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Now that I'm getting to know the place again, it's time to get a thread going on my fantasy/historical miniatures rules, Conqueror: Fields of Victory.

I created this at the (apparently defunct) Warseer forum more than a decade ago when word got out that WHFB was about to enter its 7th Edition. I really like 6th, felt it achieved about the best balance one could expect of GW, and having already gone through transitions from 5th to 6th (and 2nd ed. 40k to 3rd), I wasn't willing to retool again.

Thus, Conqueror was designed to seamlessly integrate GW-type fantasy armies as well as ancient to early modern historical armies. It started out as a design thread and just kept going, lots of good suggestions, people playtesting mechanics and that sort of thing. It is now in its second (or revised edition), which came out in 2018.

Conqueror is generally IGO-UGO, but uses an integrated turn sequence to create a simple but realistic flow of activity. This makes it a bit more of a wargame, and I borrowed some mechanics from historicals to give it a bit more flexibility. For example, there are the traditional column and skirmish formations, but also a square, which allows units to face all directions at once (useful if one is outnumbered). Cavalry units that are being charged can make a leadership test to countercharge - they don't move, but get their lance bonus.

Perhaps the biggest enhancement is in movement rules, which I streamlined. There is free measurement (no guessing!) and when units engage in melee combat, there is a procedure known as "centering up" which ensures the maximum amount of figures are in contact. Unlike WHFB, victory in melee combat is determined by casualties inflicted, and the "rank bonus" only comes into play when checking morale.

Attacks are resolved simultaneously, which speeds up combat resolution and is more realistic. Some units (cavalry with lances) gain a damage bonus when charging, but the chief advantage is that charged units have to test morale first, making them more likely to break.

Now lets on some of these features in more depth.

Morale

A lot of games downplay it, but historically, units run away far more often than they stand and die in place.

One of the challenges in miniatures games is reflecting changing morale states without cluttering the tabletop with various markers. When I set out to design Conqueror, that was a paramount concern - I wanted to maintain a clean, aesthetic tabletop.

To do that, I created three morale states plus a status (more on that later).

We're generally familiar with normal morale and with routed, and these are easy to indicate, however I wanted to create an intermediate state where a unit is starting to break but is still able to fight. That is disordered, and to represent it, one marks the unit with a little bit of cotton, showing the dust rising from troops shifting their feet and the jostling in the ranks. (This is a historical fact, and one way armies deceived each other was to fake disorder in the ranks by having the troops deliberately kick up dust.) Disordered units take a -1 modifier on all morale and leadership tests.

This is more realistic and also allows me create a wider range of morale scores, creating more diversity of potential unit types. It also creates tension, because a unit in disorder is now clearly about to run. Can they hold for another round of combat, or not?

I also created a concept called shaken, which is caused by the unit taking casualties. The point at which a unit is shaken is determined by their morale rating. High morale units can take up to 50 percent losses without becoming shaken, while low morale units can only take 10 percent. Shaken units have a -1 modifier on all morale and leadership rolls. There's no need to mark shaken units - their depleted ranks (and off-table dead pile) tell their story.

What this means is that prolonged combat wears out units, and commanders have to balance pushing home the attack vs breaking the unit. At the same time, it offers some great battlefield moments when a militia unit stands in defiance of heavy losses.

Morale is rated from A to E and I used letters because it gives more flexibility than a single digit. As you can see, morale is pretty straightforward, but provides a lot more flexibility and realism.


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Combat

Combats in Conqueror are quite different from WHFB. For one thing, there is no "toughness" stat. This has been combined with armor to create a single "save." Thus, unarmored models are typically removed as casualties. Certain creatures have an inherent save (such as dwarves). The save stat is modified by AP, which reduces it. For example, a model with a 5+ save is hit by an AP 1 weapon, thus it only has a 6+ save.

In another departure from WHFB, both sides shoot during the same player turn. The moving player shoots first, followed by the non-moving player. What this does is eliminate the need for "overwatch" or "reaction fire" since it is built right into the turn sequence. Other than bows, most weapons and artillery may only fire once per game turn, and while the rules specify that this happens during the owning players shooting phase, there is an option to allow players to choose when they fire. For example, a cannon expecting to be charged, may well decide not to fire during its own shooting phase, waiting until the enemy are upon it before firing.

