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Mass combat anyone?


skars

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Hello, I was wondering if anyone had used the mass combat rules? This portion of the fantasy hero book really caught my eye. I have quite a few armies in various scales eager to hop off the shelf and into my budding Hero campaign. Any pointers? I would like to use 10mm scale warmaster figs for the battles. So, i would be scaling the battlefield accordingly. Any thoughts or reviews on this portion of the system would be much appreciated. Game on!

 

_Thom

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Way back in 4th edition, when the mass combat rules made their debut, there was some skepticism in our group that they would work. However, one GM in our group eventually ran us through a large scale combat, where our team ignored the main battle and went in and out of the conflict. He used the mass combat rules for the engagement so that it would not take too much time away from our roleplaying, and I must say, they worked like a charm.

 

A preliminary read-through of the 5th edition mass combat rules does not indicate too many deviations from 4th edition, so they look like they'll work pretty well. I'll let you know on Sunday, after they get another workout in my Saturday game...

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I'm not terribly enamored with the new mass combat rules, myself... they are heavily slanted towards removing units from the battle as fast as possible, and keeping them that way.

 

This is good if you just want to get the battle overwith quickly.

 

If you care about how the combat itself PLAYS, then IMHO, it's not so good "as is".

 

 

If you add some house rules to allow rallying (even if only for exceptional Morale rolls) to "heal" units, and allow some extended maneuvers (Bind, Shield Wall, Teamwork/Coordination with second-rank units using L or L2 weapons, more formations like Skirmish/Picket Line and Open/Closed ranks, etc.), then it's actually fun to use.

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I've not had the pleasure of running FH since the sourcebook came out. However, I have run Mass Combat prior to the sourcebook's release. I created a spreadsheet that calculated the average number of BODY done to the bad guys (zombies and skeletons) and the average STUN and BODY done to the good guys (living creatures).

 

Then each group took the average amount each turn with the PCs rolling for their damage individually and adding to the good guy totals. An appropriate number of bad guys would be designated as attacking the PCs and their hits and damage rolled for individually and applied to their designated PC.

 

As GM, I felt it was a good system. Unfortunately, I believe my players were fighting a battle that I enjoyed and they would've preferred to do without.

 

I'd love to check out the Mass Combat system in FH, but my players will never let me GM again if I subject them to another unit level battle.

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Originally posted by Victor

If you add some house rules to allow rallying (even if only for exceptional Morale rolls) to "heal" units, and allow some extended maneuvers (Bind, Shield Wall, Teamwork/Coordination with second-rank units using L or L2 weapons, more formations like Skirmish/Picket Line and Open/Closed ranks, etc.), then it's actually fun to use.

 

Would you mind sharing some of these house rules? I am a newbie to the system and I would love some examples. Thanks for all the great comments!

 

_Thom

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