Clan War

by AEG

Review by Russ Lockwood

My experience with Clan War is based on a demo game at a convention. Suffice it to say that without a rules booklet to look at, and the confusion inherent in the hall, I may have missed a few subtleties, and my terminologies may be a bit off. However, from a first look standpoint, I'd say it has real potential.

Clan War is based on the L5R card game--of which I am a big fan. So I was looking forward to Clan War, especially with tie ins to the card game. This sample game consisted of two units a side, so each player had a 10-man unit with one personality leading the unit.

Each player receives 5 Battle Fate cards, which consist of spells, tactical advantages, and so on. Basically, these are the random points in the game that you can control, and you can play one card per unit per turn. You can craft your own decks, so when you draw cards, you can fine tune your army style--a neat idea.

Players roll d10s for initiative, and move in order of the die rolls. Movement is 4 inches--somewhat slow in my book, although the aforementioned Battle Fate cards can increase and decrease movement as well. Oddly, there's no obliquing, only wheeling. units are in two ranks, and for archers, being stationary allows firing for the second rank as well as the first. There's comparisons of numbers for archery, rolling a d10 per archer, with full multiples of 10 eliminating a unit.

You roll for each figure in close combat as well. Without getting into an indepth discussion of design parameters regarding probability, statistics, and die rolls of a unit (one die for the result) vs skirmishers (one die per figure in a unit), suffice it to say you'll be rolling lots of dice. I recall that units lost a figure or two per turn, and that personality figures, naturally being tougher, took multiple hits to kill, and die last. When you lose 25% of the unit on one turn, you take a morale test.

Overall, it took 1.5 hours to come to a conclusion of a game. I found it a bit long, but with having to explain rules, give examples, and so on. Remove those and it was probably closer to 1 hour to completion. No doubt it would go faster with veteran players. Obviously, that's a little on the long side considering there were only two units a side. I have no idea which clans were on the battlefield.

The strong point was the interaction of the battle fate cards with a unit--you could pull off a few surprises (double speed for one). As the cards take the place of a roster, it was easy to look at the card and get all the pertinent information. The ability to customize a battle deck is neat.

The weak point was the speed. Four inches a turn move is rather slow. Yes, I know the games Workshop rules are similar, and with multiple units, I'm sure it would be better with cavalry (8"), and so on. But with wheeling only, quite often you're stuck. By the way, it's half movement in woods.

A neutral point was the dicing aspects. If a unit has to stay together, one die roll should be sufficient for combat results. Rolling a die per figure is more like skirmish warfare, in which case a unit should be able to be more flexible. Yet, rolling 10 dice and viewing the numbers for hits had its moments. Like I said, it's a neutral point--the more you like rolling large numbers of dice, the better you'll like Clan War.

The main box costs $75 and includes rules, metal figures, cards, dice, and so on. Clan Expansion Boxes cost $45 and include figures, specific rules, and cards. Blister Packs with figures cost between $7.95 and $29.95. It's a lot of lead for the bucks, and as you collect and build armies, becomes more exciting--especially if you buy into the mythology of the background.

With a couple of house rules--allowing oblique movement, and perhaps adding 50% to the movement--this could be a devastatingly good game. Now, that's just my opinion, mind you, but I'm a big fan of faster movement to get into contact. Other than that, rules-as-played Clan War has its moments.

See also:

Back to Other Game Review List
Back to Master Game Review List
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1998 by Coalition Web, Inc.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com