing cards for activation in his games, which I think does a lot of good for keeping everyone interested - it means your card can come up at any moment during the turn! It also keeps games interesting in that it's not the tired old I-Go-U-Go method, and so initiative can mean a lot.

 Manchu wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:
One of the guys in the area uses playing cards for activation in his games, which I think does a lot of good for keeping everyone interested - it means your card can come up at any moment during the turn! It also keeps games interesting in that it's not the tired old I-Go-U-Go method, and so initiative can mean a lot.

Ever since BA, I look for some kind of activation gimmick in a rule set. I wasn't totally happy with the card-based one in Muskets & Tomahawks, however. In that game, the card drawn indicates which kind of units can activate ... which strikes me as a bit too much. The FATE system Mr. Cavatore invented for his new Terminator game is really cool. You have a d6 with three 1s, two 2s, and a side that says FATE and you activate as many models as you roll or none if you roll FATE -- unless you have a model with the command special rule, in which case, upon rolling FATE, you may as many models as his command rating (including him). Now, that is very thematic to that IP but it is also a great activation system generally.

But I sort of suspect that the Soldiers of God cards will have less to do with what units you can activate, or at least will not be exclusively about that, and have more to do with what you can do with those units tactically (i.e., command and control).

 Optio wrote:
Not long finished up two 6mm armies for 1st crusade. It does look nice out on the table.

Oh! Baccus do a nice range of crusaders/arabs, don't they? Hm...

Warwick Kinrade wrote:The rules aren't scale specific, they will be playable at all scales, because the players pick the ground scale and measurements based on their collection and table-size.