While I’ve been mucking around with miniatures since I was very small, I fondly remember my first proper set of wargames rules:

I was a bit young, only 11, but this game looked pretty good (we’d seen the adverts in White Dwarf), and I think I received it for Christmas. There wasn’t a wargames club anywhere in the town where I lived, so I got together a small group of like-minded friends and we did the best we could on my parents’ table tennis table (which, at least, was green). Having played D & D, we saw all the figures as individuals rather than units, and anyway, the initial tagline of this game was ‘the mass combat fantasy roleplaying game’, so it was all a bit confusing. And brilliant fun.

Fast forward forty-ish years, and I’m sat at a gaming table with one of the original authors of Warhammer, about to demonstrate my own ‘mass battle’ game to him. I’m not sure that twelve-year old me would have believed it, but there you go.

I got to know Rick during the heyday of Warhammer Ancient Battles, the historical game produced through Games Workshop in the early noughties.

I was fortunate enough to write two supplements for WAB (El Cid and Age of Arthur, the latter with Steve Jones) which Rick maintained an involvement in before the project’s end.

Having run into Rick behind Mount Erebor at a recent show, he kindly expressed an interest in Midgard Heroic Battles, so I agreed to pop over to demonstrate the game at some point in the future. Arthurian Britain was picked as the theme, we agreed a date, and it was game on. Having survived a savaging (well, licking) from his ferocious cockapoo as I entered his house, we carried the boxes through and set up on a portion of the mighty wargames table.

I brought a couple of Forces over, the same ones that have been appearing in our official videos with Richard Clarke – Artos and the Britons and Aelle’s Saxon Raiders. These were slightly different versions of the 300-400 point sample lists that appear in the rulebook.

The scenario was to be The Red Ford – a new one currently undergoing play testing that is likely to appear in a future Midgard supplement. Rick had set out some of his terrain tiles in a 6 x 4′, to which I added my ‘drop on’ river terrain piece. The lush green banks of mine didn’t quite fit the traditional green flock of Rick’s boards, but so what?

We both had soothsayers in our ranks with the Omens Trait and elected to spend a Mighty Deed each to gut a goat (or similar oppressed small animal) and read its entrails to foretell the future. We each rolled a 5, with our prophets each reporting that it was a good day to fight, my lord, and that surely we would win the victory! (Someone must have been fibbing, but we both added two Reputation tokens to our goblets). We were therefore much amused to find this porter on in the pub at lunchtime!

Anyway, back to the plot. Artos (Rick), determined to hold up the horde of West Saxons (me) about to pour into Dumnonia, sent Gwalchmai (AKA Gawain) down to the ford. He issued a challenge to single combat which Wiglaf (and his hound) was glad to take up, as turning it down would have meant a loss of Reputation.

With both Heroes succeeding at keeping their footing in the water, the combat went back and forth as Wiglaf first wounded Gwalchmai, then was wounded back in return. In the third and final round, however, my dice came up trumps and Gwalchmai ended up in the ford, ruining his day, his trousers and his fancy shield. The Saxon Force gave a great roar of victory and surged forwards towards the crossing.

Unfortunately for Aelle, while the front of the Saxon line surged forwards, the back ranks were clearly feeling a bit reluctant and refused to obey orders despite repeated yelling and bawling from the Heroes!

A round of dreadful Command Tests – and failed rerolls using the Heroes’ Mighty Deeds – left Aelle’s front line unsupported. The Britons, in contrast, had managed an orderly advance!

Seeing Hussa and his Saxons taking the left side of the ford, Rick did what any good Arthurian hero would have done and sent Artos’s warleader Bedwyr and his heavy cavalry smashing into the Saxon lines, hoping to break them before Aelle and the rest of the Saxons got their house in order. Reputation was duly gained (+1 for a Hero leading a charge and +1 for the first charge of the game – hurrah!), helping to make up for the loss of Gwalchmai in the single combat at the start.

I’d like to say that the battle for the ford was hard-fought, but Hussa and his Saxons turned in a desultory performance, inflicting no Stamina damage on the Britons while losing half of their own. Some superb ‘support saves’ from Rick meant that the cavalry Unit shrugged off a number of blows from the Saxons.

Worse, Saxon thegn Hussa was hit by a javelin in the melee and took a wound (this was me rolling 1 on my raven dice and sadly not for the last time in this game!)

