There’s been a threat on the horizon for a while now. The first indication was a few scattered raids – Vikings, Saxons, Normans. Soon after, wave after wave of plastic kits came over the seas, scouring our wallets and taking over our painting stations. Now, the full terror of the age is abroad – Pillage is here and we have played it!
Thanks to Victrix and Noodle Wargames for sending the rules over for a review. This article contains a clearly labelled affiliate link.
Pillage, the new game from Victrix by Guillame Rousselot of Noodle Wargames, has been accompanied by a fair amount of hype and a massive amount of expectation. Pillage has promised narrative-driven skirmish combat in the early Medieval period, with a heavy focus on adventuring, raiding, swashbuckling and, especially, pillaging. That’s a lot to live up to, so we’ve dived in for a close read, test games and come to the conclusion that it’s a great system for early medieval skirmish.
What is Pillage?
Lenoon: Pillage is a small scale skirmish combat (and looting) game focused in on individual models. You’re running 10-30 models a side, with 30 being a massive game, using an alternating you move-I move-you shoot activation system (fans of Lord of the Rings will be familiar with the basic gameplay structure) that allows for exciting, thoughtful play. It’s a game that puts a lot of emphasis on feeling and looking “right” – you’ll be rummaging through monasteries for gold, plunging out of the darkness on unsuspecting foes and then running off with a chicken under each arm back to the longboats. The core rules are simple, clear and effective, but the real “what is this game” is in the feel of it – this plays like you’re a Viking/Saxon/Norman, telling a story of the Viking age, not playing a game of it.
Pillage is going to be for you if you want to tell some stories with a tight game system that’s dead fun, easy to pick up and can act as a fantastic gateway into historicals. If you’re historicals agnostic, the rulebook and a starter bag will see you up and away. If you’re a veteran, this is going to provide a really interesting change of pace and focus from Saga, the Barons’ War Conquest and Lion Rampant.
Michael O “Mugginns”: I can’t say enough about how good the layout and design are in this book. The designers worked hard on the look and feel a ton and it shows. Frankly, I was worried that since this was a translated game – from French to English, in a first edition, that perhaps it’d have some wonkiness to it – but it’s solid.
I love how they setup the rules design – it starts with defining things that need to be defined, then takes you step by step through an introduction to the rules and the base mechanics. The play setup is all the usual stuff, plus a 4×4 or 3×3 mat depending on game size.
I also really enjoy all the background history that was included. For newbies to historical games, or people new to this period, Europe during this time period can be very confusing, as many countries were named differently or didn’t exist. The author describes everything you need to know about the period and what it was like. Plenty of maps and a timeline from 793 to 1066 are included as well. There’s even a half-page on why the Viking raids happened, including demographics, polygamy, environment, and politics.
How Pillage Works
With a brand new game competing in a fairly crowded space for early medieval rules, we want to focus on some of the key parts of Pillage that make it unique in the space – there’s a lot of good here, and a lot of interesting ideas!
Medieval “What You See Is What You Get”
Lenoon: Pillage is model driven, cinematic, narrative-enabling skirmish gaming. The model-driven bit is important, because this game aims for immersion while keeping gameplay light and quick. WYSIWYG is important – a warrior with a spear has a spear, a mail coat is a mail coat – and you’ll need to choose models accordingly. There’s a nice bit of work here that the early medieval age is “two guys in the same kit from different places hitting each other” that eschews a lot of special rules and nails down that the equipment is the important thing.
Keeping to such a strict WYSIWYG system is fairly unusual for historicals, but it matters here because we’re all about the immersive, at a glance information. Pillage is about what your models can see and do (both literally – LOS is head to head – and figuratively, with no pre-measuring in the game) with what they’ve got. That’s going to be immediately obvious at a look at the table – heavily armed warriors look, move, fight differently to their more lightly armed compatriots. This is absolutely everywhere, from movement – fully armed models move 6 inches, to unarmed 8 – to combat, where defence rolls determine your survival. This feels like it could be quite fiddly, but the advantage is that this game is very clearly designed for Victrix models – handily where Unarmoured, Some Armour and Full Armour are very clearly delineated on the model. It also keeps the visual language of the game consistent – you know your opponent’s guy in chain with a shield is going to be moving slower and hitting harder, and you can tell that at a glance. It might take a bit of getting used to initially, but I’m really sold on the idea.
Michael O “Mugginns”: I think ‘Some Armour’ is such a weird phrase but it works okay. It’s important to know that you’re buying individual models when you build an army list. You could have two guys in Full Armour, six in Some Armour, and 15 Unarmoured. They move and fight individually, so the guesswork about whose stat is whose is clear by looking at the model. Even if you’re using figures from other ranges you should be able to get it clear.
