The original The Baron’s War took my local wargaming group by storm. It provided the “These are my extremely customized guys” feeling that many players of older editions of Warhammer were missing from the more modern incarnation of those games, and with skirmish-level model demands and accessible plastic kits from Wargames Atlantic and Victrix, it provided an easy on-ramp to historical gaming and is now the subject of a once monthly Baron’s War gaming day that’s building towards a campaign.
With that level of enthusiasm, I’ve been both eager and anxious for the new edition. And while we wait for Goonhammer’s review copy to make its way across the Atlantic, a PDF copy of the rules lets us see what’s changed.
The TL;DR version? The new edition of The Baron’s War preserves the feeling that has made the game so compelling, while getting rid of many of the ambiguities that added friction both for how you play games and also how you build your forces before the game begins.
Table of Contents
Cleanup in Aisle 1215
As you would hope from any new edition of a game that isn’t “We’re reworking this from the group up,” a lot of the content for The Baron’s War Second Edition is focused on tidying up the ruleset, getting rid of ambiguity, and etcetera. A lot of these are things that feel like you could logically arrive at (units can only kill what they can see with ranged shooting), but which weren’t clearly there at the outset. There’s other bits of cleanup like that – for example, making it clear that you always roll a d6 when you charge, even if you are already within your standard movement, because the 1 or 6 will matter for momentum.
The dynamic between compulsory actions (i.e. dealing with Broken units) and new actions has also been clarified, which is important for a game where alternating activations and the activation economy are potentially major factors in the cadence of a game. In this case, Broken units must be activated first, but you still alternate, which means if you have a lot of Broken units and your opponent doesn’t, you’re still switching off, and they may be making new moves while you’re still trying to get your panicking troops back under control.
Other changes are just reducing cognitive overhead – like bonuses now add to rolls, rather than decreasing the threshold you need to clear. The difference between Broken and Shocked and which happens when under what circumstances has now been made far more clear by just getting rid of Shocked. This alone would be worth the price of the new book, as this always necessitated our group looking up which was which or what happens if both are in play, slowing things down a lot.
Some of these changes are pretty significant. For example, the beta rules from the first edition about retinue commanders participating in combat are now just The Rules – your commander can participate, and is potentially quite powerful if they do so, but in exchange, those enemies who are in contact with them can target them, with potentially disastrous consequences. Their multiple actions can now also be spent to boost their attack or defense, rather than getting other units to do things, opening up the niche for a genuine dedicated combat-focused Baron vs. a more potent field commander.
Secondary commanders now also have a role, in that they can also command units, but only for reactions, rather than your retinue commander who can command both reactions and actions.
Finally, there’s a lot of clarification as to how ranged shooting works. This makes a lot of sense – so much of the errata and advice surrounding the first edition of Baron’s War was addressing the (intended and justified) lethality of shooting. The new rules clarify how to shoot at things that are partially hindered, straddling long vs. short range, in cover, and so on. These aren’t all nerfs to shooting either – now shooting over multiple obstacles induces multiple -1 penalties, but doesn’t completely negate shooting, allowing you to still fish for high rolls on the often crowded The Baron’s War boards (the advice to have twelve pieces of area or LoS-blocking terrain on the standard board still remains). One of the impacts of this is the suggestion that your terrain be based to prevent ambiguity there. As one of the people whose responsible for maintaining a club’s terrain that’s expected to be potentially useful for multiple game systems over a myriad of both historical and fantasy periods as well as a number of potential different backgrounds of grass, muddy streets, and so on. I’m not a fan, but from a clarity perspective I get it.
A Marked Reduction in “Feel Bad Moments”
It’s my personal theory that game mechanics that result in a lack of interaction between players tend to result in A Bad Time. This is why, again in my opinion, the traditional Tau archetypes in 40K get a lot of hate despite being statistically middling armies a lot of the time. Because there is fun unrelated to winning and losing, and “I do things and you put your models away” tends not to be that fun.
The first edition of The Baron’s War had a handful of these, and as far as I can tell, they’re largely gone.
Critical Hits
The worst offender was probably critical hits – that a roll of 0 on a d10 not only automatically hit, but could only be defended on a roll of 0, with no shield saves allowed. Conceptually I liked the idea – that freak spear thrust into a weak point in a knight’s armor, or an arrow jutting through a helmet visor, and statistically they were rare, but with the way human beings actually interact with randomness, they were a problem. It raises the specter of of a game-winning roll your opponent can do nothing about, and I’ve been on the giving end of one of those rolls twice. And while it’s nice to win games, “Yeah, that unit’s just…gone.” usually isn’t how I prefer to do it.
Those days are over. These types of hits are primarily the purview of crossbows, and then only at short range.
Bodkin
Speaking of crossbows, the Bodkin rule, which let you ignore one defense die if your opponent was wearing mail, is gone. This was another one of these “no interaction” type of rules – a thing happens and you don’t get to do anything, and while it was a decent way to try to model the threat crossbows posed to armored fighters, I’m glad to see it gone. There was also, to my mind, a little ambiguity in how to implement this rule in game, which means I’m doubly glad to see it off.
