Warrior Kings, Tactical Rules and Campaign System from 3000 B.C. to 1492 A.D. Written by Ed Teixeira, published by Breakthrough Games. 50 pages. Most ancient and medieval wargames rules seem to fall into one of two categories. One category emphasizes the weapons, tactics, armor and morale of the individual units and gives the player some say about what happens inside individual units. Our erudite Editor's own Medieval Warfare rules are an example of this style. The other type emphasizes the unit's battlefield function over equipment and divorces the player from the internal workings of individual units. DBM is the best known example of this type of rules. As I'm known locally to be a fan of the DBM philosophy our infinitely patient editor asked me to review Warrior Kings. WK is certainly in the 'battlefield function' camp, but still it manages to avoid being a mere clone of DBM. It has a number of interesting rules innovations that I haven't seen elsewhere. Some seemed useful to me and I found others to be a bit distracting, but one certainly can't accuse the author of being just another 'me too' rules author. The contents of this 50 page set includes: Battle rules, Solo battle variant, Campaign rules, Army lists. I already mentioned my taste for the battlefield function style of rules. Let's examine the key mechanisms of Warrior Kings. Most decision making on the part of the player is during the initial deployment. The player groups his units into bodies and must decide which bodies will be activated first with the limited activation points at his disposal. Once these multi unit bodies of troops are in motion, they continue on until intervention by the general or interaction with enemy units causes them to stop. Do I like this? Yes, because rules that allow one to move everything exactly where it is needed every turn seem to produce an unrealistic result. The army lists aren't as extensive or detailed as the ones that support DBM or MW, but they are adequate. The most interesting thing about the lists is that they give the player a set of basic troop types that are characteristic of that army, and then there is a dice rolling system to fill out the army. In other words, no designing an army specifically to whack a particular opponent. On the other hand, there are elements of the lists that one might quibble with. Mandatory crossbowmen in a Norman army come to mind. Still, I rolled up Norman and Saxon armies to test the rules out and the system produced two plausible and evenly matched armies. Overall I liked this part of the rules, although a lot of gamers who enjoy designing their army won't care for it. This system may also require the gamer to own more figures for a particular army than he otherwise would choose to buy in order to cover every possibility that the dice rolls might produce. Not a problem for me because it's a great excuse to buy more toys, but people who have not yet lost their minds might balk at the extra expense. Especially if it causes them to buy and paint units that they don't particularly care to own. The battlefield terrain setup frankly didn't appeal to me. There is a process for determining who will attack and who will defend. The defender rolls a D6 and that is the number of 'points' he has to buy terrain. The more difficult the terrain is, the more it costs in points. The defender lays out the terrain where he wants to and the attacker decides whether he wants to fight on that field or not. The attacker is allowed two such refusals and must accept the third field. In a campaign, if the third field is also not acceptable, then the calendar is advanced one season, which is something of a bloodless victory for the defender. The part of all this that doesn't appeal to me is the degree of control over terrain placement given to the defender. In my test case, with a modest die roll of 3 I was able to place all my Saxons in nice mushy ground to the disadvantage of my cavalry heavy opponent. The engine that drives the Warrior Kings rules is the system of reaction tests. Bodies of troops, once set in motion, develop a mind of their own. The good news is that the system does seem to cause troops to behave very much like you would expect their type to act. Shock cavalry has a strong urge to charge for example and massed archers tend to stand and shoot. The bad news is there are a lot of these tests, one for each set of circumstances that a unit might find itself in, and a single battlefield event can trigger a whole chain of reaction tests, all of which must be adjudicated before one can move on. The tests themselves are short and simple, and I suppose an experienced player can bowl through them pretty quickly, but in my test game I found them to be distracting. When dark masses of grim Norman knights trot up to their jumping off line I want the avaricious scarred veteran baron who led them there to stand in his stirrups, point to the Saxon shield wall, snarl something appropriately obscene and aggressive and lead a thundering charge. I don't want the Norman to take a test, which causes the Saxon to take a test, which in turn causes the Norman to take another test, which....well, you get the idea. Having said that, the tests themselves are cleverly contrived to deliver realistic behavior for the various troop types. If you don't mind this sort of thing, you might enjoy the interactions brought about by all that testing. There is a section on solo games included in the rules. I rather liked this part. The author identified the fighting style of each army in the lists, and laid out a sort of autopilot deployment and grand tactical posture for it. Since the battle rules have the troops acting true to type during the fighting, these solo rules really do work better than most. Just the thing when the fearsome Viking you were going grapple with is grounded by his wife. A campaign system is included in the rules. The system is simple and clean, but the gamers play the role of war leaders of their respective states rather than the leader of the country. Decisions that are the meat of most campaign systems, such as who will go to war and where they will attack are governed by die rolls and charts. The system runs not to allow you to exercise your skill as conquering national leader and Machiavellian diplomat, but rather to produce a series of battles, each one influenced by the previous ones. Interesting concept, but insufficient scope to exercise my natural sneakiness. My overall assessment of Warrior Kings is to avoid it if you like that style of rules that allows you to make decisions inside of individual units. If you like the 'battlefield function' style of rules writing, you might just want to check this rule set out. They deliver a decisive result in about 3 hours in a way that will please a certain type of gamer, and the fresh ideas alone make for a stimulating read. Back to Saga #73 Table of Contents Back to Saga List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Terry Gore 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