Hi gang.
Our small but intrepid gaming group decided to try out a summer campaign of Open Combat. All very short and sweet, five players each meeting the others twice. So everyone plays eight games and as it should be able to get two games in one session we can hopefully bring the campaign to a successful end.
Open Combat is a generic "Sword and Shield" skirmish ruleset with built in campaign rules, published by
Second Thunder. It has lived a while in PDF form but was released as a hardback rulebook recently following a very successful kickstarter. When I say "Sword and Shield" it's because while it can be used for fantasy figures it doesn't have any special rules for those typical fantasy staples like short and burly dwarves, firebreathing dragons and magic wielding spellcasters. The system caters for any figures though and since you decide the stats of your figures yourself you can use fantasy figures, but to call it a fantasy system is a bit much. Simply put it's an excellent and open combat game -- hence the name.
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| The Rulebook. At least a picture of it from the Second Thunder webstore. |
When creating your warband you simply look at your miniatures and decide their stats -- as long as you use the same number of Renown (or points) as your opponent the game will be balanced. There are five stats: Speed, Attack, Defence, Fortitude (hit points) and Mind. Each point in each stat costs one Renown. If you want some equipment like a sword or bow that costs one Renown each too. Skills like Intimidate or Shield Bash also costs a Renown. If your model has armour and you want to reflect that simply increase Defence. It's deceptively simple but tactically very clever. You can simulate spells by giving your magic user ranged weapons for magic missile type spells and relevant skills for boost or mind attack spells -- things like Leap, Raise Skeletons or Heal are missing though.
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| The Voluptuous Vixens from the Village of Voluptuous Vixens. Yes the name is a lure to attract easy prey. |
One problem with a totally free environment is that my view of how tough or effective different figures are can differ from my opponent's which causes a slight disconnect -- I might think that an Attack value of 5 is average and give that to my support figures while my opponent thinks that 5 is very high and gives it to his main fighter figure -- the game still works and will be balanced since my opponent will have more figures than me, but seeing the club-armed peasant hold his own against a knight will feel a bit strange perhaps. With that in mind the rulebook does contain a lot of sample characteristics and sample warbands with explanations about their design philosophy.
