Rock Labyrinth: A Regiments Scenario

Last fall, I had grand ambitions to run a Regiments map campaign for the NEWC. I had played and run the Border Princes campaign from the Generals Compendium (perhaps the greatest WHFB book of all time) about half a dozen times and thought its narrative focus and game within a game nature would be a huge hit. I spent a long time rewriting rules, converting scenarios, and transcribing mechanics but ultimately decided to drop it at the eleventh hour in favor of a league inspired version Steve came up with and ran. It worked out great and everyone had a blast! The Border Princes asks a lot from its players and with our geography it didn't look like it was set up for success. Doesn't help that I was pitching a 14 page rules packet to a group who prefers to do things on the fly! Someday, I hope to assemble a dedicated group and share what is easily one of my favorite wargaming experiences. 

I've slowly been repurposing some of the work that I did and this scenario I am sharing is part of that. This was a special mission for use on a specific map segment of the Border Princes called the Warrens. In this region, bandits and ne'er-do-wells calling themselves the Carrion Band lurk behind labyrinthine rock formations. Human factions could bully them into providing support, gaining some extra points in the upcoming battle. The big flashy part of the scenario is that both players could nominate one unit in their army to become skirmishers! This was exciting because that type of unit does not exist inside the confines of Regiments and was a cool problem to try to solve. Below is a version of that scenario with the campaign related rules stripped out so it can be used in regular games of Regiments. There are likely many issues with skirmishers I had not foreseen, so if you try this, let me know how it goes!

ROCK LABYRINTH

Overview. Two armies meet in the Warrens, a rugged area in the foothills of the Black Mountains which is home to a labyrinthine series of rock formations. Maneuvering and shooting in the Warrens is difficult and ambushers may lurk around every corner.

Armies. Armies are chosen as normal.

Battlefield. The table should be covered by rock formations that turn the battlefield into a maze. All of the rocks are very steep and thus impassable terrain. Rock structures should be set up at least 7” apart to allow units to pass in between, but there should be no straight paths from one side of the board to the other. 

Mission. Place D3+2 objectives. Players roll-off to go first and then alternate in placing one marker each outside of deployment zones and over 9” away from each other. At the end of each round, if a unit is within 3” of an objective while enemies aren’t, then it's seized. Objectives stay seized even after leaving, but if units from both sides are contesting an objective, then it becomes neutral again. The game ends after 4 rounds and the player controlling the most objectives wins.

Deployment. Players roll off and the winner picks a long table edge as their deployment zone, with their opponent taking the opposite. Then the players alternate in placing one unit each within 12” of their table edge, starting with the player that won the deployment roll.

Skirmishers. A single unit in each player’s army may adopt a Skirmish formation for the duration of the battle. Skirmishers have the following changes to their rules:

Movement and Formation. Skirmisher units do not have to be in formations. Instead, unit members must stay within 1” of at least one other member and within 9” of all other members. All facings are considered the unit’s front facing. The unit may only be within 1” of other units when charging and may only charge if at least one charging model is within charge distance of the target unit. Skirmishers may move or shoot in any direction.

Melee. Once one model makes base contact with their charge target, the remaining models in a Skirmishers unit rank up around it to maximize contact as though it were a normal Regiments unit. If charged, once the enemy unit makes contact with a model, turn all models to face this unit and rank up around the charged model. Skirmishers do not receive any combat bonuses for the number of rows their unit has. Skirmishers otherwise follow all other melee combat rules as presented in the Regiments rulebook.  

 

PORTCULLIS IS BACK IN STOCK!

26 pages of cannibal children, killer art, and a mind melting crossword (prize still unclaimed)! Printed locally in Worcester MA, the blacks are blacker and images are even crisper!

$10+$4 shipping for US/Canada. DM on Instagram/Discord or email portcullismagazine@gmail.com to order. Accepting Venmo and PayPal.

Locals - I’ll have these with me at meet ups if you wanna save shipping

International warriors - DM me and we can work something out!

Thank you all for the support!

PORCULLIS MAGAZINE HAS ARRIVED!