While this may make shooting seem overpowered, successful hits are reduced by half (rounding up). This is done to emphasize that pre-modern missile fire was used to harass and disorder units, not wipe them out. Thus in Conqueror, missile troops will typically target units hoping to force a morale test or eliminate high-value targets.

The heart of the game is of course melee combat, and as mentioned above, combat is conducted simultaneously. The advantage of being the charging side is that they test for morale second and certain weapons (notably lances) are more effective when charging.

The melee combat in Conqueror is bloody. The units are rating on a scale of 1 to 6, and elite units (for example) will hit militia on a 2. The margin of casualties determines who won the combat the loser must make a morale test with a negative modifier equally the excess wounds they took. Thus if an infantry unit takes 6 wounds while inflicting only 1, there will be a -5 modifier.

The lethality of the combat in turn encourages different formations. For example, above average troops like high elves will typically fight on a broader front, to maximize their weapon skill. The more engaged, the more kills they can achieve.

Poor quality troops will fight on a narrower front to limit losses and also to maximize their rank bonus. The side with greater depths of ranks gets a +1 morale roll modifier for "outranking" the other, which conversely suffers a -1 penalty for being "outranked." There are additional modifiers for being engaged in the flank or rear. Ranks have a minimum width of four models.

During playtesting and development, the test case for combat was elf vs goblin. In WHFB, the superior stat line of the elves doesn't amount to much in combat. That is why GW had to create special rules like spears in three ranks in order to make elves worth their points.

In Conqueror, the elves have a decisive edge, hitting goblins on a 3+ while the goblins need a 5+ to hit. The point values reflect this advantage, so goblin armies typically have considerable numbers. This is why the square formation is important - the elves can form a hedgehog if need be to stand off enemies that surround them.

It is also why elves may choose to fight in seven- or even eight-model frontages.


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I will stop here for now. If people are interested, I will explain further.

You've tempted me with this post, so I've ordered a paperback. Sounds extremely interesting.

Question - are there formal army lists, or is it more "here's what an elf looks like, here's what a spear/great weapon looks like, combine them together and that's an elf unit"?

 Rihgu wrote:
You've tempted me with this post, so I've ordered a paperback. Sounds extremely interesting.

Question - are there formal army lists, or is it more "here's what an elf looks like, here's what a spear/great weapon looks like, combine them together and that's an elf unit"?

Great question! One of the deficiencies of the original version was that it did not come with army lists.

The revised edition does. While you can build your own units from scratch, I provided a wide sample of armies to choose from, including orcs, goblins, elves, dwarves, dragons, lizardmen, elves, undead and so on. Lots of flavors of human as well.

Basically, you can do any WHFB army you want. If I didn't list it, you can just build your own, even creating your own fantasy race if you like.

One of the reasons I started this thread was to provide a space for people to offer suggestions or get help in making custom units. Thank you for your interest, I think you'll find it an easy, intuitive way to play fantasy battles.

Got the book, looked it over. Looks good! I think the amount of special rules is a little low but that just means thinking really deeply about what matters for a given unit.

One thing I don't understand is how "customizing units" works. You give the price for a unit of, for example, 10 infantry. And it says that for up to 20 models, additional models cost half as much, and then say 1/10.

May be that I was reading it too late at night, but something doesn't grok.

If a base unit is 100 points and I want to add 2 models, is that 120 points? Or 110 points because the additional 2 models cost half as much?

Also, just thinking about WHFB Dark Elves. Paying 10 points per unit for Callous seems a good representation, and maybe Ferocious? Specifically Witch Elves will want Bloodthirsty, for certain. Not sure what to do with Hydra, as off the top of my head there was no sort of regeneration special rule beyond a spell.

 Rihgu wrote:
Got the book, looked it over. Looks good! I think the amount of special rules is a little low but that just means thinking really deeply about what matters for a given unit.

One thing I don't understand is how "customizing units" works. You give the price for a unit of, for example, 10 infantry. And it says that for up to 20 models, additional models cost half as much, and then say 1/10.

May be that I was reading it too late at night, but something doesn't grok.

If a base unit is 100 points and I want to add 2 models, is that 120 points? Or 110 points because the additional 2 models cost half as much?

