"Review of Pride of Lions " Topic

I wrote this review of the Pride of Lions fantasy mass combat miniatures rules a few weeks back on our club's web forum. I thought I would share it now with the peanut gallery.

If you are only interested in historical miniatures, you can stop reading this now. Pride of Lions is a mass combat fantasy miniatures rules set. Several of us were introduced to the rules set at Millennium last November. Splintered Light Miniatures was one of the vendors and they sell POL as well as a wonderful line of 15mm fantasy miniatures.

The command control system is a simultanius movement system using order chits. The combat system uses opposed die rolls. It has a fairly robust points system although those rules are not included in the written rules, you have to download them from the Pride of Lions yahoogroup.

The combat system is pretty simple, each unit has a melee/morale die. The more powerful the unit, the higher the die it uses for melee, missle fire, and morale tests. Modifiers usually increase or decrease the die level rather than modify the actual number rolled on the die. The effects of combat are determined by the difference between the attacker's and the defender's die roll. The nice thing is that even the crappiest militia unit has some chance in a melee although it might not be able to roll a high enough difference to destroy a powerful enemy, it can at least hold off a powerful foe (anybody can roll a 1).

The real attraction to the rules set is its magic system. It actually has several types of magic in the game each using a different game mechanic but the most prevalent system (and to my mind, the most fun) is the Shamanic magic system. You buy a die level for your shaman (d20 is the most common practice in our group). Each spell has a difficulty level ranging from 3-10. During each round of magic, the shaman selects a spell and then must roll against the difficulty level in order to get the spell off. If you roll the difficulty level or less then the spell fails and your shaman is done for that magic phase. If the shaman is successful, the spell goes off and he can fight another round if he wishes. In each succesive round, the shaman becomes fatigued and drops a die level when he rolls for spell difficulty. The mechanism that keeps shaman from rolling till he drops to a d4 each magic phase is called "brain burn". If a shaman rolls the highest number that can be rolled on his current die type (he rolls a 20 on a d20), his spell goes off, but he suffers brain burn and his die level drops 1 level for the rest of the game.

Another plus for me is the rules are figure neutral, that is to say you don't need any specific figure or line of figures in order to play the game. There are some army lists in the rules geared towards ranges available from Splintered Light Miniatures. SLM figures are great and I bought a ton of them at Millennium, but you don't need them to play the game. In fact, both Kevin and I have used old DBM armies to play and it worked just fine.

The rules author is very active on the Pride of Lions yahoogroup and has even joined our web forum. The rules set (and the author) are very house-rule friendly and we have instituted several house rules. The most prevalent house-rule we have come up with is a standard endgame for pick-up games. You add up the number of units in your army to determine your breakpoint. When you reach breakpoint, your army is wavering and at the end of each turn you roll a d6. For each point you are over break point you subtract one from the die roll. If the number rolled is 1 or less your army collapses and you lose the game.

The game is very fun and several of us are building armies and playing!!

Is it easy to create customized units and monsters/creatures in the game? I've actually been asking the writer some questions about the game here on TMP and he has been extrememely generous and responsive. I plan on picking up the rules to use for my 15mm LOTR project. Those figs will be painted before 2020, I swear. Great review and thanks for posting it!
Mongo

Thanks for posting your review. You've got me interested in these rules, but I have a couple of questions if you wouldn't mind answering them:

1. what are the basing requirements/restrictions? Is there flexibility in basing, i.e. will I be able to use figures that are already multi-based for other systems?

2. can you shed any light on the kinds of dice used? I've heard it said that this game uses a range of dice from D4 to D24(?). I'm not generally keen on systems that employ multiple types of different dice, so I'm keen to know how fiddly or otherwise this is during play.

1. The recommended basing is 40mm x 40mm stands and units comprise 3 stands. You can use pretty much any basing standard you want as long as the frontages are consistant.

2. It does use the full gamut of dice d4,d6,d8,d10,d12,d16,d20, and d24. Not everyone has a d16 or a d24 but its easy enough to use a d8 with a d6 to determine if the range is 1-8 or 9-16, by the same token you can use a d12 with a d6 to do the same thing d6 rolls a 1-3 then 1-12 on d12, 4-6 on the d6 and d12 is 13-24). Happily my FLGS had both d16 and d24. The one thing about both of these dice is you need a very flat surface to roll them properly.

I don't find the dice mechanism fiddly at all and again, because almost all die modifiers are to the die level and not the numbered rolled, even the most powerful unit will occasionally lose a battle, which I like as well.

Dave

Thanks Dave!

Mongo,

I guess the answer depends on what you mean by customized unit. There are rules for very powerful monsters like dragons and giants so my tentative answer is yes.

