Recovering from an operation, I have been limited, part down to what my arm could do, partly down to poster operative fatigue interfering with my concentration. So all my possible ongoing projects seemed too concentration intensive, and too much set up and break down. So I decided to compare three sets of wargames that can be used for historical, but have a strong fantasy element and compare how they performed. I needed several sessions to do this, over three weeks, because of brain fog. I don’t think any of my posts has the version save count of this post.
The three games are
Those three were chosen because they are scale agnostic games, using units all on a fixed base width, so I can use the counters supplied with Mythic Commander for all three, and they have mechanisms covering command ability.
TL:DR – I like all three. Mythic Commander I would keep for a travel or quick set up game. Fantastic Battles or Midgard Heroic Battles are both excellent choices for a game, with decent command friction and are streamlined, quick but decent feeling rulesets. I will keep playing both, but I prefer Midgard.
TL:DR the TLDR?
They’re good games, Brent!
The set-up
The units and situation is artificial, and the unit choices constrained by the army building rules of Mythic Commander, the first set I built for, as I was using their counters and paper battle mat to fight on. The counters supplied with the game do not give enough matching units (in colour and layout, there are enough of the types, but they are given with multiple troop layouts and colours) to be easily distinguished by my aged eyes, so I printed off enough matching counters. The playmat is gridded, but that is only relevant to Mythic Commander.
Both forces have the same equivalent units for their army type, leaders where appropriate, perhaps some special items to make the points cost eqivalent. The leader of one force will be a Mage. The rest of the army will be three units of missile troops, three of normal warriors, the remaining three are house guard types.
The experiment is more about how the armies handle and how the results seem given the circumstances the armies find themselves in.
Unless amended to suit peculiarities of the rules I am looking at, the armies are divided into three divisions
Army of Cadwyr the Necromancer
Advance Guard
- Rhodri, Bane of Legend
- Three units of Archers
Cadwyr’s guard
- Cadwyr, Necromancer and commander
- Three Units of Heavy Household Guard
Rearguard
- Banhyr the long dead
- Three units of Warriors
Army of Earl Raedwald, Earl of Markia
Left Wing
- Thegn Alfred
- Two units of warriors
- One unit of archers
Centre
- Earl Raedwald
- Two units of Huscarls
- One Unit of Archers
Right Wing
- Ceolwulf the Sharp
- Ceolwulf’s Huscarls
- Unit of Warriors
- Unit of Archers
The Battle set-up
The Cymric Necromancer Caedwyr is moving to try and get his revenge on the Saxon Invader, and has raised an army, literally, to seize the Saxon Eorldom of Markia.
His army is in marching order when it enters the field, but Eorl Raedwald has had warning, and his forces are arrayed in the way. Cadwyr needs to exit the map with at lreast three units, after all, he can always raise more troops with his Necromantic skills.
Mythic Commander
The basics
These rules are geared to fantasy. Army building has a bit of a Small World feel, as you choose units from a list with a characteristic that gives it a special rule, and can be modified with updates, either updates from a list for its culture (eg ‘Advanced’ or ‘Barbarian’) updates, or general updates available to all.
There isn’t command friction in traditional terms, you can activate all the units in a round, but you have a hand of cards, that refreshes to your limit each round, that can be used to execute special orders or carry out a reaction move, or spent to boost your chance of winning initiative for a round. Movement is by grid square, with a turn of 90 degrees being a move.
Initial disposition of forces, and the command cards, turn counter and spell cards There is also the FORTUNE OF WAR card
Unit durability is its “Strength” attribute, which, for non-hero units, is also the number of attacks it has in melee or for missile fire. As Mythic Commander has alternating activation, having the initiative can be key as, unless your opponents plays an Interrupt card, the target of a charge or missile fire will suffer wounds before it can attack back. You score hits by rolling a number of d6 equal to the Strength dice, if a die is equal or greater to the melee or missile skill equals a hit, armour saves work similarly, roll a die for each hit equal or over the Defence skill, is negated.
The last thing for now is that there are decks of magic cards for different colleges of magic, as a Necromancer, Cadwyr, naturally has access to Death Magic. Summoning new troops can put the army in breach of the army building rules, but that’s the building rules, I could not see anything in the rules to prevent that happening, apart from the limit that reach spell card can only be played once.
