Specifically, I made armies for the Barylistan, Stygustan and Zheman, which are modeled after Persian, Egyptian and Assyrian ancients. I used the basic troops and random recruiting rolls -- by the way, I really liked the recruiting tables as they give variation but maintain consistency in each army.
Using the solo system given in the rules and some intuition about formations, my first playtest game started like the following picture. I played the yellow-tinted Barylistans in the bottom against an automated Zheman army at the top.
I didn't finish this first playtest after I noticed some mistakes but I learned a few things:
- Despite the advice in the book for not charging fresh infantry with cavalry, for some reason I thought this would work with chariots (which are nearly the same, game-wise.) It didn't and it ruined the Zheman army.
- It seems wiser to make less bodies of more units than those small bodies like I made. My body of two skirmisher units on the left was quickly dispatched by archers, for instance. There really is strength in numbers in RRtK.
- I also managed to trap cavalry between the enemy and my own infantry, resulting in taking extra hits due to being unable to retire. Really awful.
As with other Two Hour Wargames products, it takes some time to actually wrap your head around everything, and you have to browse the discussion group (or ask questions) to clarify a point or two. However, I feel that after this first test I got most of the basics. I still have to make a few more test runs (to try magic and heroes, for instance) and maybe make a "second generation" of counters before I can have a reasonable battle to report but I'm really liking it.
1 comment:
Meant to comment on this yesterday but my android phone wouldn't let me. Good to see you playing RRtK. Thanks for the link, I've been playing with pretty scruffy card counters until this latest report. I would like to play with miniatures but can't seem to make the time to finish painting any.
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