Dave

Well, could I create a Balrog or a Treebeard from Lord of the Rings? A Witch King on his flying beast. Trolls? Those types of things are what I want to make.

Would a unit of Orcs be any different than a unit of Elves or humans? Or is it all pretty abstract? Humanoids with Swords vs. Other humanoids with swords.

There is no specific difference between units other than the die type and abilities you buy for them. You could build a balrog or Treebeard using the construction rules and by buying appropriate special abilities. I actually have unit of nazgul looking figures riding flying beasts. There are several different ways to point something like that up.

Units are differentiated by thier melee/morale die, movement rating, missile rating, and special abilities (pikemen, spearmen, skirmish ability, ability to fly, etc.) It doesn't directly represent things like guys with longswords in chainmail fighting guys with bastard swords wearing studded leather if that answers your question.

Dave

That does help, thanks!

Dave, thanks for posting this.

While the rules are emphatically aimed at fantasy (I'm rather proud of the magic system) they do work well with at least some historical periods -- especially, I'd say, the Dark Ages, with a relatively limited range of troop types. (Probably not so much, e.g., the classical period of Macedonia and Rome.) We've gamed Mount Badon a number of times, with no "real" magic -- Merlin had tricks but they were just that, not magic.

My aim was simplicity and ease of play, and that entailed combining a lot of distinctions together. A unit's training, weaponry, armor, experience, and status as veteran or elite or whatnot, are all rolled together into a single die level that serves for melee and morale.

There are also no formations as such; the units on their movement trays remain physically the same throughout the game, although a unit may be in shield wall or hedgehog, or skirmishing, or perhaps charging in wedges if that is its training (but not placed into a visible wedge on the table -- that ability would have been a factor in deciding its die level before the game starts).

"Constructions" can be designed with a lot of combinations of powers, as they have an armor die level, perhaps multiple attacks, and a variable number of "life points" or "hull points" or whatever is appropriate. This is for mighty dragons and giants, as well as fortifications and ships and big siege machines and such.

It is a game of UNITS in large battles. There is NOT extensive detailing and differentiation of characters, as is true in, say, WARHAMMER. There will not be a superhero whose powers and weapons make him the equivalent of a unit all by himself. Characters issue orders to units, affect units' morale through exhortations, provide magic support for units, and allow units to reroll a bad die in a melee, by acting heroically and risking death.

I'm working on extensive campaign rules, and will take the occasion of their being published (late this year, God willing) to update the basic rules.

There's a very active Yahoo group that any TMPer is welcome to join.

The comment regarding historical miniatures gamers was really directed a certain members of my wargaming club (the article was originally written for my club's web forum). Probably should have edited that comment out for here. I know Ken posted an AAR on the POL yahoogroup of a big hundred years war battle using POL and it sounded interesting.

Dave

If I were doing a balrog:

First, is he a spirit, or is he physically manifest? OR, both? You could make him a "construction" unit like a giant or dragon, with an armor die level, and multiple attacks (whip, flaming sword, perhaps wing buffets if you think the wings were really there and really physical). You could make him, as well, a character, with command and magic abilities. You could also make him a spirit in the sense of being able to initiate a spirit attack (characters already defend against spirit attacks) although presumably he'd need to be restricted from sending his spirit off away from his physical body.

All of these things have points costs, and combining them all would be very expensive.

I played a game at Nashcon a couple of years back, and had a lot of fun. Good game (and nice folks).

At Historicon last year my son and I ran a Pride of Lions Pokemon game. Yes you heard right, Pokemon. We were in the HAWKs game club room.

It was actually pretty easy to use, the various dice size for combat worked well, if you're attacking unit had an advantage over the defending unit then the attack die went up a level. For example, a fire-type is strong against a grass-type, so it would go up. But fire is weak against water so it would go down one. I made cards for each unit indicating their strength, abilities, what they are strong against, and what they are weak against.

I made a set of spell cards for each pokemon type, then let each kid playing (the HAWKs always run several kid-friendly games) pick a "hero"/magician pokemon. Each magician could cast "spells" from either a generic deck or one specific to their type. The spells were powerful pokemon attacks lifted directly from the video games.

PoL rules have units of three stands, I did that too, except for legendary pokemon. They were individual figures that took three hits. The figures were tons of the 1" sized vinyl gumball machine pokemon, you can get them in random bags of 140+ for a few pennies a piece. I had to mix some units because I never had enough of any one pokemon for a complete unit – so an electric type unit might have Plusles, Mimums and Voltorbs in it.

I believe the game ran well, the players seemed to have fun. The rules author actually played and he seemed at enjoy it, which is always a good sign. If I remember correctly, the game ended with a good-guy victory.