Play-testing my Medieval Draft

Here’s a battle report of my first play test of the rules from my previous post. Two forces: on the left, an 72 point force, on the right, a 70 point force. I realized very quickly after writing the rules, that I don’t really have the figures to field two forces of 150+ points! The image above shows Force 1 (on the left) winning initiative and moving first.

Force 1

Bowmen

WS 1

30 pts 

(6 figures,light armor, bows)

Infantry

WS 3

24 pts

(6 figures, light armor)

Command

WS 4

18 pts

(1 commander, 2 sergeants, Heavy Armor)

Force 2

Bowmen

WS 1

30 pts

(6 figures, light armor, bows)

Heavy Infantry/Sergeants

WS 5

16 pts

(2 figures, Heavy Armor)

Command

WS 6

24 pts

(1 commander, 2 knights, Heavy Armor)

Bows were devastating in the first activation. The small 2-man unit of heavy infantry in force 2 lost a single man and failed their morale check, leaving the field before the battle really started. It was really the small unit size that had such a huge effect, not the arrows.

Force 1, however, lost most of its troops in the first volley from Force 2’s archers. This was, in fact, due to the arrows!

Both sides advanced slightly, and Force 2 shifted itself to prepare for the next turn.

Force 2 won the initiative, and their archers demolished the bows of Force 1 (seen routing on the left). Meanwhile, the infantry prepare to clash!

After two turns of brutal combat, Force 2’s command unit fights off the two units of Force 1. Force 2 is victorious!

Things I learned: 

1. Bows have the propensity to be devastating against lightly armored targets and small units (as far as morale goes). Which is the way it should be, I think.

2. In this case, it was better to have a smaller force of higher quality units, than a larger force of lower quality. We’ll see if that holds up repeatedly.

Unrelated to this play test, as I was setting up I realized I need to add in missile attack modifiers for shooting targets in cover. I may simply rule that a unit behind cover is treated as one armor class higher, and heavily armored units in cover are immune to missile attacks. That way I don’t have to worry about pluses and minuses. I really want to give this a go with a full field littered with terrain.