A thank you to Malev Da Shinobi for reaching out and supplying a copy of the rules for review. This game is now up on Kickstarter to order a physical copy of the rules. 

In today’s crowded market of skirmish wargames there is often the promise of low-model-count combined with interesting rules so that you can play on the kitchen table at a low cost of entry while still having fun. Sometimes that’s still too large an ask. I’m sure that you, the reader, have often pondered why there isn’t a skirmish game that uses a single sprue of plastic foot knights with zero terrain investment that you can play on a piece of A4 paper. For our American readers that is a piece of paper that is slightly more narrow and slightly longer than your standard ‘letter’ size.

Good news reader! This game now exists and it’s as minis-agnostic as you want it to be, too. All you need to start playing are:

• Six to twelve models, loosely representing knights
• A piece of paper
• A handful of six sided dice, at least twenty
• The rules

To be honest this is not something I ever thought I’d needed, or even wanted, in a wargame. When I first saw this game I assumed what you might be assuming, too, that there’s no way that this could be a full sized wargame. On a sheet of paper that small? Really? No chance that could be complicated enough to warrant playing over and over again, how could it? After all, most skirmish games have you playing on at least a 3’x2′ table if not a 4’x4′ or larger. These are even 28mm scale models! Where do they move??

Well it can be, and is, extremely good. If that’s all you wanted to know then you’re welcome for not leaving you in suspense! I like this a lot and am already thinking of various micro projects I can do for it to play with friends.

Micro Skirmish, Semi-Historical

We’ve recently been talking about Scale a lot in the Historical wargaming mines and I’m going to count this game under that umbrella because it’s just as historical as Saga is. When we talk about what a skirmish game is that can vary from a handful of models per side up to a few dozen models, which can be confusing. Greathelm is the former where you play with a handful of minis per side, as little as three and as many as you like; the recommended number is six per player in a two-player game. The other part of scale is size of minis and for this game it’s been made for 28-32mm sized minis which will cover you for many historical popular historical manufacturers as well as popular fantasy miniatures as well. Having played some of it I think it could absolutely work with 15mm miniatures if you wanted to halve your distances and play on an even smaller sheet of paper, which could make an incredibly cool travel game. I really do love that to play this game all I had to do was pack a dozen (magnetised) minis into a metal lunchbox, print out a couple pieces of paper, and strongarm a friend into playing with me.

The rules centre around you using “knights” on foot, not mounted, with advanced rules for a variety of weapons even including ranged weapons. There’s no list building you need to worry about, all of the balance comes with the advantages and drawbacks of each weapon, so all you need to worry about is what’s on the physical model you are using and making some form of distinction of what’s what. The developer has even said that you can “reskin” the game as you like, too, and with rules for various hefts of armour you can very easily use any fantasy or historical models that you have to hand! No need for them to be of the medieval era and no need to have them fighting against enemies that “make sense” either. Want to see who would win between a handful of Crusader knights and Lizardmen? Why not! Get it on the board, it’s all just for fun!

Actually Playing

Like many skirmish games you start each turn by rolling initiative. Unlike most skirmish games this isn’t just one dice but is a number of dice equal to the number of models you control on the board plus one additional dice. To a minimum of three dice so that you’re not entirely left without hope near the end of a game. Each player then takes all of these dice and organises them into neat little rows to distinctly show how many of each they have; the player with the most 6’s wins initiative and activates a model first. If there’s no 6’s or equal 6’s then you compare your 5’s and so on until you have a winner; if you both roll the exact same dice then congrats, just roll off or something. You can also re-roll some dice, too, so you won’t necessarily be stuck with a terrible roll.

Players take it in turns activating any model they like on the table to perform actions that correlate to the initiative step. Players take it in turns to activate models starting at Initiative Step 6 until each of their dice in that Step are spent before moving onto Step 5, and so on. Instead of activating a model in that step a player can move that dice to the next step below, giving you the option to always have dice available to attack but depending on your roll it might take a few actions until you get to swing. During initiative step 6 models are able to be activated to Run to move 6″ but that’s all they can do! You are free to keep activating the same model multiple times in a turn without any penalty but if they rush up the table then they’re sure to be outnumbered with allies too far back to help, and that will always end badly!

I really, really, like this implementation of how to activate models and as far as I’m aware this is an entirely unique activation system which I’m a real sucker for. Historical (and Historical-adjacent) games really do have the most innovative mechanics, you might not think so, it’s nuts. It also just makes a lot of sense to me for a skirmish game, it means that the player that rolls better for the turn won’t simply be running a murder spree on the other player; that person will get to make the first attack but that’s after four whole steps of movement and bashing before it happens giving you plenty of time to regroup and get ready for when the blows start coming.

