Sunday 24 June 2012

War & Conquest Rules

War & Conquest Rulebook
I have recently been given a copy of the the new set of rules War & Conquest for ancient and medieval battles.

The rule set written by Rob Broom and published by his company Scarab Miniatures show Rob well known pedigree of various, now sadly defunct, Warhammer Historical and WAB publications.

Once again the rule set is in the the form of a coffee table book, hard bound and with lots of eye candy through out, and anyone with some of the aforementioned WAB books will recognise many of the troops from them (obviously from Robs own collection) plus many others too.

The rules themselves are made up of the usual sections; Intro 'Preparing for War', Movement, Charging, Terrain, Shooting, Combat and Combat Resolution making up the  core of the rules and the first two thirds of the volume. The last third is made up of the exceptions to the core rules; Personalities of War, Strategy Intervention Points, The Armoury, Skirmish Formations, Chariots & Elephants, Battle Begins and a final Section, 'The Rearguard'.

The rules themselves will be familiar in principle to anyone who has played WAB and the terminology throughout the rules is quite similar in flavour.

The rulebook is full of, well...rules. There is not really any padding to the volume and indeed no army lists or scenarios except the taster towards the end, the 'Battle Begins' and Rearguard' sections which cover quite interestingly basic scenario concepts and a random generation system for creating on the spot games, an interesting and useful section in it's self.

The rules are well laid out and with the now expected high production values, the rules keep up with the other newly released rule sets for the periods lately, though I do notice a fair amount of 'space' but this does lend some clarity to the rules if increasing the page count.

All the mechanisms in the rules are illustrated well using miniatures (rather than diagrams) which I like and these work well.

The actual rule mechanisms do not in themselves appear to earth-shatteringly novel or ground breaking; throw to hit/wound/save/kill with modifiers for weapon types, formations and so on, but there one or two little gems thrown in to the mix which again add to the flavour like the 'surge' rule for warbands which amounts to mob rule, 'there's more of us than them, get 'em' and  the Frontal Attack Zone, ala Impetus-esque zone of control and a few other tweeks making this a bit of a tasty gumbo of a rule set.

There has been much in the wargaming press recently regarding Hail Ceaser (HC), Clash of Empires (CoE) and War & Conquest (WaC) and the authors doing a pros and cons comparison for the rule sets. HC seems to be winning the publicity battle to date at least from where I stand, with CoE running a bit behind and WaC tagging along. This may be due only because that was the order that the relative rule sets have been released, but also because of the hype generated by rule supplements and army lists that the other two have generated have helped their profile. WaC does not seem to be going down that route and instead is releasing army lists through the Scarab Forum but more through the rules dedicated yahoo group.

Though I have not yet played these rules in anger yet, I do like how they read and they do seem to be taking on the WAB mantle quite well and any WAB army/army list would translate to WaC very easily with many terms (and indeed rules) being the same between both.

It will be interesting to see how the various rules turn out in terms of popularity and staying power and if there's room for all three (plus the other dis-similar rules) on the block. I would guess that at least one of the three will disappear, but not without a fight, but I'm not saying which one I think it will be...



10 comments:

  1. "Given" a set of rules? Quality, you can never have too many rule books!

    Haven't played WaC yet either, but I did enjoy the battle report in Wargames Illustrated.

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    1. It looks like there will be a fair bit of coverage in the press, hopefully that will be maintained. It was a nice batrep in WI.

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  2. Thanks for the report. I agree that the other two are winning the publicity battle as W&C is completely off the local radar. There's certainly more of a buzz for HC given the success of WL's Black Powder and that Rick's name is a bit more familiar than Rob's. Also, two local gamers have their minis pictured in HC and the Dark Age supplement, so we're pretty much locked in at this point. :)

    Jason

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    1. Nice to get some local talent recognised in HC, I can see why that would focus your attention right enough.

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  3. These rules do seem to be a good buy, I've yet to play them but a few mates who have said they're very good!

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    1. The reports are that they play well, hope to find out soon.

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  4. I really want to support Rob, but single figure removal type games no longer interest me and so it makes no sense for me to purchase this book. I'm glad others are playing it to support Rob as I wish him success.
    As for me it's Impetus and Hail Caesar which has less to do with publicity and more to do with basing and game mechanic preference.

    Christopher

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    1. I think that's where WaC may fall down with the fashion for WAB-esque game types may have passed and Impetus and HC type game systems look to be taking the ascendancy again.

      Impetus certainly has taken off round our circle of gamers with HC beginning to get some attention with the tie in with Warmaster being the focus.

      I do hope WaC does do well but I think that will revolve around the amount of back-up the rules get in terms of army lists etc.

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  5. Shared on Google + as an experiment! I don't really know what Google + is about so I thought I would see what if anything happens

    Back on topic these look a reasonable set of rules. I forsee a game set in Iberia at some point!

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    1. Not sure what google+ is all about either but thanks anyway :-).

      I think your prophicy skills might be on par with that one though.

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