Having different movement rates for different armour types is innovative. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out in scenarios. Clearly if you’re doing a Raid you might want to get in and out fast, so do you take fast Unarmoured guys or slower Full Armoured guys? Do you take a block of Full Armoured guys to hold the center while the Unarmoured guys do the Raid work?
Phases
Pillage works through alternating action phases where both players move, then shoot, then fight. Rules are fast and light touch, but cover just about every action your Vikings/Normans/Bretons/Welsh could possibly want to make. Alternating actions are going to keep all players very involved throughout, and the possibility that you hold, take or lose the initiative will require careful planning.
Michael O “Mugginns”: There are five phases in Pillage, in which both players do all their actions in each phase, starting with the player who won initiative.
Initiative Phase: players roll off, the winner goes first in each phase. If Player A wins Turn 1, and then there is a tie in Turn 2, Player B will win the initiative. It is not set in stone if you win you must go first – you can actually hand it to your opponent and they must then take it!
Movement: Player A moves all the models they want to move, then Player B moves all the models they want to move. Movement is fairly straightforward, as is terrain. Of note: roads give a bonus to movement!
Charges happen in the Movement Phase. You choose the model who is charging, choose the target (without pre-measuring – you cannot measure anything in the game until you’ve declared it). Then the charging model rolls a D3 and adds that to their movement. If they make it, they’ve charged. If they fail, they move half distance.
There are two reactions to charges that happen before the charging model makes contact – a Closing Shot and Fleeing. Closing Shot is fairly straightforward, with a model being killed not finishing its charge, but if they make it in the shooter can’t use their hand weapon or shield in the melee. If they choose to flee, they get a 50% chance of getting away – if they make it, they move their maximum movement away, if they fail, they die automatically if contacted. It’s important to know that if you go first and move a model, it cannot flee in your opponent’s phase. Each model can only charge one other model, so you can split up your combats a little when all charges are done. It’s possible to double team an enemy with two charging models making contact.
There are the normal narrative game rules for movement as well – ladders, jumping, climbing, and even swimming. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen swimming rules in a game but it’s really cool. Your armoured guys are going to swim a lot worse and have the chance of drowning!
Shooting Phase: Shooting is fairly straightforward, and GW game veterans will find it easy. You declare targets, check LOS, check range, then make a Target Roll – if there are intervening obstacles, such as models, hedges, walls, etc. you have to roll for each one. So if Rollo is standing between Aethelthred and Ragnar, and Ragnar looses an arrow at Aethelthred, Roll is hit on a 1-3. If there is a low wall in between in addition, that’ll be hit on a 1-3 if it makes it past our man Rollo.
Then you make a hit roll – for a bow you have a range of 20” – at over 10” you’re -1 to hit. So a Bow against an Unarmoured target hits on a 4+. That UA guy then makes a Defence roll and needs a 6 to save it (SA guy needs a 5+, FA guy needs a 4+). If they fail the Defence roll they take a wound and lose one hit point.
Chieftains (at least one per army) have three hit points. Berserkers, Huscarls, Healers, and Warriors all have one hit point.
Melee Phase: the melee rolls are very similar to ranged rolls. All melee attacks take place simultaneously, so both players will get to attack. Charging grants +1 to hit in the subsequent melee – a pretty good bonus. A model with a spear hits a FA model on a 5+, as an example of how melee works. There are special rules for most of what you’d expect, including raising your shield to add +1 to your defence, but removing your attack ability for that turn.
Fire Phase: this is not about firing guns – this is actual fire! In this phase the player with initiative gets to light fire to stuff, then the opponent gets to. Fire will also spread during this phase.
Lenoon: The existence of the Fire Phase tells you a lot about where Pillage is coming from. You are going to set things on fire. You should. It’s all thatched after all.
Individual Model Focus
Pillage works on the scale of individuals, not units or groups – you’re moving, shooting and fighting with one model each time. Interactions between models in groups (shieldwalls, large melees, support and healers) are clearly defined and, as far as possible, break the game down into one on one combats.
Lenoon: In trying out the game with some extremely unlikely Norman raids on an Egyptian village, I thought that in scaling up to the smaller game size (250gp – about 12 models a side if you go toys over boys) that individual model focus would become a little trying or overly fussy, but the rules are smooth and intuitive enough to keep games moving at a fast rate. After one game I wasn’t looking anything up until I had Normans leaping between buildings and the defenders trying to burn their own barn to stop the looting. A 250gp game recommends a 2 foot square board, so you’re close into the action straight away. I wonder how well the game scales up to 1,000gp (where you could flood the board with 50-60 warriors a side), but I guess we’ll see as I play more games!
There’s a lot of detail and emergent story possible in keeping gameplay based around individuals too – your horse can be shot out from under you, a brave warrior can hold a gap against many foes, you can chase your opponents through buildings or leap between roofs to escape a spreading fire. There’s a lot done with a little here, adding to the feel of managed chaos, individual action and period-appropriate panic.