Battle is joined
Saxons spend more cards, but do not win initiative
Despite the Saxons using cards to boost their initiative roll, the Undead win, and start to move into a fighting line as the Saxons advance to a better position to hold the road and start shooting the undead. The Undead’s line was not the best they could have been, as Mythic Commander does not allow units to interpenetrate.
Missile fire can be deadly, so a good incentive to close, and cards that allow multiple units to charge can be very handy. Counter charge got to be the most sought after card, as that makes charge combats simultaneous.
Cadwyr’s most useful spell was “Despair”, which causes any adjacent enemies to check morale at the bookkeeping end of the round. When played, this caused the centre line to retreat. This was a risk, as Cadwyr was attached to a unit, so using the spell as the activation meant that the unit could not attack. The retreating Saxons were saved by Ceolwulf, however, rushing in and rallying the centre, including Raedwald, and managing to hold off attacks until the line could be restored.
The lines as a whole pivoted about their centres, about 80 degrees, which seems reasonable enough, each having success on their right flank and pushing ahead. The undead captain Banhyr was sent back to the grave as axes smashed the bones of his guard annd him, elsewhere, though the Saxons were suffering many casualties, the undead were suffering worse, and the end was called there, as three units would not be able to exit the map.
Thoughts
This is a fast rule set, the somewhat restrained “buckets of dice” works well, the dice rolled to hit can be picked up by your opponent and used for save rolls, adjustments are few and plain. The card system, improved from “Airfix Battles” keep it fresh, giving options, and there is the Fortune of War card, which gives the holder a reroll. This flips from player to player as it is used, so it can, tactically, be worth holding onto it if you want to deny your opponent a reroll when you are hitting them hard.
It is abstract but, whilst it can be used with figures, being a complete set that can be packed away relatively flat is a good strength to have, though it is a pity Modiphius have not sold extra maps or square marked terrain pieces for a bit of variety.
Fantastic Battles
The basics
These rules are sold as a fantasy rule set, but there are historic army lists to show that, stripped of the fantastic, they work for battles from Antiquity to the Renaissance. The rules are simpler than they might appear from the layout and, once you have established the answer to a situation, you usually don’t have to check that again.
Units can act as individual companies, or as grouped together with identical, more resilient units, at the cost of flexibility of action. Heroes act as commanders, units not within a command radius of a unit will act according to a random table, unless constrained by a trait. All companies have a standard base width, which is the basis for all measurements in the game.
A turn is SHOOTING, ACTIONS, MELEE.
- Shooting is conducted alternately, first Attacker then Defender and back and forth
- The Action Phase works by pulling a token from a bag and activating a commander of the side whose token is pulled, though the first token drawn for a side always activates their units currently out of command distance. This is where movement, rallying units, casting spells or even heroes challenging others can take place.
- There is no separate “charge” move, coming into contact triggers melee (though unactivated units can react to a charge), and melee combat is resolved but any effects of any losses do not take place until the end of the turn.
- Units get a number of dice to roll when attacking, if they equal or exceed the defence, a hit is scored, reducing the “Resolve” of the unit. Reduce to zero, and the unit is scattered.
Bolt Action dice getting a workout for Activation Tokens
Battle is joined
Cadwyr’s undead enter in three lines, archers to the fore, household guard in the centre, warriors to the rear. The guard are a single group of three companies led by Cadwyr, the other lines have their own leaders, the units being single companies. The guard have long spears and big shields giving them more effective attacks and defence from the front.
The Saxons are in three groups, archers to the front, awaiting to see what the undead do. The Saxon Huscarls have big axes, reducing the effects of any defence.
The first thing to do is roll for pre-battle mishaps, in this case the Saxons had one unit get a bit excitable and head a little in advance of the line. The undead suffer more, surprisingly, with two units of warriors arriving early, one halfway across the field of battle, and one group of archers, containing their leader, to the rear.
The stranded undead warrior unit, out in far in advance of its line, as undead, will just sit there until it comes intro command radius again, and has to endure Saxon missile attack. It does so reasonably well, Undead are hard to damage, but they are also slow, so it is gone by the time the rest of the army gets into formation and advances. The Undead, being infantry, took a good few Actions to shake themselves out, and with enough missile fire, even the tough undead took some hits over time.
Eventually the lines clashed, and the long spears and shields of the Undead Household Guard prove effective, but the shields might as well be paper against the heavy axes of the Saxon Huscarls. The warriors, both living and walking dead, are more evenly matched, though still the living, being more active, have the edge over the undead.
