I've just completed and released A Game of Fire and Ice on WargameVault.
A Game of Fire and Ice allows you to recreate both Historical and Fantistorical battles and campaigns set in the medieval period. You can create an army from your favourite fantasy book, television series, movie or, if you, prefer from history. A campaign system lets you and your friends take the command of a great house and battle for the throne of mythical Westerlands or historical England in the War of the Roses.
Starting with the Basic Game it features a programmed learning system with scenarios after each rule section. The Basic Game contains all you will need to recreate a typical medieval battle. After you have mastered the basics, the Advanced Game adds Crossbows, Longbows, Poleaxes and variations on armor and formation. Finally the Fantistorical section adds Heroes, Dragons, Mages and Undead, so that you can bring to life any fantasy setting with a medieval background. (As an added bonus I included ship and siege rules.)
The game uses a simplified variation on the popular DBX mechanics which allows you to fight an entire campaign in a series of linked battles in a single afternoon. This volume includes The Battle for the Throne campaign system and complete orders of battles for a campaign set in mythical Westerlands, England during the War of the Roses and an alternative history campaign featuring exiled Lancastrians, Spanish Conquistadors, the Aztec Empire, a Native American Confederation and a Viking Colony all battling for control of the New World.
The campaign system and orders of battle are designed to be generic enough for use with virtually any game system designed for medieval warfare including L'Art De Le Guerre and even Kings of War.
Every effort has been made to present the rules as clearly as possible using standard wargame terminology. I do not wish to ignite a debate over Phil Barker's writing style (the father of DBX mechanics). Some love it some loath it. I'm agnostic. The point of the introductory rules is to present the basics of DBX mechanics in a manner that is understandable to those who struggle with Mr. Barker's particular rule writing style. The rules provide an excellent spring board into DBA, DBM or DBMM (even L'Art De Le Guerre). I've also included a complete alphabetical glossary of troop types, weapons and special abilities similar to the FASA style of rule writing to make looking up rules during a game much easier.
Besides the introductory rules (based on the Knights and Knaves system I originally taught my then 10 year old son – now a multiple DBA tournament winner), the Advanced Game contains a set of medieval specific mechanics that cover that period in more detail than the normal DBX games that cover 3000 years of history rather than the 300 (1200-1500) covered by Fire and Ice. These rules can be easily added to any of the DBX stable of games to add historical flavour to replays of specific battles.
These rules do not replace any of the DBX sets and don't cover eras prior to 1200 nor are they designed for tournament play. The intent is to help new (and a few old) players learn the basics of DBX, add medieval specific rules and provide a campaign system to battle for your favourite throne, whether drawn from television, books, movies or history. You can use the same game and campaign system to command House Wolf against House Lion and House Dragon or House Lancaster against House York and House Tudor.
Go forth and conquer – your throne awaits!
Thomas J. Thomas
Fame and Glory Games
takes the plunge.