Also, just thinking about WHFB Dark Elves. Paying 10 points per unit for Callous seems a good representation, and maybe Ferocious? Specifically Witch Elves will want Bloodthirsty, for certain. Not sure what to do with Hydra, as off the top of my head there was no sort of regeneration special rule beyond a spell.

The special rules section is small because I tried to make the primary differences between units expressed in the stats. My overriding question when building the rules was simply: do I really need to 'break the rules' to do this?

The primary example I used was High Elves, who had a special rule for every unit. This was because the GW engine doesn't provide sufficient differentiation if you just go by stats. I can get deeper into the weeds if folks are interested, but by changing my engine to make MS and saves more contrasting, I found few if any rules were needed.

As for the points values, it's two ways of saying the same thing. For additional infantry models, you pay 1/10 of the price of the unit (so 10 points each). Once you get to 20 models, you cut that in half, so they are 1/20 (or 5 points in your example).

This is because models not in actual combat have less effect on the game. They boost the units ranks, provide resilience against being shaken, but do not make attacks unless the unit is hit from behind, or has taken heavy losses.

There are several ways you can do Dark Elves, and I think you're on the right track. For the hydra, the question I'd have is what is are its salient features? Regeneration is just another mechanic for saying "very hard to kill," and there are a couple of ways to get there without adding to the length of the rule book.

As you note, there is a spell that does the same thing, so paying 10 points to allow the unit to cast that spell on itself each turn seems a good way to do it.

I'll need to play a few games to really get a grasp on how the stats play into each other. Having a basic idea from reading is one thing - experience is another!

I just looked at the base sizings again, and noticed... cavalry are 20x40, monsters are 40, and chariots are 40x80. These are unusual to me, as most of my cavalry are 25x50, monsters are 50, and chariots and some monsters are 50x100. How much will that impact game play? Should I treat basically everything as having the Wide Base rule and reduce points by 10 for those units?

Maybe my final question for now - is there any way to bring truly huge bases into play? I have a Dread Saurian from WHFB and that thing uses a sheet of paper for a base.

It may be something that's just entire outside of the scale of what *should* be handled in this game. Which is extremely reasonable, just curious on your thoughts as the designer.

 Rihgu wrote:
I'll need to play a few games to really get a grasp on how the stats play into each other. Having a basic idea from reading is one thing - experience is another!

I just looked at the base sizings again, and noticed... cavalry are 20x40, monsters are 40, and chariots are 40x80. These are unusual to me, as most of my cavalry are 25x50, monsters are 50, and chariots and some monsters are 50x100. How much will that impact game play? Should I treat basically everything as having the Wide Base rule and reduce points by 10 for those units?

Maybe my final question for now - is there any way to bring truly huge bases into play? I have a Dread Saurian from WHFB and that thing uses a sheet of paper for a base.

It may be something that's just entire outside of the scale of what *should* be handled in this game. Which is extremely reasonable, just curious on your thoughts as the designer.

Those measurements probably came from after-market bases I use. Standard GW measurements will also work.

The idea behind the game is to try to keep things consistent, and also to let people use what they have on hand.

I worte Conqueor when WHFB 6th ed. (which I really liked) was about to be replaced. Having been through that cycle with 40k, I decided to sell of my books immediately (before knowledge of 7th ed. was widespread) and then built a set of rules that I'd never have to worry about going away.

My Christmas vacation is at hand! This is traditionally the time when I get some gaming in and also do some game design work.

I think Conqueror is pretty well developed, and my next project is to develop a set of siege assault rules because who doesn't like attacking a castle?

The idea is to focus purely on the assault itself. Let's face it - a siege that ends in surrender or honors of war is not really fun to play out with miniatures.

As of now, I've got five scenarios under consideration:

Sortie. The defenders launch an attack designed to either break the siege or destroy equipment crucial to the attack on their position.

Over the Walls. The attacker seeks to take the fortification through sheer strength of numbers, using only ladders and missile fire.

Take the Gate. The attackers have sent a battering ram against the main gate, seeking to force and entrance while also attacking the walls with ladders.

Siege Tower. The attackers deploy one or more siege towers in an attempt to take the walls.

Into the Breach. The attackers have secured a significant breach in the walls. It could be through undermining or bombardment, and the defenders must hold his vulnerable point while defending the rest of their position.