Crossbows remain terrifying, even without this bonus, but with more interaction and less confusion.
Spears
The old mechanic for spears, trying to represent their superior reach, was another one of these points of non-interaction: unless you were armed similarly, you couldn’t counter-attack a unit of spears. Beyond the non-interaction bit (just sit there and get poked with sharp sticks…), it oddly made spears better on the attack rather than defending. This too has been fixed – you get to fight spear units if they charge you, but they have an extra inch of range in terms of who can fight, which means they can likely manage a third rank. This opens up a lot of interesting opportunities – combining this with the Brace ability spearmen have makes spearmen – especially spearmen who can limit the frontage of the cavalry charging them – genuinely quite dangerous. It’s also made me rethink Spearmen as my default unit to take as Green quality to meet the 10% requirement.
Reaction Shooting
Previously, if a ranged unit got charged, it was largely helpless to do anything – it could take the Defend reaction and try to weather the storm, or optimistically take the Attack Back reaction and hope their opponent completely fumbles the combat. There’s a new reaction option, Reaction Shooting, which allows them to fire on charging opponents as long as they started more than their standard movement away. This is treated as a long range shot, so no critically hitting crossbows, but there’s the potential to cause a casualty or two depending on what’s being shot, and that can be impactful – especially with damaged units and pushing them into morale problems. And when it comes down to it, it’s another addition of interaction where there wasn’t anything before.
Retinue Construction Improvements
Building a force in the first edition of The Baron’s War was, to be blunt, complex. The primary issue stemmed from how the unit entries had the various stat bonuses for the default equipment built in. You had to undo this to switch out equipment, and there were a lot of complexities here – some gear had a negative point cost, as it would be cheaper than the default gear, but that assumed you were replacing, not adding gear. This also meant undoing things in the unit’s stat line, and when you combine all of this…things were just a pain.
This is now much more clear – there are essentially now three stat blocks, one for Baron-level commanders, one for Lord-level commanders, and one for “Just dudes”, each with their respective experience levels. Everything else is modified by an ability or a weapon, and those modifications are much more clear. Similarly, all equipment needs to be purchased – this is divided into the things you must purchase and the things you may purchase. Some of these are varied, like the array of options available to a Mounted Baron, and some are very straightforward, like Crossbowmen, who must buy a crossbow, and may purchase padded or mail armor.
Also introduced here is essentially faction-wide rules, based on which type of army, or “Retinue” you’re choosing. At the moment, the only option is “Feudal European”, which comes with two special rules — both of which benefit cavalry charges, one potentially triggering a morale check against charged infantry, and the other allowing Mounted Knights to draw line of sight through a single unit of screening infantry if those infantry pass an order check, in exchange for a morale penalty. Basically, some knights yelling “Get out of my way, bloody peasant!”.
Given Outremer and Death and Taxes exist, we can presume there will be other factions with different rules. This may be a good way to make an army off in the Holy Land feel distinct from one in the English countryside beyond “Well, they’re different colors…”
What Was Lost
All of this does come with a cost – mostly in terms of the available variety and customization options for building your retinue. Some combinations, like Sergeants with both crossbows and melee weapons, which was one of the scourges of our local group, is no longer an option. Nor are mounted Sergeants with crossbows, or a crossbow armed Veteran Sergeant commander.
Honestly, as much as I wanted a mass of crossbow-armed mounted raiders, this is probably for the best.
The sheer number of possible traits has also been pared down a lot. This is, again, likely a good thing – there were a vast number of traits all in the same genre (i.e. “My Commander is scary”, “This unit is elite”, etcetera) that overlapped each other, which almost invariably means there are some must-takes and some never-takes if you’re doing even the smallest amount of optimizing. It does however mean that there’s a narrower set of ways to make your commanders and groups unique – for example, one of my commanders for a planned campaign, “Red Simon”, carried a two-handed weapon and shield. That option is simply gone.
What Remains and Final Thoughts
Despite the somewhat reduced customization options, the second edition of The Baron’s War still retains the delightful granularity many people, including myself, look for in skirmish games. At its core, what the new edition feels like is exactly what it is – a polished cleanup of a promising new game that moves it into being a more mature title. Sanding down some rough edges, getting rid of some concepts that don’t serve gameplay. It’s more, by being slightly less, and a strong foundation to launch from. Reading through the rulebook, I’m getting more excited about potential revisits of Outremer and Death and Taxes, and whatever else Andy Hobday can cook up. While the actual First Baron’s War is an interesting setting, one that our group has found perfect for campaign play with its capacity to switching sides, outlaws, betrayal, and generalized room for opportunistic shenanigans, there’s definitely legs to the system itself, and with everything trimmed down a little, there’s now room to add more.
At the end of the day, the second edition of The Baron’s War is a cleaner, more accessible version of the game, with some much needed and welcome streamlining and clarification. It elevates what was already a fairly approachable historical game and makes it even better, while still clearly holding to the spirit of a game I’ve come to love. For players both new and old, it’s well worth checking out.
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