Chaos Wars - The Fantasy Game For Grown-Ups

Ok, OK, I know I have historically extolled the virtues of Warhammer, but I am going to say something which the Hipster gamers of the 21st century will consider heresy....

It's actually a poor game when you compare it to Chaos Wars by Ral Partha.

I mean it...

No, really...

The mechanic s of WHFB mean that you have a shedload of rolls which culminate in seeing whether the wounds you already rolled for are stopped by armour. I had never considered it before, because I followed the game slavishly, but it's all a bit arse about face.

Two of us sat down yesterday with the Chaos Wars rules from Ral Partha, and looked at the combat system. It's one roll and take the casualties off. It manages to include the combat effectiveness, environmental modifiers, toughness and armour of the opponent - And Bob's your Goblin, off come the toys in a frenzy of miniature, imaginary mortality.

What's more, basing does not matter...

What you want to design an army that suits your view of how Orcs should be? No problem... It's inbuilt.

Want to use those Ogres riding Elephants in a game? Yeah, you can even do that...

You' get a truly tactical experience too, which is missing in a lot of fantasy rules. If you think and move your units with guile and utilise the assorted troop classes to their best advantage, you will be master of the battlefield. Woe betide the unit of sword armed Yeoman cavalry (the troop classes are Peasant, Yeoman and Knight analogous with medieval historical archetypes ) which gets hit by lance armed  Knight class chaps. It'll be messy.

You can buy the books from Ral Partha (there are 7 lovely old school feeling booklets all told)

Don't want to pay for them? OK, if you have a tablet or PC or whatever, you can download them in PDF form for FREE.

Give them a try.

In the meantime, Ral Partha's Kickstarter is heading for the $20,000 dollar mark with 3 weeks to go. I'm fairly sure that my own pledge will end up being over $1100.00 because every time I check in, there's another unit or creature I notice which I've not seen for 35 years and my early days in GW when it WAS a games workshop.

TTFN