 The long wait is over! The first issue of the mighty PORTCULLIS MAGAZINE is here! Inside, you will find 26 pages of deadly magic, mighty mercenaries, and more!

$10+$4 shipping for US/Canada. DM on IG or Discord or email portcullismagazine@gmail.com to order.

International warriors email me and we will work something out.

I am traveling for work so expect orders to mail out next weekend!

I am beyond proud of this zine and the work of all who contributed. Eternal thanks to those who made this possible: Steve from Under the Dice, Eli Minaya, VVizard Dom, Hobby Dungeon Andrew, Tyler is Alright at Painting, Michael Coleman, and my incredible wife Emily among many others. 

Hounds and Spectres for the Barrow Legion

 

Work on the Barrow Legion continues! After a great start this spring and early summer, other interests and responsibilities took over and progress has slowed. I painted these units over the summer but never gave them a proper blog post. We’ve got a map campaign planned for this winter so I’ve got to get some momentum and try to finish a few more units by the end of December (not to mention finally finish preparing the actual campaign).

After one game of TOW, I realized how terrible an army comprised exclusively of skeletons was going to be and scoured the army list for any units that would need less babysitting. Dire Wolves provided some much needed mobility and the skeletal models from Highland Miniatures were perfect for the Legion. My time in TOW was short lived, but they are now a staple in my Regiments lists. With Scout and Fast, they can threaten turn 1 charges and sport enough attacks that they can usually win combat against small melee units or ranged support. If there are no good units for them to bully, they’re great roadblocks or late game objective grabbers. The process for painting these hounds was identical to how I painted all my blocks of skeletons.

My army had been a mass of greys and browns where everything ended up blending together. It needed some color and different unit types to really start to stand out. Ghosts of some kind had been on my mind since I started the army, as they were a key part of the Army of the Cairns that inspired me. In addition to providing some color and different textures, I was in need of a more elite melee unit to fight the increasingly deadly monsters and chariots being fielded. These have seen play as infantry shredding Ghosts from the Neutral Undead community list and great weapon wielding Ghost Revenants from the Ghostly Undead list. Both varieties have been performing really well for me except when facing Brad’s deadly Orc crossbows! Painting these excellent sculpts from Satyr Art Studios was a ton of fun. I wanted to avoid the airbrush look of GW’s Nighthaunts and went with a more old school look. I washed the models with diluted Nihilakh Oxide over a white prime, making sure there wasn’t too much pooling in the recesses. I then applied some Aethermatic Blue contrast paint mostly in the folds of fabric and hard lines of armor. Finally, they got a white drybrush to bring back highlights a bit.

Hoping to finish up my barrow king on chariot and newly acquired grave guard before the end of the year, but most of my free time will be dedicated to wrapping up PORTCULLIS MAGAZINE! I have a few ideas for posts about Regiments, too, so more to come soon!

Dragon Mounts in Regiments

    The OPR Regiments hype train has not stopped. The cult has grown and we have a lot of cool stuff lined up. We’re talking map campaigns, regiments of renown, magic items. Those are all posts for another day, though. Today, I am writing about dragons.

    Steve and I played a little undead on undead game this weekend and it marked the latest escalation in weapons of mass destruction: dragon mounts. His vampire on zombie dragon marks the first major monster riding hero to hit the table for our little group and, even though its only been a few days, I know of several generals already making moves to join the dragon rider club. Characters mounted on dragons is one of the fantasy wargame classic tropes, so I can’t blame anyone. It also doesn’t hurt that they are one of the better bully units in the game, crushing infantry under their claws and blades while sporting defenses that will keep them in the fight throughout all four rounds of play.