The final scenario will require an actual breached section of walls to play. I already own a castle and have started on the breach, so that will be an ongoing modelling project.

As my previous post indicated, I'm going to also use this thread to continue design work on Conqueror. The game actually started as a thread I posted 17 years ago (almost to the day) on Warseer talking about how to "Build a Better Warhammer."

After lots of discussion, draft rules and playtesting, the first edition of rules came out. One deficiency was the lack of army lists, and combined with formatting and spelling mistakes, this convinced me to do the revised edition some years later.

My daughter (who did the cover art) has expressed a desire to improve it (she's in art school now) so that opens the path for a "Revised Second Edition." All of which is to say, if there are things that interest you that you would like to see included, this is a great time to let me know.

I ordered the paperback, should be able to start reading it next week.

Got my book yesterday, hopefully i'll get some time to read it over this week and share my thoughts, already I feel like I could take this and make "Conqueror: Warhammer Fantasy Battles" versions of all the armies/units to see how they compare, its quite interesting.

BanjoJohn wrote:
Got my book yesterday, hopefully i'll get some time to read it over this week and share my thoughts, already I feel like I could take this and make "Conqueror: Warhammer Fantasy Battles" versions of all the armies/units to see how they compare, its quite interesting.

Thank you for the purchase! My intent was to create a 'final' edition of WHFB that was also open to expansion as desired. During the initial design (which started as a discussion thread), people would crunch the points and we had some neat player-generated army lists.

I'd love to see your version of the lists.

I don't know if you're still going to update the book, but I have a few suggestions so far. These are based on editing/formatting stuff. I hope you don't mind these comments, I have written/published a few things myself, mainly RPG stuff, and I'm working on the 3rd ed Battle Bible so I've had to do a lot of formatting for that. So I can't help but provide feedback on formatting because I want to help you make this better.

Page 11, 5th block of text on the right hand column "Once charges have been declared and it has been determined that the chargers are in range, the non-phasing player must state reaction the unit(s) being charged." I think you are missing an "of or something to make this a little more clear. Like "must state the reaction of the unit(s) being charged"

Page 8. The "B. Movement Phase" and other letters, are tabbed over incorrectly.

Tables: Some tables are left-justified, and others are center-justified. Like on Page 6, the sample unit profile is left-justified, I think it would look nicer if they were all center-justified.

Graphics. I don't know if it was just the printer, but the unit/squares you use for examples of how to turn/move look better with gray than with blue/green/red. I think the color is bleeding or just over-powers the black lines for dividing the squares. Also the words in those graphics look a little blurry, and the "S" for the standard doesn't show up well. X's and A's and other letters inside of colored squares do not show up well.

Page 16, the shooting gable looks like it has some double-lines.

Page 38, Artillery Summary, looks like this table has the text top-justified, but having the top/middle/bottom justification being center would make it look better I think.

Page 15 typo , first paragraph, second sentence "Models arelimited to a single shooting attack" there's a missing space after "are"

Sling is marked with a 1, no penalty for long range ,but it has no long range distance. Also of note, no other weapon has that note for no long range penalty.

This is just a semantic note, but pistols are listed as "thrown weapon", you might want to come up with a different term, something like.. "at the ready" or something to represent weapons that can be fired while a unit is charging.

Page 17, thrown weapons, these weapons have no "long range" in the weapon table so I'm not sure why it is noted they have no "long range penalty", the statement implies that the weapon might have a "long range' but they have no penalty for firing that far.

Page 18, Reaction Fire. I think you might clarify the slow firing of these weapons a bit more? Do you mean that if you fire in your own phase you can't fire in your opponent's phase? So for instance, you could say that these weapons can only fire once per game turn, in either player's shooting phase.

Page 20. The example for combat resolution. You started with Knights vs Beastmen, then you mention Ogres in the next paragraph when it should have been Beastmen again. Or... the first paragraph should say Ogres instead of Beastmen.

You also make references to "attacker" and "defender" when I think you meant "Charger" and "charged unit", which you switched to using those words later on, because earlier you used "attacker" and "Defender" in reference to the Melee Skill of a unit instead of units that charge or are being charged.

Page 22. The example of charging into a unit's front, are charging unit A and B both charging into the defender on the same turn? or is charging unit B charging into a combat that already was going on from the previous turn?

