Battles of Medieval Britain

Acting upon a recommendation from Geoff aka elliesdad, I ordered a copy of Battles of Medieval Britain: A Solitaire Wargame from Amazon.

It a nutshell, I'm glad that I did.

Let's take a look.

Physical Layout

Battles of Medieval Britain (hereafter BMB) comes in book form, specifically an 8.5 by 11 inch, paperback booklet with 44 pages. Not fancy but serviceable.

Contents

Inside, BMB contains two sections:

• Rules - which lay out how to play the game
• Scenarios - 12 battles from medieval British history that you can play using the rules

The Rules

The rules only take up about 10 pages and are quite simple.

Turns follow this sequence:

1. If applicable (depends on the scenario) roll for enemy reinforcements.

2. Choose a unit to activate. Roll 3 (for infantry) or 4 (for cavalry) D6s and refer to the scenario chart to determine what actions that unit can perform

Here is an example of an activation chart. Each roll corresponds to a potential action, and units will have multiple actions they can perform each turn.

3. Perform actions - you can choose the order of the actions. For example, if you rolled a 1, 3, and 6 you could move first, attack, then form a shieldwall.

To attack, roll 2D6. If the roll is greater than or equal to your unit's To Hit value, then you hit the enemy. Hits eliminate the targeted unit, which means combat is fast and bloody.

4. Repeat steps 2-3 for your remaining units.

5. Enemy units attack all your units in range.

Yes, an enemy unit will attack every single one of your units in range. If you have 4 units surrounding an enemy, it will attack 4 times in the turn! Thus, you want to make sure you position your troops to maximize your attacks while minimizing the enemy's attacks, especially since hits kill!

6. Check for victory conditions. The scenarios in this book require you either to eliminate all enemy units or kill the enemy leader, depending on the scenario.

The Scenarios
Most of the book comprises the 12 scenarios - battles from medieval British history ranging from Brunanburh (937 AD) to Shrewsbury (1403 AD).

Each scenario comprises 2 pages.

1. The first page has a very brief introduction, the charts you need for the scenario, a summary of combat modifiers, and the victory conditions.
2. The second page has the game map, like this:

What is neat about this format is that you can lay the book open on your table, set up your units, and play by referencing the adjoining page. This makes the game easy to play.

You may notice a bunch of numbers on the map. This is for random setup of the enemy forces. Each time you play the scenario, this will differ, giving each scenario variability and greater replay value.

The tracker at the bottom allows you to keep tabs on the turn. It also shows when enemy reinforcements arrive.

My Play Tests

I played the first two scenarios in my initial test of the game. In both cases (Brunanburh and Fulford Gate), I ran out of time before I could get to all the enemies. I think there were about 3 enemy units left in both games.

Game time was short, maybe 15 - 20 minutes each.

Evaluation

I suppose you could make a lot of quibbles about the rules:

• Your units' actions are limited by your dice rolls. A unit may be sitting next to a unit but if it rolls 3 move actions, it's not doing anything.
• Enemy units don't move. They just sit there passively. This is ameliorated somewhat by reinforcements, which can swoop in next to your units.
• To Hit odds are determined solely by the attacker without reference to the target (and especially the type of armor the target wears).

Nevertheless, this is a fun and challenging game. It is a bit of a puzzle to determine how to best approach and attack the enemy's dispositions. Furthermore, the optimal solution will vary depending on your dice rolls. And because of the random setup, each replay of a scenario will be different.

In all, I'm glad that I purchased BMB and expect to play it quite often.

I have one other minor complaint about BMB. There are no unit counters or markers; you need to provide your own. If you have miniatures, that's probably not a problem. It would have been nice, however, if the author provided a sheet of counters one could cut out and use.

The Series

The author, Mike Lambo, has published 6 solitaire game books. Alas, the other 5 cover World War 2, a topic in which I have very little interest. I hope he publishes rules for additional periods; I would certainly purchase them.

Addendum: More Counters

As noted above, BMB does not come with counters or markers. For my tests, I used the counters I recently created. However, they were a bit wide for the map. I decided to create some 3/4" by 1/2" counters specifically for this game.

Since I was making counters anyway, I added some more to the list - casualty markers, more ships, towns, and chariots. I placed an order with Litko for the bases. Just waiting for their arrival.