    That last part is what I was missing in my off the table analysis. I completely underappreciated how difficult it is to deal with a tough(15), 3+ Def, Fear(2) unit. At one point in our game, I had a unit of 10 skeletons able to get a flank charge on Steve’s dragon rider. Some quick statistics showed me that even with the dragon unable to fight back, my skeletons would lose that combat more times than not and crumble for their efforts. I had an opportunity to rear charge his dragon with ambushing zombies and that, too, was more likely to result in me losing half my unit without the vampire lifting a finger. Fear is a huge issue for non-elite troops. These are not models you can just throw dice at. When you do fight them head on, you’re usually going to be dealing with 3 AP(3) and 12 AP(1) attacks at Quality 3+ or 4+, with many dragon riders sporting some form of Furious. There aren’t many units that can weather an onslaught like that and most monsters will take enough damage to get close to a morale check. All while Fly lets them jump over screening units and hide behind terrain. Its going to be fun finding a strategy to address them.

    A lot of armies can take dragon mounts, but there are three heroes that stand out to me as being the best. Each of these has something that your average dragon rider lacks: improved defenses, raw power, or a competitive advantage in monster fights. 

    Let’s start with the guy who made my life miserable for two hours; the Vampire Master on Zombie Dragon.

    While pricier than many heroes with access to a dragon mount, the vampire master is about as complete a package as you could hope for. Insatiable Hunger boosts its offensive potential, making its Furious trigger on a 5 or 6 on 13 attacks. War Disciples have access to this, too, but what they lack is this model’s survivability. The protected upgrade ignores one point of AP, making this dragon rider effectively Def 2+ versus most of what your opponent will use against it. AP(1) weapons become completely worthless and the versatile AP(2) weapons that normally flex well between armored infantry and monsters suddenly under perform. The zombie dragon’s Regeneration adds an additional save to the model for anything that sneaks through its defenses while the Undead rule ensures it will not route or shake if it does lose a combat. Probably the best all around dragon in the game. 

    On the raw power front, it is hard to compete with this behemoth from the Eternal Wardens faction: the Eternal Lord on Great Dragon.

    With a staggering 18 attacks plus a breath weapon, no other dragon rider can come close to this attack output without getting very lucky with Furious rolls. The 3 additional tough is not a tremendous improvement over the tough(15) of most other heroes, but fearless helps keep it on the battlefield when it is below half strength. Most dragon riders are best as a bully unit, fighting medium or light infantry to clear them out and get an activation advantage, but the 8 AP(2) attacks let the eternal lord be a little more flexible in who it charges. This is the sledgehammer of dragon heroes. 

    This is the dragon rider I expect others to end up fearing: the Black Orc Boss on Wyvern.

    At first glance, there is not much very exciting about this hero aside from its significantly lower cost and Furious. It has a pretty standard dragon profile but trades a breath weapon for a few additional claw attacks and has quality 4+ compared to the Quality 3+ of the units we looked at earlier. Goblin Shroom Sniffers, which should be in just about every orc army, gives it +1 to hit in melee so its on par with its competitors. Beyond that, the Black Orc Boss has two rules that make it one of the best dragon hunters in the game: War Cry and Headtaker. War Cry adds +2” to advances and +4” to rushes/charges, giving it a larger threat range than all non-Lust Disciple dragons. This gives you a ton of board control and gives you a very good chance of getting the charge against other dragons. Headtaker gives AP(+2) whenever fighting a unit where most models are tough(3) or higher. That turns all 16 of the black orc’s Furious attacks into great weapons against monsters. On the charge, that averages about 13 AP(3) hits, putting every dragon without regeneration into routing territory in one combat. Easily clearing monstrous infantry in addition to chaff is a nice bonus. This unit is the best dragon killer I’ve encountered so far and I expect in the next few months, as players assemble their scaly beasts and they get more table time, our greenskin players will initiate the next round of nuclear proliferation.

That's two posts in a row where I have written a wall of text about Regiments. Though there will be more of these posts in the future (sorry Gage!), I have a number of units for my Undead nearing completion so expect some hobby posts in the near future!

Why I Love Age of Fantasy: Regiments

    I jumped into OnePageRules’ Age of Fantasy: Regiments along with a few other War Council guys and was impressed by the depth and replayability such a simple game could have. Over the last 5 months, its become our primary miniatures game and it doesn’t feel like that is going to change any time soon. Its inspired us to make scenery, create some rules supplements, and pick up multiple armies. I have a map campaign brewing that I can’t wait to start this fall or winter. It has firmly entrenched itself in my brain. That’s not surprising as the game has a lot going for it; its rules light but strategic, list building is easy and fun, and it is easily hackable. 