Page 23, Units that fail to turn their facing become routed and flee? Assuming they were charged in the flank, and either won combat, or didn't flee after losing combat, it seems a harsh penalty. But... Page 27 says that a unit failing to change their facing does not rout? This needs changed/updated/clarified.

Page 28. Do Routed units who fail move their base movement plus 6? or plus 1d6?

Page 28, commentary. "A disordered unit may be temporarily thrown of balance" I think you meant "off" instead of "of".

Page 29/30. You don't have a summary for Slings like you do for other ranged weapons.

Page 30 equipment table "Shield only, or light armor only or" I think you have an extra "or" there.

Page 33 there is a "\" character that separates two paragraphs, I'm not sure if you intended for it to be there.

Phew! I need to take a break, but i will finish reading this book. So far, rules wise, i think it works well, most of my feedback is just stuff I would have edited if I was involved in publishing.

I think you should make it clearer earlier in the book that there are MORALE checks for being shot and fighting in combat, and COMMAND checks for rallying and other stuff.

Got the book a few months back. I have not gone through it yet, but it is on the short list.

feedback part 2.
I like the "open ranks" reaction to chariots charging.

page 37, typo "like other units, artillery batteries maybe attacked in melee combat" "maybe" should be "may be"

page 38, artillery summary. some entries have D6, some d6, so there's an inconsistency with capitalization.

page 39, magic items. Is the cloak of deception a 6+ armor save? or a ward save?
cloak of mist, is this armor or ward save?

page 42. Spell rituals. I wanted to double check, or think you might need clarification? On the turn that a ritual is cast, does it count as the single spell a wizard can cast? Can a master wizard cast a ritual and then cast a normal spell in the same turn?
Lets say, game turn 1, a wizard chooses to start casting a ritual, game turn 2 the ritual is cast, does a wizard have to wait until game turn 3 to start another ritual to cast on turn 4? or would the wizard be able to start a ritual after game turn 2 to take effect on turn 3? And how does this all work with master wizards? Could a master wizard cast a spell turn 1 and then start a ritual? Then would the ritual get to be cast on turn 2, then the master wizard gets to cast another spell and/or start a new ritual?

page 45. typos "the schools of death and invocation are focused on direct results" I think you meant death and elemental?

page46. flyers. "each flyer makes its full attacks against ground unit, which in turn is permitted to attack with an equal number of models". equal compared to what? This isn't clear.

Does the defending unit make a morale test even if it wins the combat?

It seems like combat against flyers is completely different from normal combat.

page 47. Ferocious rule. Does this give +1 attack for the whole unit? or +1 attack for each model attacking from the unit?

page 48. typo "enemy units also much always check morale first" I think you meant "Must always" not "much".

Thanks for the feedback.

I've decided to do another revision to clear some of this up, and improve the formatting. Also it needs better cover art.

Other items under consideration:

Siege assault rules
Rules for battles in the Underdark/caves
New armies inspired by D&D rather than GW

I may post the army info here for feedback and playtesting if folks are interested.

BanjoJohn wrote:
feedback part 2.
I like the "open ranks" reaction to chariots charging.

Sorry for the delay, I had to dig into some of this. You'd be surprised at how much of the stuff I wrote I don't remember. Glad you appreciate it.

page 37, typo "like other units, artillery batteries maybe attacked in melee combat" "maybe" should be "may be"

page 38, artillery summary. some entries have D6, some d6, so there's an inconsistency with capitalization.

I'm going through the book again, and noting some of the problems. Rule books are devilishly difficult to edit.

page 39, magic items. Is the cloak of deception a 6+ armor save? or a ward save?
cloak of mist, is this armor or ward save?

Both are normal saves. If I meant "ward," I included it.

One of the things that the revision will do is greatly increase the page count. I know, I know, terrible that I will get to charge more for it but I've decided that a lean, bare-bones rule book isn't really what people want.

The first edition was more of a kit than complete set of rules, with no army lists, just the point system. When I revised it, I added sample lists, but they're still basically things you do for yourself. This wasn't a cost-saving measure so much as fatigue on my part. Cranking out those lists was exhausting.

But now that the basics are in place, I think it worthwhile to flesh things out more. So in addition to some new army types, I'm also looking at creating more specialized units within them, which will probably double the lists.