With the combat won, Bedyr’s mounted comitatus pushed the Saxons out of the river. Using the momentum of their win in combat, the supporting Unit (with the red banner) swung round to cover off Aelle’s Saxon hearthguard who would otherwise have threatened the flank of Bedwyr’s men.

Reeling from the defeat on their left, it was time for Aelle to commit everything to battle. Along the length of the river, he issued the order to charge, and an enormous melee broke out in the knee-deep water. Many Reputation tokens were earned for this glorious deed, giving the Saxons a slight edge at this point in the battle.

On the Saxons’ left, Bedwyr’s gamble of an early charge was paying off. As the fighting continued, he broke Hussa’s Unit and forced the Saxon leader to choose discretion over valour as his men fell around him; Hussa chose to retire to the rear, but at the loss of a Reputation token as Bedwyr’s riders jeered him!

Bedwyr’s supporting Unit was now fully engaged with Aelle’s Saxon hearthguard who – with indifferent dice rolling – had to settle for pushing the British cavalry up the bank and on to Artos’ side of the river. This had almost immediate consequences as Rick had held back a third Unit of mounted companions as a rearguard. Seeing the potential crisis, they hurled their javelins and plunged in to join the melee.

Now it was action all along the ford, with Artos himself riding in and joining in the melee. Despite being in the thick of it, with both sides taking damage, Artos couldn’t roll a raven to save his life, passing all his Risk to Heroes tests. What a Hero!

In sharp contrast, Osric, another of the Saxon champions fighting in the ford, promptly rolled a 1 and found himself with a sword in his head. Ouch.

On the Saxon right, Artos’s foster brother Kai found himself face to face with his opposite number, Eanfrith. It would have been rude not to issue a challenge and Kai duly did so, dispatching the Saxon in two rounds.

I rolled on the Hero Death in Combat table, hoping for at least a glorious death, but found that Eanfrith had ended up as no more than ‘food for ravens’. Which is why he doesn’t get a mention in the Arthurian legends, I guess. 🙂

The fighting on the Saxon left continued, with the wounded Hussa and Wiglaf trying to shore up their flank. A change in fortunes finally saw the lead two British cavalry Units broken, but Bedwyr survived (albeit at the cost of a Reputation token) and Artos’s rearguard had held the line.

Unfortunately for him, Aelle paid the price for pushing so deep into the British lines. Having little support, he was wounded and then killed by Artos’s cavalry, leading to a catastrophic loss of Reputation (four tokens out of the goblet). The battery on my iphone took a sudden nose dive at this point as well, so I’m afraid our chronicler was forced to use stock pictures to illustrate the rest of the report.

Although the Britons had been damaged by the loss of two of the noble cavalry Units (three Reputation points apiece), the gains resulting from Kai and Artos’s heroics managed to shore up the Reputation of the Britons. The Saxons were now almost leaderless; although they were inflicting casualties upon the British Units, several of which were on the verge of breaking, the momentum was with Artos and his warriors.

The final turn saw the critical damage done, with the Saxons losing the wounded Hussa and another Unit, emptying their goblet of Reputation. With no Heroes left in position to lead a charge, the Saxons were broken and fled, leaving the Red Ford filled with their dead. Artos and his Heroes had defended Dumnonia once again, the great warleader having an apparently charmed life in the midst of battle. The bards would sing of this for a long time.

It had been a thoroughly enjoyable game, with Rick being ever the genial host and gaining the favour of the Gods in his dice rolling as a result! (Apparently this is not a normal occurrence – the dice rolling, not the geniality). It was a massive privilege to be able to demonstrate my game to someone who has been a major influence on the wargames scene and my gaming in particular.

I was especially pleased that Rick enjoyed the game and commented favourably on the rules, in particular the ‘support saves’ mechanism. We had a chuckle about nothing really being original in wargames rules, but I hope that Midgard Heroic Battles manages to assemble them to create something new. Unsurprisingly for someone who read The Iliad in his youth, Rick picked up the heroic ethos very quickly and got stuck straight into the game with a winning combination of single combats, heroic charges and sound tactics.

My thanks again to Rick for his hospitality and hosting the game. Anyone seen that soothsayer though? The Saxons would like a word!