Sword and Spear Demo

Our club put on a demo at the Barn's craft fair. We did a bit of a display and ran a game of Sword and Spear.

The game was a two vs two thing, which went pretty well. The Saracens lost a load of their horse archers on their right flank, but in a way they did their job coz their heavy cavalry came through, unscathed and ripped the flank apart.

It was an interesting result in that the Crusaders won 29 - 21 in Army Points. But looking at the table you could see the Saracens were probably better placed. So, I added up the build points left on the table and it came to 177 - 120 in the Saracens' favour, pretty much the exact opposite result.

It felt a bit wrong, and I might have a think about working out how to end S&S games in future, coz a few times I have felt the game has ended too early, and this time the result definitely didn't reflect what was happening on the pitch.

Also note the excellent, thematic dice bag, which I got from saddlegoose: http://glenbrookgames.co.uk.websitebuilder.prositehosting.co.uk/saddle-goose

  

 

Camels

Made a unit of Camelry for my Sword and Spear army. The camels are from Gripping Beast. Also got a couple of baggage camels from them, and a couple of unburdened camels from somewhere else.

Sword and Spear Test

I really like Sword and Spear, and have pretty much finished the armies to go with it, but I feel like making a few minor tweaks. You activate units by rolling dice from a pool and hoping to get a high enough score to do the job you want the unit to do. Eg a Discipline 4 unit requires a four to do a simple advance; if you need it to do a more complex manoeuvre then you will need to roll a five, etc. Therefore a good number of rolls will get wasted. You can't do anything with a one and only your best units accompanied by a leader can use a two.

Your total pool-size is based on the number of units in the army, and so, inevitably, unless you roll very well a number of units will often be left inactive for a turn. I don't have a problem with this in principle, at all, but I was finding that quite often bits of the battle were going off, while other areas nothing at all was happening. That probably happened quite often in a real battle, but I was finding the flanky cavalry bits were often deciding the outcome of the battle before the heavy infantry in the middle could get involved.

Another cool thing about the activation system is that if you get pairs or trips or quads, etc, you can play them all together to get bonuses for your actions. Eg, a unit going into a melee might get an extra melee dice if it is activated with one dice, but if it is activated with three 4s instead of one 4, it will get three extra melee dice. Or you could get bonuses to your movement distance or shooting range, instead.

I have decided to add a few more dice to the overall pool, and also increase the size of the pool you draw each phase. This way, istm, there is much more chance that a unit will get activated and there is also more chance that a unit will have the option of using a bonus when it does so.

So, in this game I decided to give two extra dice for every leader on the board. And also, instead of drawing 13 dice per phase I drew 15. I also used my True Cross unit which I house-ruled brings two extra dice to the pool. I also arsed about a bit with the official army lists to reflect my models a bit better.

For what it's worth, the game played very well. I felt that the number of dice going on was about right for me. I'm hoping to play a big multi-payer game of S&S soon, and will be using these sort of numbers of dice, then.

I split my crusaders into red and blue battles, and split my Arabs roughly in half. Each battle had a General and a Captain, bringing 2 extra dice each to the pools.

18 Crusaders: 23,34

Name	Type	Discipline	Strength	Protection	Missile	Melee	Other	Points	Army Value
Knights	Cavalry	3	3	Armoured	-	Impact	Undrilled	40	4
Knights	Cavalry	3	3	Armoured	-	Impact	Undrilled	40	4
Knights	Cavalry	3	3	Armoured	-	Impact	Undrilled	40	4
Knights	Cavalry	3	3	Armoured	-	Impact	Undrilled	40	4
Knights	Cavalry	3	3	Armoured	-	Impact	Undrilled	40	4
Turcopoles	LtHorse	4	2	-	Bow	-	-	18	3
Turcopoles	LtHorse	4	2	-	Bow	-	-	18	3
Turcopoles	LtHorse	4	2	-	Bow	-	-	18	3
Dism Kts	HvyFoot	3	4	Armoured	-	Spears	Undrilled	36	4
Dism Kts	HvyFoot	3	4	Armoured	-	Spears	Undrilled	36	4
Spearmen	HvyFoot	4	4	Shieldwall	-	Spears	Undrilled	24	4
Spearmen	HvyFoot	4	4	Shieldwall	-	Spears	Undrilled	24	4
Crossbow	MedFoot	4	3	-	Xbow	-	-	18	3
Crossbow	MedFoot	4	3	-	Xbow	-	-	18	3
Archers	MedFoot	4	3	Lacking	Bow	-	-	15	3
Pilgrims	MedFoot	5	3	Lacking	-	-	Large	12	5
True Cross	MedFoot	5	3	Lacking	-	-	Large	12	5
Camp	Camp	4	3	-	-	-	-	0	3
18								449	68

  

  

20 Arabs: 23,35

Name	Type	Discipline	Strength	Protection	Missile	Melee	Other	Points	Army Value
Ghilman	Cavalry	3	3	Armoured	Bow	-	-	44	4
Cavalry	Cavalry	3	3	Armoured	-	-	-	36	4
Cavalry	Cavalry	3	3	Armoured	-	-	-	36	4
Bedouin	Cavalry	4	3	Lacking	-	-	Undrilled	15	4
Bedouin	Cavalry	4	3	Lacking	-	-	Undrilled	15	4
Turcoman	LtHorse	4	2	-	Bow	-	-	18	3
Turcoman	LtHorse	4	2	-	Bow	-	-	18	3
Turcoman	LtHorse	4	2	-	Bow	-	-	18	3
Turcoman	LtHorse	4	2	-	Bow	-	-	18	3
Muj Cav	Cavalry	4	3	-	-	Impact	-	36	4
Berbers	HvyFoot	4	4	Shieldwall	-	Spears	Undrilled	24	4
Sariya	HvyFoot	4	4	Shieldwall	-	Spears	-	27	4
Sariya	HvyFoot	4	4	Shieldwall	-	Spears	-	27	4
Archers	MedFoot	4	3	Lacking	Bow	-	-	15	3
Archers	MedFoot	4	3	Lacking	Bow	-	-	15	3
Archers	MedFoot	4	3	Lacking	Bow	-	-	15	3
Mujahidn	MedFoot	3	3	-	-	Impact	-	28	3
Mujahidn	MedFoot	3	3	-	-	Impact	-	28	3
Bedouin	MedFoot	4	3	Shieldwall	-	Spears	Undrilled	18	3
Camp	Camp	4	3	-	-	-	-	0	3
20								451	69

So this is not much of an AAR but I took a bunch of pics of the test. I have included the dice rolls in many of the pics, so if you know the game you can sort of work out what's going on. These rolls are before armour nudges, and usually before damage tokens are added.

I finished with the crusaders down 18 points (and the red battle having reached its morale test point) and the Arabs down 6 points.