Running and Walking are the first things you get to do in the turn and you’ll want to be careful to not move too far ahead with just one or two models or else they might find themselves alone and getting picked on later in the game. These actions also give the model momentum tokens which can be spent later on for bonuses to attacks but we’ll get to that in the next section. A knight can only have up to three momentum tokens at a time so there’s sort of a limit to how much running around is worth doing.

Moving is otherwise very simple and very free. The only thing you can’t do, really, is move across other models bases. Being base to base with enemies doesn’t hamper or slow movement in any way either, you can simply walk away from combat. Bashing an enemy lets you move the enemy model which is very powerful in any game and here it happens after all of the faster paced, momentum-giving, movement occurs leaving your opponent with a model out of position and without momentum for any ensuing fights; it does require a successful Clash test to happen, though, which I’ll be covering in the next section.

Attacking and Defending

That’s all well and good but how do I kill the other guys? That’s the question you should be asking by now. For starters, every model has three health so they’re going to normally take three hits to be taken out. Initiative steps 4, 2, and 1 are all clash test actions which means they won’t automatically happen, you have to roll some dice! When using an action with a clash test you first decide if you want to spend any momentum tokens that knight has before rolling one dice, each token spent will give you +1 to the result that you roll. Defending knights cannot use momentum to defend so going in swinging with multiple tokens can make it very difficult to defend against! Before rolling off the defending knight must choose what they’re going to do between dodging, parrying, riposting, or blocking; not all options are available to every knight however, only knights with shields are able to block and many weapons will stop a knight from using a riposte. Each option will stop all damage if the defence was successful and will then have an additional effect unless you simply blocked. Dodging allows you to move up to 1″ while parrying will give your model a momentum token and riposting deals a point of damage back to the attacker instead without any chance of stopping it! What I really like here is a very clear rule that if the defending knight forgets to declare their defence before dice are rolled then the choice is assumed to have been a parry.

The attacking model needs to roll equal to, or higher, than the defending model to win the Clash with extra bonuses from outnumbering your opponent with friendly models and from various weapons or items that your knight may be carrying. If the attacker wins the Clash then the defender gets to try and make an armour roll. Rolling a 6 will fully block any incoming damage while a 1 will make them suffer an additional point of damage; results of 2-5 simply deal normal damage depending on if it was a Fast or Heavy attack.

Arms and Armour

In the basic rules there’s no distinction between different weapons, simply if a model is carrying a shield or not. In the advanced rules you’ll have options between one-handed or two-handed weapons (which cannot be used alongside shields) as well as ranged weapons, bows and crossbows, paired with a dagger. Each weapon has a built-in advantage with some coming with reasonable and expected drawbacks. For example the simple arming sword will give you +1 to light melee attack rolls with no drawback; a flail also gives +1 to light melee attacks but stops you from using the riposte or parry defence while also denying ripostes from your opponents keeping your knight safe from retaliatory strikes. It’s best not to think too much about what weapons are “best” and from the games I’ve played so far none really stick out either.

Ranged weapons add a whole other level to the game. Bows shoot during initiative step 2 while crossbows are slower and can be shot during initiative step 1. Both have unlimited range given how small scale this skirmish is and simply need to draw line of sight from your mini to theirs. There’s no shooting at models with friendly knights in base contact, either, making them far less useful weapons in the late game. Clash tests with ranged weapons are done in the same way as melee but the defending model can only ever make a dodge or block (and only if they have a shield!) when getting shot at. If you’re using some terrain then barricades or other defensible pieces will give your knight a better chance of shrugging off the shot, too.

Similarly with armour, in the basic rules you don’t have to worry about any distinctions of what they models are wearing but in advanced rules each model will be wearing heavy, medium, or light armour. Heavy armour is the standard and doesn’t add anything different. Medium armour will suffer an extra point of damage on armour rolls of 1-2 instead of just a 1 but also adds +1 to all dodge rolls. Light armour will instead take that extra damage on a 1-3 while having +1 to all dodge rolls and also +1″ to all moves. It’s up to you whether you want to run sneakier, less armoured, models that can pick their fights and dodge attacks easier while getting picked up off the board much quicker when they are hit!

There are also whole lists of Items and like rings, banners, musical instruments, relics, throwable weapons alongside Consumable Items of healing remedies or oils that grant various effects. The advanced action list lets you make use of items during initiative step 4 after most movement has happened but before any attacks.

Items

Yes, there’s more equipment options. Two of your six Knights may take a Worn, Consumable, or Use Item. Worn Items is a list of rings, amulets, and belts that afford a small bonus and you roll a D12 to determine what you get. Use Items is a D6 list of items that you can use during the game from a banner or relic to lovers handkerchief giving powerful effects but that you need to activate during Initiative Step 4 to benefit from. Consumable Items is a D8 list of once-per-game things you can….consume, like potions, typically for healing or to throw a fire pot. In our games we rolled for a Worn Item each and then just chose a Use Item since we had a banner and wanted to use it. You could simply choose all the items I suppose but that could easily start to stack up with a knight or two that’s just fully kitted out and hard to take down; maybe that’s something that’d be fun, you decide.

