Midgard Bellorum

My wargaming mojo has been pretty low of late, due to other hobbies and the fact that Autumn has taken ages to arrive, meaning there was still plenty of work to be done outside. However it has now made its presence felt this past week, so my mind has turned more towards wargaming, outside of reading that is. But more on this in another post.

Iain of caveadsum1471 fame mentioned Dux Bellorum in a recent post, a set of rules we played to death not long after they came out. However the problem was they led to rather dull games and went on for ages, especially if playing two Shieldwall armies. As Iain said, Midgard by James Morris possibly sort of fixed the issues but, not having played the game, only skimming the book, I thought it worth a revisit, especially as we have been enjoying watching House of the Dragon, which re-awakened a desire for some Medieval type games.

Rather than try and come to grips with Midgard, especially as I don't have any heroes on individual bases, I thought I'd try a simple mash up of the two rulesets, taking the action dice from Midgard but using the Dux Bellorum rules pretty much as written. Worth a try I thought, so I set up a very simple game, which is pretty easy to do with these rules, on a 2' x 2' table, just to get back into the swing of things and to see how my ideas worked out.

I like to add a bit of narrative to my games, so Deryck the Dangerous Dane has come raiding into Saxon territory, with the aim of getting some pigs for his bacon business, as well as plundering the local church. Standing in his way is Marmeduke the Mad Monk and his loyal band of followers.

An overview of the table, with the Danes at the bottom, the Saxons the top.

An old stone circle of the Old Gods and their shaman attached to one of the units.

Marmeduke is in the church praying, but the One True Cross is ready to help the faithful against the heathen host.

Defending the pigs.

Deryck and chums waste not time in closing with the Saxons and the combat breaks up as the battle ebbs and flows.

The shaman trying his best to motivate the Danes.

The One True Cross is not having the desired effect, as the Saxons are pushed back.

The Danish right wing ready to charge.

A view from the church where Marmeduke is praying for divine intervention.

As the battle rages on, the Saxons take early losses but are still in a good position.

Then suddenly the Saxon centre collapses and the Danes destroy the One True Cross!

The way is open to the church and the plunder contained therein.

The Saxons hold on on their left wing, but have lost too many units to effectively continue the fight.

"Foes to the left of me, foes to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you!"

The Saxon left wing about to make a fighting withdrawal.

Post Game Thoughts

A fun and quick little game that was just the ticket after quite some time away from the games table. I must admit I was rather rusty with the rules, but no surprise given how long ago it was I played the game! So initial thought on how things went as follows:

• Using a few simple additional 'action points' per formation sort of worked OK, as the centres had two to play with, the wings one. I deliberately kept them to only be used for movement or additional dice to roll in the attack and not for 'saving hits'. 
• I think in the next game I might allow one 'action' per Turn to be used to 'save' a hit, to prolong play, but need to have a think about this.
• Of course I could simply use the 6 points as written in the rules, but not use them for 'saves'. Again something to ponder.
• I remember when the rules first came out I was immediately struck by a sort of 'DBA vibe' to them, but without the dreaded 'Barkerese'! So another option could be using DBA action points, but using an average die to even out the points available to each side.
• In my games I like to try and run a mini-campaign, with a strong narrative, but I'm not sure how this would work with these rules. Probably quite easy to come up with something I'm sure. Again something esle to ponder.
• At least I did enjoy getting these figures out and onto the table for a game and fancy exploring the above more over the next dew weeks as and when time allows.
• Midgard, well I need to read up on these rules and maybe use counters or something like this in lieu of actual heroes, until such time as I might want to make some if the rules tick a few boxes. They seem to popular, which might bode well...

Right, that's it for the moment. As always thanks for reading and any comments greatly appreciated!

TTFN.