However the earlier archery proves to have been decisive. The losses inflicted on the undead left some units fragile, and they were soon outnumbered allowing the faster humans to get around the flanks and rear, and gang up on the walking corpses. Again, Cadwyr does not exit with his three units, he has lost lieutenants as their units crumble, and he loses.
Thoughts
This is my first experience with these rules, and I am sure I got stuff wrong, and I did not use the full range of unit types, nor yet the Campaign rules, but I was trying the basics, moving and fighting units, and command friction, if any.
They worked. Movement is simplified, in a good way, so less maneuvering and corkscrewing of some systems and more “is where you end up no further than your movement allowance?” Though it does get slightly trickier for units comprised of groups of companies if they want to wheel in formation, group formations still have relatively simple and sensible movement rules.
I was surprised that units who have used missile fire can still act in the Action Phase, they don’t seem to be under the same Activation and command restrictions that take effect in the Action Phase, which is unlike how a few rule sets do it, and glad to see that similar units can have such a different feel to them.
First time with these rules, unlikely to be my last as I want to try them with a bigger battle, either in Middle-Earth or some mystical battles with Normans versus Saxons, get some monsters and actual cavalry involved.
Midgard Heroic Battles
The basics
Midgard is aimed at battles where hands on leadership and inspirational acts of heroism hold the army together, though leaders are not themselves superheroes, they do not themselves cut through units. The turn is basically
- ATTACKERS MOVE AND ATTTACK
- DEFENDERS MOVE AND ATTACK
- ANY MISSILE FIRE REMAINING HAPPENS
Armies need to be grouped in three divisions, each with its leader, so I amended the divisions of the Undead slightly, as only the army commander can command units not in their division. I swapped a unit of Warriors with a Unit of archers between the Left and Centre Divisions.
Distances in Midgard are all based on the “Spear throw”, which is the same as the width of a unit base. All the units in this test are infantry so, undamaged, they can move one Spear Throw. A second move, or a first move when they hsave taken casualties, need Command Tests. Some units are more disciplined, and heroes can expend “Heroic Deeds” to try and overcome reluctance. Turning a unit is not complex, like Fantastic Battles you can turn as you move as long as no part moves further tha the movement allowance, but a 90 degree turn is your unit’s move.
Armies have Reputation to measure morale and cohesion, losing heroes, losing units, or refusing combat loses Reutation, leading from the front and heroes winning single combat earn Reputation. If Reputation hits zero, the Army is gone.
Combat involves a number of dice, usually 12 for close order units, each 5 or 6 is a hit. Defence is a threshold, for each number of hits equal to armour, a point of damage is done, and the only “save” roll you get is uf you have nearby supporting allies. Losers retreat, but not the undead, who instead take more damage, naking them more fragile.
Battle is joined
Earl Raedwald seeks advice from the army’s priests, and they pray for guidance, and tell Raedwald that surely the Omens are good, the army is cheered (gaining 2 Reputation).
The centre line is disrupted trying to move into pisition
The undead take time to shake themselves into a fighting line. Some ambiguity in the Necromancer’s commands must have led to the failed command tests, but eventually the line is set, with Cadwyr and his guard more to his army’s right, the intended Left Wing providing support and some missile cover.
The Saxons put their archers forwards and advance. At long range, archery is not very effective, especially against armoured opponents, and as the lines close, the archers retire. Missile fire is still worthwhile, and if they cause hits, even if they do not cause casualties, they trigger Command tests which can cause the target to retreat.
The Saxon hero’s blows strike true, the undead, for all their years of experience, go wide
The Undead hit first, Rhodhri and his unit of Warriors charges to the attack, gaining Reputation, he is called out in Single Combat, and is butchered by Thegn Alfred. The Undead lose Reputation and the Saxons gain some.
In the ensuing combats though, the heavy Undead Right push back the Saxons. where the Saxons do the same in their Centre and Right. Saxon warriors and Archers on thre right fall, as well as Alfred, but in the rest of the battle Undead have been destroyed, and they are losing. The initial Omens and Single combat bonus to Reputation are keeping the Saxons in the fight.
It looks like the Undead have made their breakthrough and will win, getting their three units off the field but at the last minute, Raedwald and his Huscarls manage to destroy Cadwyr’s Guard and Cadwyr himself. The army loses its last Reputation but, without its Necromancer, the Undead are lost.
