So, my usual partner in crime (and by crime, I mean constantly buying new rules, and even sometimes playing them) decided to try the new Osprey set, "Outremer". It is, obviously, a ruleset for the Crusades, and the Crusades in the Holy Land alone. No Spain, Baltic or Albigensians! (Well, actually, I guess you could do the latter. And maybe the first. The warbands are generic enough to handle them). It's a skirmish set of rules, a very skirmish set of rules in that at most you can only have 13 figures on the table at a time. Although you can play one off battles, the campaign system is very much hardwired in the rules, a bit like – if I may drift out of historical gaming – Necromunda or Mordheim.
My impressions? It's fast to play. We drew up our bands, and played two games in three hours, and that's being very unfamiliar with the rules. As well, we had no QRS. A QRS would be extremely helpful for this game. We ended up jotting down a lot of information about weapons on our rosters. Hopefully Osprey offers just such a download on their website soon.
We played two scenarios. Number one and two for those of you who enjoy playing things in the proper sequence. The first was a bog standard set up 'em and fight it out, the other was somewhat the same, except that we were both raiding a village for loot. The rules for that scenario were somewhat odd. You set your forces up in opposite corners within a foot of said corner, set up the first of D6+2 loot counters in the very centre, and then you alternate putting loot counters down anywhere as long as they are further than 4" from the edge or another loot counter. We immediately placed all of them under our already set up figures. I honestly wonder if the author made a mistake and that the loot should have been setup WITHIN four inches of a previous loot counter, so something like that. Still, as our figures with loot had to drop them off at the starting corners, it did mean that our forces were strung out as we rushed across the board.
As for the gameplay itself, it was OK. Each figure activates when their card is drawn, which is a nice and easy way of introducing sequence uncertainty. Bow shooting is a roll to hit, a roll to wound. Melee is opposed die rolling. Multiple die types are used – ie a Templar leader may roll a D10, whereas my peasant may only have a D4. Unlikely, but my peasant could indeed beat that mighty crusader, as no matter how high the die type, there's always a one on it somewhere! There is nice feature, in that when you wish to charge, or you take a hit – and assuming you live – you roll your "faith" attribute against your opponent's "presence". If you fail you either don't charge, or run away.
As befitting a low level skirmish set, there are a variety of weapons, which all differ from each other in a variety of ways, and an absolutely huge number of character attributes that mean each figure is very much an individual. Honestly, I did find that somewhat annoying – I used some of my Gripping Beast plastic arabs, so that meant bowmen and spearmen. So when I rolled on the various tables, some of my spearmen were excellent at using the mace, or sword. Do I have any figures with a mace or sword? No. So those rolls were a waste. Admittedly that gripe is purely subjective; those of you with huge Saracen collections will scoff at me. And I guess I could have just said that those figures that held spears, were actually using different weapons. But I'm a cranky grognard, and insist on play WYSIWYG. (And fully painted, but that's a different kettle of fish).
Another (big) gripe is the points system. I really can't understand whatever formula the author used to create the points for the figures. My opponent used a warband of Crusader Military order knights.
They move 6, attack with D8, defend with D6, have two wounds, have faith of D10 (although their faction specifies they ALWAYS pass any faith tests), toughness of 3 and presence of 4, and get two initial rolls on advancement tables.
My melee type Saracens move 5, attack D6, defend D6, one wound, faith D8 (and these warriors must take faith tests so will fail a lot if I'm rolling), tough 3 and presence 3, and also get two initial rolls on advancement tables.
The first warrior costs 70 points. The Saracen about costs 72. Huh?
For me, the game seemed OK. After playing most of the Osprey blue book series, my friend and I have come to the conclusion that by and large they tend to follow the old SPI "Strategy & Tactics" model – for every four issues of S&T, one game was a dog, two were OK and one was brilliant.
Admittedly, I find most skirmish games from any author, rarely seem to be as "deep" as larger scale games, nor really require a lot of thinking or decisions so I might be a bit biased in that respect too . And as I happen to like games that do require a lot of thinking and tough decisions, for me, I'd firmly put "Outremer" in the OK category. I wouldn't avoid it, it was easy and fun, but nor will I try and drum up players to play in a campaign with us.
