"What games do sieges well?" Topic

So, what games do sieges well? Or, what are good board games that cover sieges pretty well.

I know the Viking game Hnefatafl is about getting your lord to safety in a siege, so that's one example.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafl_games

WAB and Warhammer Fantasy both have supplements that cover sieges very well. They have a lot of scenarios in them for doing the various parts of a siege.

I'm not really satisfied with the current edition of warhammer fantasy. What would be a good edition to roll-back to?

Sieges or Assault? Most "siege" games I've seen are really assaults or breaches. A siege game would really involve turns or weeks or months and focus on supply and morale.

Warrior Heroes – Warband siege has siege rules that consist of five battles in order, representing an extended period of time.

link

Assault, Raid the Besiegers, Mining, Into the Breech and Relief.

The results of each battle affects the Campaign Morale of each side.
If the attackers can win the Assault they take the city by storm.
If not the morale of both sides are adjusted down if they lose a battle.
If the Defender can reach the final battle without its morale breaking, the attackers give up the siege.

WRG Ancients 6th Edition had some interesting ideas for sieges. Basically, you accrue logistics points by assigning troops to tasks, and these convert to siege effects such as the building of towers, rams, ladders etc; attempting to undermine walls; or just plain old artillery bombardment. The defender had similar work points. If I remember correctly, there were two daytime 'siege turns', and one night time. The game converted to tabletop if the attacker wanted to mount an assault, or if the defender wanted to sally forth.

This was pre-internet, and before the easy availability of computers, but it should be quite easy to adapt these ideas by using spreadsheets or whatever. I'd have a map of the fortress and its surrounding areas and then set up the specific combat areas from that…

There was an old boardgame called siege. 4 periods inside.

then you can download from the perfect captain; everything they do is well thought of, well researched and fun.

link

16th century, but you can sure adapt for medieval.

I don't have it handy but Knights & Knaves has a siege section that is more of the logistics type game.

I'm finishing up on the siege portion of my rules for the 18th century. This takes in the full "March of the siege." This means the slow sapping forward of trenches, mining, countermines, supply, raids, bombardments, foraging for supplies, bringing convoys in, etc. etc. Oh yes, assaults and sorties are in there, but I wanted one that embraced the whole picture of siege warfare.

@Darwin--for WFB, you could always go with 6th edition (came out in 2000). Warhammer Siege was I think 5th edition but came out right before 6th edition, so would be compatible. Also, the siege supplement for Warhammer Ancient Battles is a little more detailed and worth a look, though harder to find on Ebay (though I have seen pirated PDF's all over the Internet).

Rules – Great Wall of Haub were the most fun set IMO. They inspired Arty Conliffe to write the siege supplement in Medieval Tactica. MT also has a pretty good set of Siege rules.

okay, actually I still have the "Generals Compendium" so I think I have most of the siege rules.

Wasn't the meta for 6th ed heavy cavalry?

I think 6th was good for cavalry as was 7th, and people think 8th nerfed cavalry. I only collect the figures so am not sure.

My experience with 6th edition rules is that while heavy cavalry could be good, it can be beaten. Ironically the 7th core rules allowed for more counters to heavy cavalry, in the form of insane courage and rotating the fronts. Despite that more cavalry units became almost unbeatable due to multiple attacks. While cavalry could be abused in both editions, I think that the 7th had more instances of abuses. I played more 7th than 6th, however whenever I played an old 6th book even in the 7th edition, I never had the issues with cavalry that I had with 7th edition books, and I virtually used the same dwarf book for both editions.

An example that I had was that I was in a league during the 6th, and admittedly a very new player decided to field an all Silver-Helm High Elf army, which was a good army back then. I cant remember if he had any Dragon Princes. Given how new that I was to the game (maybe 6 to 8 games before the league) the only victories that I had in the league was beating the High Elf guy with his heavy cavalry, and I was playing a heavy infantry dwarf army. I know that it is localized and anecdotal, but the winners were VC in my league I believe, with minimal cavalry and experienced at handling their army. Anything close to this high elf army in the 7th would most likely have at least one DP unit and they would own the game even with my dwarves.

Back a little more on topic, infantry is king if you are doing siege games for WFB. Cavalry is basically target practice, unless you are doing some kind of breakout scenario, and even then limited. The GC has a lot detail for these scenarios, and my mind can be used for really any edition that you would want. Most of the siege rules for WFB would be in 6th however so that you can buy things like towers, latters etc.

Warhammer Siege, the hard cover book one, came out in 1988 and was 3rd edition. First of and arguably one of GW's better sets of rule add-ons.

Another book, same name, was released in 1998, but I cannot tell you good or bad on this one as I had already split ways with follow-up editions of WHFB.

Hey, how hard would it be adapt Horde of the Things rules for a breach?
Just make it where a third of the board represents the main castle and have the base represent the central keep?

Maybe have a line of terrain that uses the Keep's stats, but can be destroyed?

As mentioned above, first "Warhammer Siege" was published for the 3rd edition, and covered both WHFB and Rogue Trader. The rules were ss complex as 3rd edition itself.
The second book was published for 5th edition and contained several scenarios to give a siege mini-campaign. I played several one-off assault games with it and it was always a fun game.
From 6th ed. on, you'd only have White Dwarf / GC / Annual supplement rules, not very different from 5th ed.
WAB supplement is called "Siege and Conquest" and covers both sieges and campaigns. I've yet to play it, but it always looked in-depth and attractive to try out.

Great Wall of Haub?

If you want a rules set that play well, and relatively fast, with towers, ladders, oil, rams, screws, and mining, 2e BattleSystem features these. 2e BS is fantasy, it is playable in a decent amount of time; it covers just about everything you could want. It can be used with/without magic, with/without fantasy races/monsters.

It's available in PDF, for $4.99 USD, at DriveThruRPG.com. Great game, as written. Magic is potent, but it won't win for you. Buckets of dice, but that is part of the fun of it: roll one Attack Die for each figure fighting. I've run several siege games with it. How that goes depends on whether the attacker pushes to the walls quickly, or not. If not, there is no 'siege'… Had one player sit back, shooting ballistas and catapults, wasting precious time. When he finally pushed forward, we ran out of time -- in a 6-hour game.

His teammates sat doing little for hours… Not the fault of the rules. He failed to see that the point was the attack on the walls, up close and personal.

No matter the rules used, make certain everyone understands you want to play an up-close siege, or the game may take a left turn down the wrong path. Cheers!