Thoughts
I have been playing Midgard for a couple years, and really enjoy them, so I am definitely biased towards them, they are quick, fun and rewarding. It is the first time though that the inability of units from other divisions to be commanded by anyone other than their own commander and the Army Commander has been such a problem, give the Undead’s initial disposition.
As Archery hits do not combine, there is little chance of them causing casualties, but hits to a unit can be disruptive, as they cause Command Tests to be taken and, if failed, the unit retreats, and a chance to injure any heroes attached to the unit, which I think is a nice way to solve the usual balance arguments over archery in wargaming.
I think the morale system in Midgard is an amazing strength of these rules, leaders get a chance to counter loss of motivation and morale, as even leaders noted for keeping apart from the action to keep an eye on the battle could get stuck into the action if things became desperate.
Comparisons
Army design and flavour
All three let you design armies that feel and handle differently from each other, even with the limited troop type. Of the three, Mythic Commander, felt like it had the least differentiation between line troops of the armies, but the Death magicmagic rules made up for that.
The flavour Midgard Heroic Battles and Fantastic Battles give Undead give undead seems fair but harsh, as they disintegrate faster rather than retreat. If I was facing an Undead Army in Fantastic Battles, I’d be aiming to destroy the leaders and the rank and file skellies just hand around doing nothing.
Commanding and manoeuvring troops
I think which form of command you prefer might depend how the battle is developing. The Fantastic Battles command system lets any leader command any troops within range, but if a leader is killed, then thet will do random things or, in the case of undead, will just stand there. Midgard Heroic Battles lets units move out of command, but not having that ability to let new leaders take over might make generals sad. The Mythic Commander initiative bid and card system is definitely more game than simulation, but introduces card play fun and surprises to the mix with Special Orders and Interrupts.
How you feel about the activation system will depend on you. Midgard Heroic Battles makes a decent compromise between IGOUGO and simultaneous combat, the others have alternate activation which can get a bit unrealistic as you have a build up of reactions to units moving to each other when in reality the moves would be simultaneous and reactions delayed.
Two being alternate activation and Midgard not being pure IGOUGO and allowing reactions because of traits or commans options keep all of these from being exercises in frustration from the point of view of the non-active player, and the level of control seems fair.
Combat
All three use “handful of dice” for resolving combat, which is a style I prefer to just one or two dice and consulting pages of modifiers, instead you just add or remove dice as required by circumstance, and both sides get to engage in a melee phase, though charges might get you advantages, so there is still that dance of maneuver as units want to be the one to make the charge.
For Mythic Commander and Midgard (if you have support), you can pick up the same dice that score hits to roll saves, which is a usual feature of “handful of dice” games that I appreciate for its simplicity.
Mythic Commander is the only one of the three whose durability is so obviously reflected in its force when attacking, though losses in Midgard Heroic battles can affect the ability to get the unit in a position to attack. Although this is a fairly common system, being used to other rules where the unit has a constant attack ability, presumably as rear troops filter to the front as they receive losses, until they either lose so many that it is reduced, or the unit ceases to be effective. It works for the game, but it does keep it more of a game than the other two. Even figure removal systems don’t tend to lose attack dice until the front two or three ranks are depleted.
Of the three, Midgard I find handles missile fire best. For most of the time where it can have an effect, that effect is disruptive rather than lethal, at least for well armoured units.
Conclusions
Trying to do a proper comparison of these was hampered by my muzzy brain, for both the length of time taken to play them all, and trying to remember the earlier games when it came time to write things ups.
All three of these games give a believable conclusion based on what happened during the games, and, more importantly, were fun to play with rules that did not need constant checking. Mythic Commander is loosest in terms of Command friction, but it still relates to the leaders on the field Maneuvering takes time,
If I was forced to pick one only to play, I’d ask you not to make me choose, but if firearms were pointed at me, I’d pick Midgard Heroic Battles over the other two. It is more flexible, the mix of characters as heroes and leaders are better on all counts than the other two. It might only be slightly, compared to Fantastic Battles, but it is better, in my opinion.
I like the other two, and will keep playing them. Again, if forced to pick between Mythic Commander and Fantastic Battles, then Mythic Commander falls to the bottom of the list, if only because of the lack of support, no downloadable and printable terrain pieces to fit the squares, no army builder or pre-made lists and that Strength loss means less Attack dice mechanic.
Moving upstairs, they found two rooms and ahead a low wall with a tree beyond. The first room seemed to be quarters, unkept and dusty. (I didn’t check my notes, the players missed out on so much quality flavour that I forgot).
