Friday 20 April 2018

Playing Outremer Faith and Blood II: Activation

So last time we took a quick look at how players could assemble their Warbands for games of Outremer: Faith and Blood; now we get to the real meat of the matter... actually playing the game.






First up we are going to take a look at the Activation process sighing the game; essentially this is used to establish the order in which your fighters can do ‘stuff’ and how they go about carrying out these functions.

As mentioned in the last post every single model on the table will be allocated a unique playing card from a normal deck of cards; and it is in the activation phase that these will be used. Therefore before the game starts each player should pick one of the four common suits (hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs) which will be their Warband’s designated suit for the duration of the game. Once this has been done then players simply allocate each of the models within their Warband a specific card from this suit. My recommendation is that a player’s warlord gets given the relevant King card and then they work downwards in terms of fighter’s seniority allocating the remaining cards as they go.




Once both players have assigned a card to each of their fighters these cards are then all collated together in a single pile and shuffled; this will become known as the ‘activation deck’.

Once the battle has commenced properly the top card from the deck will be turned over and the model associated with this card will then be considered to have been activated. 

An activated model is then able to carry out two actions from the following list: Move, Hide, Shoot, Melee, Rally, Rest. Once this model has completed his two actions the next card is then drawn and a new model becomes activated, and the process starts again. 



Once all the cards in the deck have been drawn the cards are again shuffled up and the next turn begins. As fighters fall or leave the battlefield then their cards will be removed from the activation deck.

It really is that simple and although it’s quite an unusual system all of my play testers universally reported that it worked really well during their games. It took me ages to perfect this system and much trial and error was undertaken in order to provide both balance and fun. 

Initially I tried going with a standard IGO-UGO format for the game but I consistently found that in skirmish games of this size it led to a degree of an imbalance as the player who went first invariably seemed to have a higher chance of dominating the game! 



What I particularly love about the activation system that I have developed for Outremer: Faith and Blood is the element of randomness... you never quite know in which order the fighters’ cards will be dealt and so you really have to think ahead as you develop your strategy. You may well have the best plan in the world, but if the cards aren’t drawn in the order you want then you’re going to have to come up with an effective ‘Plan B’ rapidly. In truth this reflects the reality of combat in which both the circumstances and the enemy conspire to derail even the best laid plans. The test of a truly brilliant commander is in how they adapt to the shifting tides of fade on the battlefield.

Next time we’ll take a closer look at some of the actions available to your fighters once they have been activated.

19 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Cheers mate! Initial reviews and feedback is positive which is always nice to hear!!

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  2. That's an interesting idea, and nice that it uses a standard deck of cards instead of custom cards that are an extra expense.

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    1. Thanks Andrew! Absolutely, why pay £11 for a deck when a normal 99 pence pack of cards does the same job. That being said players can always print off and trim special cards for their Warbands if they want and make their own decks. I know some of my play testers mentioned doing this!

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  3. Hi, I received the PDF version of the rules. They look great. However I have a doubt. It seems that the Saracens career path for commoners is the same as the Crusaders one. However these don't match with the Saracen starting profiles. For instance they also present Pilgrim 1 & 2 and Levy 1, 2 & 3. In the starting profiles there are Ahdath 1, Askari 1 and Mamluk Recruit 1, but these do not appear in the Saracens commoners path. Any comments on this?

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    1. Hello mate.
      Thanks for this. I only have a copy of the printed book from the publisher so I haven’t seen the PDF. That being said the commoner career path for the two factions are substantially different and all of the above warrior types are clearly shown on page 39 of the hard copy. If you stick your email address up in reply I’ll get in contact with you!

      Cheers

      Jamie

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    2. Thanks for your fast response. My email is evilaltaperdomo@lincoln.ac.uk.
      Take care
      Eliseo

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  4. Nice idea: looking forward to this immensely.

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    1. Cheers mate! I hope you enjoy it!! Let me know what you think!!

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  5. I don't have my book handy. What mm bases for foot troops and what mm for mounted? All round bases, right?

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    1. 25mm round or square for foot troops
      40mm round or 25mm by 50mm rectangular for mounted

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  6. Wonderful game, thanks! Is there a roster sheet available for printing anywhere?

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    1. Sky;

      Apologies for the delayed response. I will try and get one posted on the Osprey website ASAP!!

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  8. Now I have been dipping my feets in skirmish wargaming since the early era of Mordheim...I've played quite a few skirmish systems, red even more of them and I think I can safelty say, that I know a good game when I see one, and this my friends is in fact a very good game. It has everything a good skirmish needs (looking specialy @ campain part of the rules - those that do not fight work for the good of the warband - brilliant idea!). The rest of the rules are more than good in comparition to other systems, and in my humble opinion falling just slightly behind only to those made by Mr. Faust in his genius BoB. Superb work Mr. Gordon! Thank You for a very well written system, and I hope we will hear more form You :-)

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    1. Damian! Thank you very much for your kind words!! I’m glad you’re enjoying the game, especially the campaign element!!

      If you fancy taking some photos and doing a battle report then let me know and I’ll post them on here!!

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  9. Glad I came across this blog. Order from Amazon just today.

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