Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland both
have mass combat systems, but Mythic Bastionland is the game
where I expect mass battles to be an increasingly common feature of the game as
the Knights grow in glory.
Here's what the Oddpocrypha section has to say.
PLAY
The company lead an army sieging a small fortress. They
have four warbands: 2 men-at-arms, 1 archers, and 1 cavalry with javelins. They
also have 2 stone throwers.
Ref: Okay, it’s just after sunrise and you’re all set up,
facing off against the fortress. You can see hurried movement along the
ramparts, defenders hurrying about.
Moss: Well I guess we ruined the element of surprise when we
let those scouts get away.
Ref: Yeah, in fact you see the main gate swing open, 2
Warbands emerging. Looks like a band of archers and a horde of aggressive
looking fighters, carrying an axe or blade in each hand. Remember you were told
to expect the enemy’s mercenaries to arrive some time this morning. Actually…
Ref very roughly sketches out the battlefield, noting a
bog and a small forest.
Ref: Okay so… wait, one minute.
Ref tears up some small paper rectangles and uses them to
show the locations of each Warband, coloured dice showing the Knights.
Ref: Right, what’s the plan?
Tal: I mean we could just sit back and use the stone thrower
to break down the gate.
Moss: Remember the Mercenaries? We heard they might have
heavy cavalry, which would be tough to deal with. I think we need to be more
decisive.
Tal: Well we outnumber the enemy right now. I think send the
cavalry to deal with the archers and everybody else piles into that other
warband (Tal pushes some of the paper warbands around on the map).
Moss: Okay, let’s do it.
Ref: Right, so as you advance on the enemy your archers
exchange fire with each other.
Ref rolls an attack for the enemy archers, Moss for the
allied archers. The enemy are especially effective, Wounding the allied archer
warband.
Ref: The enemy definitely get the better of the exchange,
your archers crying out as they take casualties, but holding steady for
now.
THOUGHTS
Mass combat can be handled similarly to personal combat, but
with warbands as the primary unit, rather than individuals.
Much of the guidance I’d give here is similar to that of the
Dynamic Combat entry, but it can be difficult to remember when faced with the
concept of a full-on battle with hundreds of soldiers. Even though the scale is
larger, most of the same principles apply. Here we see a battle with a built in
time limit, the impending arrival of enemy mercenaries, which goes a long way
to make the battle feel dynamic. As well as this, Ref makes sure to describe
what the players can see, from the bustling defenders on the ramparts to the
lay of the land in front of them.
This might sound obvious, but this scale-shift can sometimes
intimidate Referees, who find themselves trying to keep things as simple as
possible to the detriment of the actual game. The ever-present risk that things
deteriorate into a numbers game without adequate description of the present
situation.
Drawing out a map, like Ref does here, isn’t part of the
rules, but it can be useful when dealing with larger battles involving multiple
warband types, even if it’s just keeping track of who’s fighting whom.
Ref places a forest and a bog on the battlefield, but the
combat system doesn’t explicitly have rules for how warbands behave in
different terrain types. This is one of those “it doesn’t matter until it
matters” situations. Perhaps the players could lay an ambush in the woods, or
set up behind the bog to dampen an incoming heavy cavalry charge. These things
aren’t detailed in the rules, but they provide vital leverage for both players
and referee to perform certain actions that would otherwise be implausible.
I’d like to see Ref asking the players where the Knights
themselves are. Are they leading specific Warbands, or hanging back on their
own? In a big battle like this, especially when you introduce a map and pieces,
it’s easy to lose track of the personal experience of the knights. Battles can
feel big and sweeping, but we should always be aware of what the Knights are
personally doing.
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