Open Combat - thoughts after a couple of games

A quiet hog-farming village, soon to be not so quiet... My heroes to the right, Thomas' scoundrels to the left.

I have finally started playing with the 2^nd edition Open Combat rules, and a lot of fun it is.

I had the first two games quite a few weeks ago, when I met Thomas, Koen and Laffe for a refresher of the mechanics and an introduction by Laffe (a veteran of at least a handful games...) of what’s new in the 2^nd edition.

Ganging up on someone is a good idea.

Then we had a go at each other, and Thomas and I sat down for what became two games.

Retreat! Thomas' warband breaks as they have been on the receiving end of a world of hurt.

I had prepared a 150 point warband by taking one of the sample warbands from the rules and tweaking it a bit. I essentially removed one figure and buffed the other ones while I removed some abilities that I thought I would probably forget anyway.

Koen and Laffe fought it out in a greveyard. A good idea as a lot of after action activities are close at hand...

We switched sides in the second game, and my troops attacked from the left. The result was the same, as Thomas' troops were mangled.

The set-up in our living room. Lots of really old terrain I found in a box.

I had another game at home with my 12 year old daughter. I used my warband from the match with Thomas and Johanna used a warband she had used with the 1^st edition rules.

Johanna's mostly female warband

My mostly bad-ass warband

It is surprisingly easy learning the basics and after a couple of games you’ll probably have found out how to balance your force. There is also quite a lot of tactical considerations to think of, as positioning is important. To surround an enemy (who don’t wield a two-handed weapon) or force him or her into an obstacle is game-winning and takes a while to figure out.

Long range sniping can be effective. The centaur in the background is protected by the tree and harder to hit and damage.

All in all I think this is a solid set of rules and that it will see a lot of action both at the club and in my home.

Quite a lot of maneuvering to get in good positions

Definitely worth it to try if you want quick fantasy skirmish games. As you stat the figures yourself there is at last a chance to use all those minis that have just languished stored away in a box somewhere.

Spears are good as they have a 1" reach and can attack through your own soldier.

Recommended!

The power of surrounding your opponent. You get a bonus to hit and all results of withdrawal is treated as a wound. The female fighter was quickly felled.

(Hey, and I won three games out of three. Can’t be an altogether bad game!)

The gnome fightress is up against a hedge and can't back off, my blue cloaked fighter is surrounded and can't retreat either, the female knight is also surrounded and can't retreat. This was really bloody and ended the game in my favour.

A big welcome to follower Neil Scott with a blog of his own, Scotty’s Wargaming, a nice collection on a wide-ranging number of topics. He’s building a small army of GNW Swedes, so he is by definition a nice guy with good taste (if he wins with them, of course…). Hop over to his blog to have a look.

First games of Open Combat fantasy skirmish rules

I bought the Open Combat rules late last years and they sort of just laid there, un-played and forgotten. Then after the summer I dusted them off, read them through, got my son David to read them too and we finally got a game in.

Thankfully my camera ran out of battery-power half-way into the game…

The set-up. Heroes start on this side and the evil intruders start on the far side

The heroes defending their crypt

Lots of evil elven intruders. They should stay up in the sun and leave us be!

Our heroes. Rudely woken from their sleep.

Here we go. To defend what is rightfully ours

Cowards. Staying in formation and having a plan.

Things are looking good. We're in battle. What could possibly go wrong now?

Oops. That mummy was pushed back by a hailstorm of arrows. 

The battery gave up at this stage, and that was a good thing. 

The game is D6 based and it is a bad thing to roll 1:s in attacks. If you only roll 1:s the turn goes to the opposition. When you take a chance with a lousy one-dice-attack you have a one-in-six chance of loosing your turn. A two-dice-attack lowers the risk to one-in-36. 

It is not a good idea to loose your turn before most of your men has activated.

I rolled double ones two turns in a row... early...

I'm glad the camera didn't capture my crushing defeat.

(Okay, my son David played an excellent game also. But those double ones... they sealed my fate)

A couple of days later we got a four-ways game in at the club. Me, David, log time gaming buddy Thomas and Gunnar (of the Cult of Ra in our Pulp Alley Campaign at the club). Our intention was to test the rules as only David and I had played them at all earlier.

We all had one border edge to enter from and then the mayhem began. The objective was to be last man standing.

The set up. My courageous undead heroes enter from the left board edge. Evil Elves (David) from the near. Equally evil hill giant and his orc and goblin minions (Thomas) from the right edge. Rat men (Gunnar) from the far edge.

The elves and undead face off imediately.

While the hill giant and rat men harass each other.

Just one door-way between elves and undead. Lots of blows with little results. But my Wights use their intimidate ability to weaken the elves.

The elven-undead fracas goes on while some rat men advances towards the battle. The rat men gets attacked by the hill giant that proves to be a formidable opponent. His attacks forces the rat man leader out in the open where he gets pelted by elven arrows. Hehehehe

Just one narrow doorway...

Two orcs enter the fight from behind the elves. Bad news for them.

And most of the rat men joins the fracas. There is also that hill giant coming this way.

The elves gets wiped out (or rather they loose more than half their strength and the remainder flees the battle). Undead versus rat men now. My wights weakens the rat men so much that my soldiers make short work of them.  The remainder flees also.

Just the giant and his gang left to take care of. The giant himself takes the brunt of undead attacks and weakened by wight mind-tricks he succumbs and the final intruders flee.
It is once more quiet in the catacombs. The undead rests and this time there are more of them...

From these first games we felt that there is a bit of balancing issues in the game.

Archers (or rather missile troops) seem very powerful. Maybe because weren’t very strict with when a shot was possible or not. If we were stricter and disallowed shots for example crossing own miniatures bases then that could possibly be avoided.

The ability Intimidate, used by my wights, was extremely powerful. It could be less effective it was used as a missile weapon attack, that is, it could not be used into close combat and stricter rules on what could be targeted.

There is also quite a lot of book-keeping that might take something away from the game and some other issues.

Too soon to say if this is a game that we will play regularly or if Song of Blades and Heroes or Frostgrave will take its place. Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish is also there, at the horizon.

I guess we’ll need a couple of more games and we’re also looking forward to the new expanded rules-book coming soon.

We used the excellent cardstock terrain and gaming mat from the Battle Systems Fantasy Dungeon Terrain kickstarter. Great as we could set it up in a couple of minutes, it easily covers a board and looks good also. It will be possible to buy it directly from Battle Systems in about a months time if you’re interested.

By the way, Battle Systems runs an Urban Apocalypse terrain kickstarter now. It looks very useful for your Mars Attacks/zombie/modern urban combat games. Well worth a look and it closes on October 19.