I'm also looking at expanding both spells and magic items. One of my design constraints was that they fit on a single page. I'm thinking of going with a front-and-back list for each one.

page 42. Spell rituals. I wanted to double check, or think you might need clarification? On the turn that a ritual is cast, does it count as the single spell a wizard can cast? Can a master wizard cast a ritual and then cast a normal spell in the same turn?
Lets say, game turn 1, a wizard chooses to start casting a ritual, game turn 2 the ritual is cast, does a wizard have to wait until game turn 3 to start another ritual to cast on turn 4? or would the wizard be able to start a ritual after game turn 2 to take effect on turn 3? And how does this all work with master wizards? Could a master wizard cast a spell turn 1 and then start a ritual? Then would the ritual get to be cast on turn 2, then the master wizard gets to cast another spell and/or start a new ritual?

Rituals take all your effort for the turn in which they are cast, and then go off, so the wizard could then cast regular spells or start another ritual.

The idea is that rituals are non-random - they WILL work. But they take time, and the other player can try to kill you before they take effect.

If you have any ideas for spells or magic items you'd like to see, let me know. Now is the time for suggestions!

page 45. typos "the schools of death and invocation are focused on direct results" I think you meant death and elemental?

Yeah, "Invocation" is a D&D thing. I get confused.

page46. flyers. "each flyer makes its full attacks against ground unit, which in turn is permitted to attack with an equal number of models". equal compared to what? This isn't clear.

Equal to the frontage of the attackers. I should add an illustration.

Does the defending unit make a morale test even if it wins the combat?

Yes. The advantage of charging is that even if you lose the combat, the defender has to test first.

It seems like combat against flyers is completely different from normal combat.

Somewhat. The idea is that birds are not really good at holding ground. So they strike and then fly away.

page 47. Ferocious rule. Does this give +1 attack for the whole unit? or +1 attack for each model attacking from the unit?

Okay, now getting to this. Regarding formatting, my printed copy looks fine, but I'll look at ways to make the examples clearer, beyond the margin of poor QC by the print people.

As for errors in spelling (I found some you missed), I'm going to have to read the thing aloud, which I started doing with later books. Especially when you have a proof copy rather than just a manuscript, stuff really shows up.

BanjoJohn wrote:
I don't know if you're still going to update the book, but I have a few suggestions so far. These are based on editing/formatting stuff. I hope you don't mind these comments, I have written/published a few things myself, mainly RPG stuff, and I'm working on the 3rd ed Battle Bible so I've had to do a lot of formatting for that. So I can't help but provide feedback on formatting because I want to help you make this better.

Page 11, 5th block of text on the right hand column "Once charges have been declared and it has been determined that the chargers are in range, the non-phasing player must state reaction the unit(s) being charged." I think you are missing an "of or something to make this a little more clear. Like "must state the reaction of the unit(s) being charged"

Page 8. The "B. Movement Phase" and other letters, are tabbed over incorrectly.

Tables: Some tables are left-justified, and others are center-justified. Like on Page 6, the sample unit profile is left-justified, I think it would look nicer if they were all center-justified.

Graphics. I don't know if it was just the printer, but the unit/squares you use for examples of how to turn/move look better with gray than with blue/green/red. I think the color is bleeding or just over-powers the black lines for dividing the squares. Also the words in those graphics look a little blurry, and the "S" for the standard doesn't show up well. X's and A's and other letters inside of colored squares do not show up well.

Page 16, the shooting gable looks like it has some double-lines.

Page 38, Artillery Summary, looks like this table has the text top-justified, but having the top/middle/bottom justification being center would make it look better I think.

Page 15 typo , first paragraph, second sentence "Models arelimited to a single shooting attack" there's a missing space after "are"

Sling is marked with a 1, no penalty for long range ,but it has no long range distance. Also of note, no other weapon has that note for no long range penalty.

This is just a semantic note, but pistols are listed as "thrown weapon", you might want to come up with a different term, something like.. "at the ready" or something to represent weapons that can be fired while a unit is charging.

Yes, I've already switched it to "impact weapon."

Page 17, thrown weapons, these weapons have no "long range" in the weapon table so I'm not sure why it is noted they have no "long range penalty", the statement implies that the weapon might have a "long range' but they have no penalty for firing that far.