    I used to be drawn to high complexity games where rule knowledge was a big determining factor in game outcomes. I play wargames largely to solve puzzles and the 300 page rule books for 40k and Warmachine gave my brain a lot to consider. As much as I loved my time playing these games, in hindsight I was not being rewarded for understanding the mechanisms that drove play. I was being rewarded by throwing more time at reading than my opponents.

    Regiments is on the other end of the spectrum. Its core rules fit on a handful of pages and can be comprehensively reviewed in a matter of minutes. All of the armies share common keyword abilities. There are significantly less “gotcha” moments as a result. Those interactions where you don’t have the necessary information to make an informed decision and get mercilessly punished for it are the primary cause of most bad wargaming experiences in my mind. This was common for players new to WHFB and there was always a number of people who quit the game before they left the “you’re going to lose a lot” phase. Eliminating this knowledge differential allows veterans to play novices and not have the games feel miserable.

    Units have their points calculated with an algorithm and as a consequence are much closer to each other in power level than in other games. This flatter army composition means that how you use the units you’ve taken matters a lot more than finding the most efficient, and often unbalanced, ones. There’s no wrecking ball to reliably throw at whatever you want to destroy. A player will need to angle for good match-ups for their units rather than just using brute force most of the time. Flank and rear charges reward skillful positioning and feel impactful, allowing you to strike your opponent without getting attacked back and giving a penalty on the enemy’s morale. You feel like you did something powerful and that you earned it.

    Building your army list for Regiments is incredibly fun. OPR’s army builder, Army Forge, is one of the better web based wargame tools I have used. It is relatively intuitive, provides full text for every keyword, and exports as cards for each unit with full rules. The factions all have flavorful keywords that establish their core identity and influence how they will be played on the table. There are 28 factions to choose from and you may use up to 2 to create an army. This freedom to combine any factions unlocks an incredible amount of options. Want to play a WHFB 4th edition style undead army? Choose Vampiric Undead and Mummified Undead. Have a narrative idea about Beastmen and Wood Elves repelling a horde of Skaven looking to chop down a forest to fuel their war machines? Great, go for it! It also lets you combine two factions to represent an army there aren’t explicit rules for. For example, if I wanted to play a Nippon army, I could take Human Empire and use Weapon Masters as samurai and ally with Ogres to represent Oni. If I wanted an Albion army, I could take Beastmen to represent clansmen who ignore difficult terrain and take a Mage Council from Human Empire to represent a coven of druids. There are a ton of possibilities.

    The simple nature of the game gives players plenty of room to include homebrew rules. OPR encourages this by providing members of their Patreon with access to a version of the army builder that allows the creation of new units and factions using the algorithm that balances the core game, guaranteeing fair point values for whatever you create. If a player is missing some mechanics from WHFB, it is relatively easy to create analogs in Regiments. Challenges could easily play out exactly as they do in Warhammer, while magic items could be represented by granting a unit or hero additional keywords. The advanced rules have stats for castle walls and other fortifications that could be the basis for a siege scenario. There’s a lot of room to get creative and make the game your own. We’ve got some good stuff cooking.

    The basic rules are available here for free if what I’ve shared has you curious. The Advanced Rulebook, which has a number of excellent optional additions to the game, can be found here. They’re simple enough that you probably don’t need me to walk you through any of them. Its the most fun I’ve had on the tabletop in a long time.

A CALL TO ARMS!

 This fall, I will be publishing the first issue of PORTCULLIS MAGAZINE! Inside, you'll find new rules for games, interviews with artists and people in the community, hobby articles, and more! I have some great stuff lined up, but I know there are many, many talented people out there who could have something to share. If you have homebrew rules, battle reports, ttrpg adventures, art, or anything else you'd like to contribute, email me at portcullismagazine@gmail.com or find me on discord!