Pillaging!
Lenoon: Unsurprisingly given the name of the game, there’s a good amount of rules around nicking stuff – whether that’s carting off a couple of pigs or rooting through an isolated saxon church to pick up some nice gold and silver. The pillage rules are straightforward, though require a conversation with your opponent pre-game over what constitutes loot, and they function perfectly well to let your warriors steal things and get away with it. There’s very clear rules around picking up and carrying loot, walking off with mobile loot – including potentially angry geese – and how to tally it up at the end of the game.
This is very much a story driven experience – you can find things lying around, break into cattle pens and walk off with the lot of them, or rummage around for several turns in buildings (just watch out if they get set on fire), while moving with loot is realistic and narratively engaging – pick it up, lose it in melee and hand it off to thralls loading your ships to sail off into the night.
There’s a bit of weirdness in the Pillaging and Looting rules that this is possibly the only game I’ve ever seen that actually stats up how to kidnap children in your raids (5 inch movement, worth three loot each) which is most certainly period accurate, but also real weird. You could definitely do this game, and the otherwise really interesting pillage section, without the rules for carting off (presumably) screaming kids.
What Else Do You Get?
Michael O “Mugginns”: Rules for buildings, because you’ll be running around them and setting them on fire. Each special model type (chieftain, berserker, huscarl, healer) has a few special rules or actions that they can do. Special equipment like banners, horns and even hounds are included. Shieldwalls are fully detailed, with rules for movement and ranks. Naval combat and ships are included, to my excitement – as I need to have boats on the table when I’m playing a raid. Even weather and time of day is included – the special rules for this game hit almost every checkbox.
There are five detailed scenarios included: Pitched Battle, Pillage!, St. Brice’s Day Massacre (a more specialized scenario), Landing, and Pilgrimage. Each scenario is between eight and 12 turns long.
Lenoon: A shedload of factions to represent Northern Atlantic Europe (with a focus on Britain and France) and ways to customise your leaders and armies. Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Irish, Scots, Picts, Franks, Bretons and Welsh are all present and correct in the rule book (Victrix have released free rules for Eastern European factions on their website), and distinguished by differing points costs and weapons options. Simple decisions on cost and availability do a lot to distinguish armies – Vikings are on foot and can take Berserkers, Normans can go full armour mounted, Welsh and Irish armies can take free javelins. There’s a surprising depth to army selection even though the idea of the game is “a guy is a guy wherever they come from”.
There’s also a surprisingly chunky hobby section with good intro material here for painting and constructing. I can see this working as an intro game to historicals for those more used to far-future painting, or an intro game altogether! There’s a really fantastic terrain guide as well, covering a lot of different options for effective home made terrain. This is really nice to see and would be a good, simple reference book for DIY terrain.
Challenges
Lenoon: Pillage is absolutely a great ruleset you’ll enjoy playing, but it very much aims at an audience with at least some pre-existing familiarity with wargaming, for all that the intro hobby section is one of the best around. Occasional bits like “deployment can change and it’s up to the players to decide” show that this is going to be a great “come over and play” game and will get a lot of play in wargaming clubs, but it’s not set up for standalone pick up and play.
While the rules are definitely narrative-enabling, letting you feel the impact of each model and choice you’re making, the narrative content in the book is pretty light. We have five very interesting and mainly asymmetric scenarios, rules for building your armies and customising warlords, but that’s more or less it. This is very much a “here’s the sandbox, get playing” kind of game as it stands, and veteran gamers – or anyone with the imagination and willingness to experiment with scenarios, forces and setups – will immediately be able to grab the narrative threads the gameplay dangles and run with them, yes-and-ing the dice rolls to tell a story. For newer gamers, or players taking a first step into historicals (this would be a very good ruleset to do so after all), that narrative is going to be a little harder to find.
Get Pillaging!
As you can probably tell from the fact we’re on 3,000 words of review, we really like what we see here. If you want a Medieval skirmish game with a great rule set and a huge amount of future potential for expansion, exploration and narrative creation, get it. Simple as that.
It certainly looks like Victrix is going all-in on the ruleset, with at release starter warbands (look for some review coverage of these coming out soon!), expansion plans and even sprues of cows, sheep, goats and geese. Well supported, this game has immense potential for intuitive, cinematic play in the early Medieval. Right now, Pillage is a great gameplay experience that you’ll almost certainly enjoy. With more to come from Victrix, it could – and should – be absolutely brilliant. Sharpen your sword, strap up your shield and lock your chickens away, because it is absolutely time to Pillage.
If you like the look of Pillage and want to pick it up, why not support Goonhammer at the same time by buying through our affiliate link?
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