It's part of the Department of Redundancy Department.

Page 18, Reaction Fire. I think you might clarify the slow firing of these weapons a bit more? Do you mean that if you fire in your own phase you can't fire in your opponent's phase? So for instance, you could say that these weapons can only fire once per game turn, in either player's shooting phase.

Yeah like that.

Page 20. The example for combat resolution. You started with Knights vs Beastmen, then you mention Ogres in the next paragraph when it should have been Beastmen again. Or... the first paragraph should say Ogres instead of Beastmen.

You also make references to "attacker" and "defender" when I think you meant "Charger" and "charged unit", which you switched to using those words later on, because earlier you used "attacker" and "Defender" in reference to the Melee Skill of a unit instead of units that charge or are being charged.

Page 22. The example of charging into a unit's front, are charging unit A and B both charging into the defender on the same turn? or is charging unit B charging into a combat that already was going on from the previous turn?

Page 23, Units that fail to turn their facing become routed and flee? Assuming they were charged in the flank, and either won combat, or didn't flee after losing combat, it seems a harsh penalty. But... Page 27 says that a unit failing to change their facing does not rout? This needs changed/updated/clarified

What happened is that the original concept was dropped and I failed to find all instances of the old version. When writing rules, repetition is annoying but often helpful. Much better than having only one opaque reference. But this does lead to contradiction when there was a change incompletely implemented.

Page 28. Do Routed units who fail move their base movement plus 6? or plus 1d6?

Page 28, commentary. "A disordered unit may be temporarily thrown of balance" I think you meant "off" instead of "of".

Page 29/30. You don't have a summary for Slings like you do for other ranged weapons.

Page 30 equipment table "Shield only, or light armor only or" I think you have an extra "or" there.

Page 33 there is a "\" character that separates two paragraphs, I'm not sure if you intended for it to be there.

Phew! I need to take a break, but i will finish reading this book. So far, rules wise, i think it works well, most of my feedback is just stuff I would have edited if I was involved in publishing.

I think you should make it clearer earlier in the book that there are MORALE checks for being shot and fighting in combat, and COMMAND checks for rallying and other stuff.

Yes, lots of stuff to fix, thank you for looking at it.

For those who don't feel like scrolling through text walls filled with block quotes, here's a more accessible summary of where things are.

I've already been making corrections to the rules based on the feedback I've gotten as well as my own observations. The terminology is being reworked and I'm also clipping out rules that don't seem to do anything, such as the "no run move within 8 inches of an enemy." It's a holdover from Warhammer and I fail to see a point. Troops should be able to drop their tails and sprint to safety without routing, especially when dangerously close to superior foes.

The unit profiles are being completely redone to make them less generic, and narrowing down the options within them, which makes army list creation much faster. I will be adding some weapon options as well.

One of the quirks of my design was that I generally only included rules for stuff I had( which is quite a bit), but it left several factions high and dry. I'm now going to include those because I think the system itself has been proven (particularly the points) so I'm not too worried about creating overpowered nightmare units.

As to a time frame, I'm aiming for January since I can do a lot of work over Christmas break. The big time sink will be reformatting, editing and proofing and folks who want an electronic copy for the purpose can PM me. It may take some time because I need to finish the revisions before sending it out for review. There's no point giving you something I know is broken.

Anyhow, thanks for reading.

I am going to leave another section of feedback when I get to it, but I wanted to say i was double checking the first in-book list you provided, the beastmen, and going through the steps to create my own units to see if the points values match up, and I can't get the points to match for the beastmen warriors, that is, I think the points you have listed in the book are more than the process for creating your own unit would suggest, maybe I'm missing something, and I'll put a more detailed post out if you don't reply about it before then, but I wanted you to be aware of it.

Infantry start at 10 points, MS1, SS0, SV0, W1, AT1, MV4, ML E
Beastmen Warriors are 110 points MS3, SS(3), SV0, W2, AT1, MV4, ML C
MS3 and AT1 would be +20 points (30 points)
W2 adds +40 (70 points)
ML C is two increases, +20 points, (90 points)
SS(3) should cost zero points because they have no ranged/thrown weapons.
So I'm not sure where the 20 extra points comes from that you have?
Hmm... oh looking I see the special rules for Beastmen, Wide Base is -10, and Ferocious is +30, that's how it gets to 110, okay that's good.

