"My feelings on Midgard" Topic

After resisting the urge to buy this set I finally succumbed, now I wish I had bought it earlier. A review of the rules can be found here. link

I was interested in Midgard because TFL's "Dux Britanniarum" game is my favorite for Dark Ages. I like that it has an integrated narrative and practical campaign, the minor deck building aspect is interesting. So I skimmed a copy and I came away thinking -- dang…it's WAB again.

It has the same type of mechanics -- a points driven game where you have similar stats to WAB. They may be renamed, but essentially you have Melee, Shooting, Defense, Hits and Morale.

Baron's War? Same thing, even if they use d10.

I guess it's no surprise, these games all come out of the Nottingham crowd. I was just hoping for something different.

Well, there is none of the head-counting pedantry that characterized all the Warhammer based games, but I see your point. Army games tend in one of two directions; lots of dice or lots or charts. In my opinion warfare is far too unpredictable for the "lots of charts" school, the lots of dice approach leaves open the highly unlikely but not impossible events that make up the dramatic moments in history. I particularly like the way that Heroes impact the play of the games.

Agreed, Anton. It is in many ways a game that uses many standard mechanisms, but the interaction of heroes and reputation is what makes it interesting. I might also add the turn sequence – two rounds of melee to one of firing and refreshing mighty deeds – gives a different feel to many games.

What is a standard base size, or is that a choice?

Korsun0: If you are using 28mm figures you have a standard 12x6cm sabot base, which you can put your figures on, its adjustable for smaller scales.
Its figure and base agnostic, so you can use whatever you have unless they are group based larger than the rules say.
Even then, you can use whatever size base you want if both sides agree…or you are providing all the figures!!!

Thankyou for that, perfectly doable.

I like the rules for Fantasy and Mythic games where heroes can do outstanding deeds. AS soon as it gets into historical games this just does not seem right to me.

Dave Knight--huh. I've been toying with colonial rules (Sudan mostly) and think the occasional hero, such as Col Burnaby, Lt Faversham, or even the Mulai Ahmmed el Rauisuli would add a nice touch.

Plenty of historical heroes who changed battles by their deeds or death….

TFL rules in general put a lot of emphasis on the actions of leaders and heroes. That aligns with many firsthand accounts of small unit actions in mechanized warfare anyway.

What make these rules really click with me was emphasis on leaders. Having read most of the Penguin series of Viking Sagas these rules reflect the feel that one gets from those texts. Leaders tower over the ordinary riff-raff, their speeches and actions drive the course of the battle.

This works equally well for the Trojan War, heroes loom large and the regular soldiers act almost as a background to the action.

I wouldn't use these for Romans or Hoplites, they probably would not give a satisfactory result.

I've plaid it twice with Armies that were not from the rule book, I did not get to look at the rule book. I'd did not enjoy either game. However I will give it another try if the GM uses Dark age armies.

I have thought it is quite possible to do away with the personal combat between heroes for historical battles (sorry Goliath of Gath!) – I think Midgard would work very well without it.

Seems like Victrix are going to try and join the party of Dark Age combat…

link

The Victrix game (Pillage) has both firing and factions…so that's me out!