The Barons’ War

It was AGM night at Farnborough Wargaming, so I decided to try out a new game in the shortened time we had for gaming. A couple of us decided to give Barons” War a try, and were rather surprised to see that two others had had the same idea. Given it hasn’t been played at the club before, this was a surprising result.

Baron’s War is based in England around 1216, in the time of the rebellion against King John. It’s a skirmish game, with units of 2 or more figures. I haven’t seen an upper bound on unit size, but I think more than about 8 is probably getting unwieldy. We went for ~500pt armies, and a simple “kill the other warlord” scenario. I don’t have my whole army painted yet, and some of the figures are from my Age of Chivalry armies. But it was good enough to have a game.

Just to complicate things, I have the 1st Edition of the rules, and my opponent has the 2nd Edition of the rules. I got mine just before 2nd Edition came out earlier this year, so I don’t have an intention to buy a new edition before I’d even played the game. The rules seem similar enough, though there are a few small differences. Most of the differences seem to be in layout, and 1st Edition layout seemed to be a lot better organised. At least, I seemed to find it easier to find the rules in 1st Edition compared to 2nd.

But that wasn’t saying much, since we spent an awful lot of time trying to find the right rule in either edition. But more of that later.

Turn 1

We setup the board with more terrain than we’d normally use for something like Saga or Lion Rampant. A game like Baron’s War feels more suited to a busier battle area. We each deployed at either side of the table. A river and road blocked off one of the long edges, with hedges and fences to channel movement. There were several buildings, some woods, and a hill so we could try the rules on height.

Each of us had a rebel army – but that was fine. A disagreement over something had caused them to fight it out. The first turn was just some simple movement. We take turns to activate a unit, and we both just moved units. We could have used run actions, but didn’t think of that until later in the game.

In Baron’s War, you put down tokens next to the unit after it has activated, to signify that it has acted that turn. Each unit activates once, but Commanders can give orders to activate units a second time.

Turn 2

On turn 2, I moved my unit of mounted sergeants forward, just to the edge of charge range for the enemy baron. They tried to charge, but failed. You can charge up to your move distance, and then an extra 1D6″. So there’s a guaranteed distance, and a distance with a decreasing chance of having a successful charge.

My baron then ordered my sergeants to charge. This caused them to become weary, but they moved forward and combat was joined. Their opponents reacted with a defence action. Since this was also their second action, they became weary as well.

Neither of us could find a definite and clear rule on how this worked. We think it’s possible that you can take multiple actions, but you become weary after the first. You can take a second action by reacting to a melee or shooting attack against you, or by being ordered by a commander.

With four attackers, I rolled 4D10, and needed to roll 5+. Since I was weary, this increased it to 6+. I got three hits, so the defender rolled 3 defence dice at +2 (because they were using a defence action). They passed all three, so there were no casualties. Since they took the defend rather than attack back actions, the combat was now over, and I fell back 1″.

Combat is somewhat complicated.

• Attack dice are rolled, and each success is a potential hit.
• Defence dice are rolled equal to the number of hits, and they can cancel the attack dice.
• Any defence dice that failed, you then re-roll if the defender has a shield, with a chance of blocking the hit with a shield.

Attack rolls of 10 can only be cancelled by a defence roll of 10, so getting 10s in the attack is good. A roll of 1 in a defence roll means you can’t use a shield. After the attack, the defenders only fight back if they choose the “attack back” reaction. If they do, then the above is repeated but the other way around.

My opponents archers moved into range, but not close enough to be able to move and shoot. My crossbowmen shot at them, getting three kills. They shot back, but missed. Since they’d taken casualties, we put a D6 next to them with a value of 3. This was the morale die, which modifies morale checks. In 1st edition, you make a morale check at 25% casualties, in 2nd edition it’s at 50%. They weren’t at the latter yet, so they didn’t need to make a check.

Turn 3

The opponent baron charged with his unit, getting 2 hits. For my defence dice, I rolled double 1s. This meant I didn’t get any shield rolls either, so two of my mounted sergeants died and the other two fell back.

I moved some units around, including moving my crossbowmen so they could cover the enemy spearmen and archers, and also had a clear line of sight down to the river. I had a trap in mind at this point, and hoped I could lure the enemy baron into it.

My archers on the hill shot at the enemy archers, getting 3 kills.

Turn 4

My archers went first, shooting at the enemy spearmen now heading up to their hill. I killed two of them, and then they charged me. They got terrible dice rolls though, and didn’t achieve anything except we both fell back a bit.

Then their baron charged my sergeants. He rolled a 10 on one of his attack dice, which can’t be defended against unless I also roll a 10. Which I did. One sergeant still died though, and the other fell back. This meant the baron was out in the open by the river, with a (mostly) clear line of sight from my crossbowmen.

The crossbowmen took some shots. They got 2 hits at short range. The rules for crossbows say that they ignore the first defence die against mail at short range. Does this mean that one less defence die is rolled, or that the first successful defence die is ignored? We couldn’t find how the rule should be interpreted and went with the latter. They got one success on their defence roll, which was ignored.

However, then they got a shield check – this succeeded so only one of them died.

Then, my Baron charged in. Again, I went against the unit as a whole rather than trying to directly attack his Baron. I had four knights and a Baron, for 5D10 on attack. But my Baron was on a warhorse which gives an extra attack die, so that was 6D10. I got five hits, and killed three of them.

Since there were only two knights plus the baron, the enemy baron was slain.

Now, I had a warhorse, which as far as I can tell means that two hits are needed to kill my baron. His baron only had a normal horse, so one hit was enough.

So victory went to me.

Though we’d both read the rules a couple of times, Barons’ War seems to be one of those systems where there are a lot of unclear parts. The rules aren’t well laid out, so it’s hard to find the bits that are needed. So our game was slower than it should have been, but we got through five turns in a couple of hours. That’s quicker than a game like Saga, though slower than Lion Rampant.

The closest comparison for me would be Brethren, which is a similar scale of game. Barons’ War has more complexity though. That’s not a bad thing. Different weapons have different uses, and you can build up quite unique Barons and Knights with their own abilities to use in games. This adds a level of individualism to armies which you don’t often get.

However, it wasn’t always clear exactly how these abilities all work together. Having played a game, and now knowing where the pain points are, I think another read through the rules would probably be helpful.

This definitely isn’t a game you just pick up. However, it has some interesting concepts and I like the period and concept behind the game. I’m definitely willing to give it some more goes. I do need to paint my knights though. For the more generic figures, my Saga figures I think fit into it quite well. There’s plenty of room for colourful knights with individual heraldry though. I might even buy the second edition, though I do want a version which comes with a PDF to make searching the rules easier.