Legendary Battles is a conscious attempt to take the best of fantasy and historical miniatures and mould it into the best of both. The result we hope is a playable, enjoyable but also insightful game of massed Mediaeval combat.
Fantasy massed battles have incredible colour and verve. Reality can be stretched to heighten historical fact. Sadly, the rule sets to date can not resist going totally overboard with chrome laden rules which reduce games to glacial paced affairs where the winner knows the greatest number of trick moves or simply out argues his opponent.
Historical rule sets are based on historical/actual abilities of armies. They teach how tactics and weapons affected the outcome of battles and empires. These rule sets tend to get bogged down in minutiae and play at a pace too slow for tournament games or multi-scenario campaigns. Also fantasy armies cannot be used with these rules. This is all quite ironic since the most popular role-playing game started as a fantasy supplement to a historical rules set; Chainmail.
Legendary Battles was written so that clubs and conventions could put on massed battles that both fantasy and historical gamers could participate in without giving up the element of gaming they enjoy.
The rulebook is in three major parts; Chapter 1-4 sets out the rules, Chapter 5 describes how to build and outfit an army, while Chapters 6 and 7 are dedicated to scenarios including a tournament set. Chapter 8 sets out the play aids and the optional magic rules are in Chapter 9.
The booklet for the most part is also divided into a wide column, which details rules, and a narrow side column, which presents examples and figures. The side column serves as a lighter introduction into the concepts and also as a visual index since the figures are opposite the rules pertaining to it.
We have strived to make the rules accessible to all gamers and we invite your comments and suggestions for further expansion of the system.
Keith Martens
Does the world really need another set of miniatures rules? I have asked myself that question a lot during the past three years. The answer is very simple: No! What we, do need is a set of rules that work for this scale and genre.
Three years ago a friend of mine convinced me to build a fantasy miniatures army. I have always been an avid fantasy fiction reader and a dedicated gamer. This seemed like an ideal way to combine two of my recreational interests. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, a thousand dollars and many hours of painting later, I discovered that fantasy wargaming consisted of setting up your miniatures, making your initial moves and then arguing over the rules.
Legendary Battles was born. I began with a few guiding principles and a few good friends:
1. The game must be easily playable. Good games do not have endless rules, charts and exceptions. Can you imagine playing a game of chess in which the queen gets plus one to hit if her knight is in an unencumbered supporting position provided that ...well you get the idea.
2. The game must avoid arguments. I analysed the games I had played to identify the sources of conflict. Most of the problems arose from ambiguous or conflicting rules. This meant that the game mechanics must be simple and universal.
3. The game must not have "bunny rules". For the uninformed, a bunny rule is an obscure rule or circumstance which one player (the fox) springs upon the other (the bunny) at a critical moment in the game. The more complicated the rules, the more opportunity for bunny rules.
4. The game must be enjoyable. Designing a good game is a time consuming and frustrating experience. After we were finished, this had to be a game that I would like to play. In fact, I divide the cost of my army by the number of enjoyable games played to determine, the cost of my entertainment. The only problem is that I keep buying miniatures.
5. The game must be won by good tactics. If you use dice, there will be an element of luck involved. Good sound tactics should win, in the long run, against rash tactics and lucky dice rolling.
Bridges The Gap - Legendary Battles can be played and enjoyed by both historical and fantasy wargamers; we have the play test experience to prove it.
Standard Basing - the stands and the measurements remain the same size regardless of the size of the miniatures used. This means that people with different scales can play together. Going to a smaller scale means simply putting more figures on a stand.
No Formations - in medieval times, armies were mostly organized mobs. We would rather that the players concentrate on being in the right place rather than in the right formation. We have assumed that the units will take the most advantageous formation they can muster.
Movement Trays - the use of movement trays is not new or unique. The movement tray is used to determine the position and facing of a unit not just to hold stands.
Disrupted Stands - removing disrupted stands from the movement tray allows us to easily keep track of the combat effectiveness of a given unit. Disrupted stands visually show the wounded, disheartened and tired troops which follow the main unit.
Missile Fire Disrupts - missile fire cannot normally be used by itself to eliminate an enemy unit. A player must eventually commit to hand to hand combat in order to win. This means that good tactics, not good missile fire are needed to win.
Basic Army Structure - instead of having a complicated set of rules about army construction, we have told the players what types of units and minimum number of stands they must have in a given size of army. They are free to allocate their resources in any way they see fit.
Balanced Point Costs - the point value system was crafted with extreme care. The point values are based on mathematical relationships. Two armies of the same point value will on average fight to a draw. This has been validated not only in play testing but also in millions of computer simulations; yes, that's right we built a computer model.
Tournament Games - with such a finely tuned points system it is possible to play tournament games. We believe so strongly in this aspect of the game that we have devoted one section to tournament play, and we hold an open tournament every year.
Barry Richardson