For me The Crusades are a fascinating period. It is full of colorful leaders and troops. No where else will you find so many self-made nobles in such a small area of land in such a short length of time. The Crusades were the Wild West of America of the 1800’s to Western Europe (right or wrong.)

I have tried to capture the flavor of Crusader warfare in this campign sourcebook. The most difficult rules to design were for the Horse Archer. In my mind no other rule set had ever done justice to what I had read about them. Most treated them as light cavalry with bows. This just didn’t work for me. I feel that I have captured the essence of the Horse Archer in these rules. Some disagree, so be it I am convinced of this time and again when I watch new people play a battle against them.

Usually The Crusader player thinks the rules are poorly written and doesn’t want to play them after turn one. This is due to the deployment allowed to the Horse Archer. Most players call foul when their opponent can deploy troops on their flanks or rear. This is exactly where the Horse Archer wants to start. The new player also doesn’t know (yet) how to deploy or combat against them. The first few turns are usually filled with The Crusader units getting shot up on their flanks and rear. This represent the swooping in of the small groups of the horsemen that fire and exit. Often times these attacks can trigger threats on Crusader units which cause them to fail their moral and fall back to re-group.

About turn four The Crusaders have advanced a bit and are able to charge their knights into the formed units of the Horse Archer army. Then it is all over. The Moslems can rarely stand in the face of the knights. One or two more turns of this and without any serious loss of personalities the game ends a Crusader victory.

These rules and the experience above I feel represent exactly how it was for the actual Crusaders during The First Crusade. They didn’t know what to make of the enemy and their tactics. However if they got hold of them it was all over. The Moslem tried and true tactic was to separate the foot from the horse, there they could wear the isolated force down with sniping fire until it broke.

OHG and DoBII is not for everybody, I know that. I have included the fixed turn sequence to help players along that can’t grasp the floating turn.

Finally this sourcebook can be used with Warlord with just a little attantion (or lack) detail. On the Domain lists ignore Heroes and most of the extra unit costs. See Warlord for further details.