Field of Glory Fantasy Rules Playtest

Today Mike and I tried out several rules for a fantasy variant of Field of Glory. We recreated the battle from Robert E. Howard's story "Black Colossus". We did make several alterations to the opposing forces. Each side received a battlegroup of flyers and an extra mage. Natohk's army was changed to skeletons and the army of Khoraja got an extra hero.

The army of Khoraja had one battlegroup of 4 knights, five battlegroups of 4 bow,sword cavalry, one battlegroup of 4 impact foot, one battlegroup of 8 pike, one battlegroup of 8 light foot archers, one battle group of 4 cavalry lancers, and one two stand battlegroup of flyers.

Natohk's army (commanded by Mike) had three battlegroups of 4 light chariot bows, two
battlegroups of 4 cavalry -1/2 lance
and 1/2 bow, one battlegroup of 2 flyers, and six battlegroups of 6 superior mob 1/2 light spear/bow and 1/2 bow.

The first picture shows Natohk's deployment and the second shows Conan's. Conan also had a flank march with the cavalry lancers, two battlegroups of the cavalry bow, and the sub-ordinate field commander. My daughter rolled a twelve for the flank march which promptly arrived on the first turn
next to Natohk's camp (photos 3
and 4) which had been placed near
the right edge of Natohk's side of
the table. One of the bow cavalry
straggled, but the others appeared
on the Natohk's right flank. The two units of Khorajan cavalry would spend the rest of the game engaged in a desperate battle with the opposing skeletons and the second mage before finally breaking them.

Meanwhile, the rest of Natohk's
army advanced on the ridge line where the Khorajan army was deployed. Conan led two units of Khorajan cavalry and the nobles (knights) advanced to engage the chariots. The extra hero was with the knights. Bow fire from the chariots disrupted both units of cavalry archers, who evaded when the chariot unit on Natohk's right charged them. While Conan went to rally them the knights charged the other two battlegroups of chariots who also evaded. The chariots stood their ground when the knights, who had become disrupted from missile fire, charged them again. Conan rallied the first unit of cavalry he joined and led them in an interception charge against the chariots that had charged them. Although the knights did some damage to the chariots, they failed another cohesion test and became fragmented. The mounted archers did much better and were able to defeat the lone unit of chariots they were facing.

While all this was going on the Khorajan flyers had chased after the opposing flyers. We had to substitute some regular cavalry for the flyers. A short engagement occurred when Natohk's flyers turned to face them and promptly lost half their stands on impact (top of photo 6). The pursuit took the Khorajan flyers almost to Natohk's camp.

On the other half of the battlefield the horde of skeleton foot advanced on the ridge. Several turns of missile fire from both sides saw the Khorajan cavalry on their right flank break while the light foot archers held their ground with the aid of the mage who had joined them. The Khorajan mercenary pike advanced and tore into one of the skeleton groups while the lesser Khorajan nobles (impact foot) also engaged an opposing battlegroup.

Due to time limits we ended the game at this point. The Khorajan army had lost two units of cavalry archers due to straggling and routing while the Khorajan knights were fragmented and would also be lost. Natohk had lost his flyers and one battlegroup of foot. A second battlegroup of foot was also treated as lost along with his camp and one battlegroup of chariots.

In all both magic systems worked well without dominating the battle. The mage using the Hyborian magic system forced the flanking cavalry to take several cohesion tests due to hits and had to pass one death test when one of his casts backfired. The other magic system helped the Khorajan light foot archers pass several cohesion tests which could have resulted in the collapse of the Khorajan right flank if they had not passed them. Superior mobs of skeletons were found to be very hard to break. The hero with the knights had only a minor effect on the die rolls for the stand he was with. A couple of minor changes in the flyer rules were discussed