It's kind of convoluted, but it seems to accurately translate the combat capability into a number that reflects its value.

As part of the revision, I'm going to add "plug and play" entries with less options and pre-set arms and armor. People can modify them, but it saves time to have a more finished list. Much less math before playing.

While I am working on the revision, I'm going to post updates every week or so. A big part of this is to keep me engaged with the project since it's very easy to get sidetracked, especially when there's reformatting and editing involved.

I am finding lots of little errors that are not worth bringing up, but do add up in terms of total quality. The formulation of "d6" has been standardized as "d6," for example.

I've added rules and points for repeating crossbows and repeating bolt throwers. I've also eliminated the difference between light and heavy crossbows, which was somewhat pointless. Similarly, I've resurrected the term "thrown weapons" for actual "thrown weapons," which now covers not just axes but knives, throwing stars, darts, etc.

A new special rule has been added: "woodcraft," which costs 5 points per unit and allows them to move through wooded terrain without penalty.

Much of my work is centered on updating army lists, and I've focused on the elves, orcs and goblins to start with because that's what we're playing with at the moment. Elves is broken down into the usual high, wood, and dark flavors. Orc and goblins are separate lists, but there is a note that they may be used together and that if this is done, orcs can pay 5 points per unit to ignore the rout of goblin units for morale checks.

All lists are seeing some upgrades in terms of using special rules and flexing the stat lines to a greater degree. High Elves had added Companion Cavalry, who are Chaos Knight level killers. I've always hated that the bad guys in WHFB got all the buffed stuff. I also gave them a unit inspired by The Fall of Gondolin, Broken Anvil Brotherhood, super-heavy infantry with war hammers (AP1) and a 3+ save due to artisan-level armor. They have the Dauntless special rule, that ignores morale penalties for being outnumbered.

I mention this because GW's fixation with special rules was something I desperately wanted to fix. The High Elves infamously have a special rule for every unit on the list. This is because the core game mechanics failed to give them a combat advantage commensurate with their points cost. The elf vs goblin contest was the primary test case for Conqueror. Put simply, GW priced elves at 7 points and goblins at 2.5, but in actual combat, it took three elf models to kill one goblin vs only four goblins to kill one elf. (This is models with just hand weapons and no equipment.)

The reason was that GW's combat engine is hugely inefficient. They have a 1-10 scale for skill, but the dice variation need to hit only goes from 3 to 5. It's a total waste of design space. When grinding out the range of combat outcomes, everything fell in this narrow band, with huge changes in stats only moving the percentages by a few points.

In Conqueror, I use a six-point scale for combat stats (both shooting and melee) and the matrix looks like the GW strength vs toughness table, so in case of elf vs goblin, the Melee Skill 4 elf will hit a MS 2 goblin 2/3 of the time, on a 3+, while the goblin needs a 5+. That's a much better ratio.

Moreover, Conqueror does not have toughness or strength as a stat, just an armor save with very limited modifiers. Thus elves turn goblins into paste, as they should. Goblins get numbers to make up for this, and have the Horde special rule which increases their (crappy) morale based on unit size.

Anyway, my earlier army list had no special rules for high elves, but now I've added a couple to create some flavor. The other elf factions are likewise getting them, and individual units are getting a buff here and there.

Once I have all of those factions done, I'll move through the lists in alphabetical order. The most time-consuming aspect of this is the new format for the entries, which as noted above, are now more focused and have the points cost breakdowns right in the entry. This may seem obvious, but I made a concerted effort to get the points as accurate as possible in terms of reflecting performance. One way I did this is by having point values change in proportion to unit strength for the big infantry units.

For cavalry, monsters, and missile units, the point cost is static. They all cost the same from the first to the last. But for big units, there's a discount after the first 20 models, because the rest are just loss-absorbers and a rank bonus. They will not directly engage. So I put that split right in the listing.

Big units are important because the "outranking" morale bonus is only +1 and goes to the side with more ranks. Size also plays into whether a unit becomes shaken, which is based on its morale. It's basically the breaking point where a unit suffers -1 morale because of its cumulative losses. More guys = more endurance before being shaken.

I do go on. That's enough for now.