2021-05-22

Book of War Test Units for May

We're continuing with our Book of War Playtests on the Wandering DMs channel Saturday nights. And we're getting some great feedback from our viewers and patrons. Here's the current list of units in play after a few recent refinements. Recent changes include the following:


  • We're not showing the big flying units at this time (eagle riders, griffon riders, wyvern riders). We've found in recent playtests that the aerial movement is hard to adjudicate over other units and terrain, the very high costs are stretching the system to the limit, and there's a question about whether it makes sense at all for the presumed flyers fighting in formation. They may return later as a special option or maybe solo figure types.
  • The Goblin Wolf Riders had their movement bumped up from 12" to 18". There's an interesting range of variations for wolves in classic D&D, actually: e.g., Chainmail says they're as Medium Horse (18"), unless mounted by Goblins, at which point they're as Heavy (12"). Note that other mounted types don't show a difference in their D&D natural movement and when mounted as cavalry. I've been convinced by patron seeker that it's a bit more interesting to have them at the higher base D&D move rate of 18" (as seen in B/X, AD&D MM, etc.), so we'll be testing them at that rate. 
  • I granted an extra morale bonus to the Men Elite Foot, largely because they stuck out awkwardly on the list with no special abilities at all, and it echoes the classic Chainmail/D&D trope of knights having extraordinary morale. 
  • And I got the formerly hidden column listing presumed figure Width in view (by abbreviating some of the column headers), for what that's worth. Note there's some advantage to a small unit figure, because you can pack in more melee attacks against an enemy in the same space, and reduce incoming melee attacks the same way (by a little bit). E.g.: It goes towards justifying why light-foot Goblins and Orcs are at the same price, even though Goblins are slower but otherwise have the same statistics. This entry is in units of a quarter-inch.

Note also if you're a Wandering DMs Patron, we're currently running a Patron's Pick option where we'll randomly pick armies from those proposed on our Discord server for the next live show. Choose wisely!

And: Any other ideas for things that should be further refined?

Book of War Units v.210521

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