Then comes the list of Upgraded Items that you can give to one of your six knights including a better weapon giving your knight re-rolls of 1 when performing certain actions or re-rolling certain Armour results (which could possibly end up worse if you re-roll into a pierced result!).

Lastly are the Legendary Items which are only available during Campaign Play. Yes, this game of 12 models total that is played on the smallest board size I’ve ever seen for 28mm scaled models has a campaign. I’ll get to that later on. These Legendary Items are, expectedly, very powerful and we threw one each into our normal game for the fun of it and it was very amusing. The Skeleton Lord ended up with a great sword that did an extra point of damage whenever he successfully Riposted and the Chivalrous Knight was given a piece of armour that only make him move 1″ when Bashed instead of the normal 3″ making him harder to move out of position.

I love all of this, it adds an extra depth to the game which you can take as much or as little as you like.

End of Turn

After all of the initiative step dice are fully used up it’s time to see just how courageous your knights are still feeling. Whichever player has sustained the most damage on their knights across the game so far starts testing for their courage first, or the player with fewer models remaining if damage points is tied. Any knight that has sustained any damage and is in base contact with an enemy has to test their courage; you may simply choose to fail if you wish too. To test courage there’s a lot of math involved but the short of it is that the more damage sustained and the more enemies around the harder the test will be to pass; a roll of a 6 however will always succeed, so just roll 6’s and you’re all set! If you do somehow fail to pass or simply roll a 6 then your knight testing is removed from play as a coward.

Each scenario will tell you how many rounds to play so as long as the game hasn’t ended then you go back up to the start to roll initiative dice and and progress through each phase all over again!

Terrain

This is fully optional. If you want to keep it simple with your piece of paper and not have to carry around any terrain to set up and play then you go right ahead. If you do want to add a bit more depth then you’re also very welcome to, and I’m a sucker for a bit of scatter terrain. Various features can include barricades, doors, various elevations, enclosures, explosives, ladders, or throwables just to name a few of the seventeen different types. You can easily go all-out and play in a cramped section of city with stairways, rooftops, bridges, or whatever else you might like. On the simpler end of the scale throwing down a few scatter pieces of shrubbery (like dried moss) or a tree or two to block off a bit of movement and give some natural defence against shooting can suddenly add a lot more depth with very little added cost.

After just a few games I’m already considering how I can create little book nook style A4 sized boards that would look cool on my book shelf and work as unique playing fields. Something like a castle battlement with a few levels and stairs, a back alley in a Mordheim style with ladders and balconies, or the inside of a tavern with upturned tables and a bar to hide behind. I don’t know when the last time a game has captured my imagination in such a way for terrain/boards; that’s probably because I live in a one bed flat and have largely dismissed the ability to have terrain or boards.

Questing on Campaign

That’s right, this game has Campaign Progression. I could not believe this. The Scenarios are already set up to be mini-campaigns with staged parts to them and work perfectly to play two to three games in a row, easily done in one evening, levelling up your knights as you go. Your knights will earn “achievements” in game which will get them a name and then renown. They’ll become harder to kill, auto-pass bravery checks, be able to pierce enemy armour easier, or a few other affects of your choosing.

They’ll go from being nameless schmucks and rank up to have a whole name as a Novitiate before become a Sir (or Ser if you’re feeling medieval) and eventually, hopefully, a Lord. There’s about 5 full pages of various achievements your knights can accomplish to gain renown, the hardest part will simply be remembering to track them all! You’ll then have an after battle phase where you hold a feast for your still-living knights, manage promotions, and find out just how gruesome some deaths of your knights were; of course you don’t have to do this last part if you’re simply so good that you don’t lose any of your knights to begin with. Just roll 6’s on armour, easy!

Taking Vows and Kicking Culets

I’ve been saying it in our Discord to the rest of the Historicals crew and in the best way possible this game has absolutely no right to be as good as it is. I am gobsmacked by the depth and the amount of fun for a game that uses so few minis on the smallest table size I’ve ever seen for 28mm scaled models. I roped two non-historical gaming friends into trying it while I sat back and checked through rules and we were all cracking up having a great time, thanks Joe and Harry for helping me try this and for an evening of hilarious moments. Like many games simply rolling 6’s is a great tactic, as it turns out…

Get the game. Try the game. I’ll probably be following this up with some hobby related articles on various ways I (and maybe others?) have made some creative small boards to play games on. Seriously this game has no right being as good as it is, but it is, and I just want to play more of it.

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