Para Bellum Release Conquest: First Blood Skirmish Rules
October 16, 2020 by brennon
Para Bellum Wargames has now released their FREE skirmish rules for playing 35mm clashes in the world of Conquest. Whilst The Last Argument Of Kings deals with the massive clashes between mighty armies, First Blood takes things to a more personal level.
Conquest: First Blood // Para Bellum Wargames
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First Blood has been designed so that it works for both veteran Conquest players and also those new to the hobby. The same resources and basic characteristics of Conquest are required to play but it has its own distinct flavour. Here are some of the key features of First Blood.
- Rules and mechanics that are born from Conquest (i.e. one is a success and six a failure, the turn has the same structure, players activate one regiment at a time and perform actions).
- Plays with a far smaller Model count (depending on army size, they could start playing with one hero and two regiments)
- The square Stands of The Last Argument of Kings are not used; in First Blood, Models are placed and move much more freely than in “block” movement, making it a pure Skirmish game, despite the relatively increased number of models allowed in it.
- Veteran Conquest players will find that their Regiment and Character models can be fielded in First Blood. On the other hand, a First Blood entire Regiment comprises of the contents of a single box, and you could build multiple smaller First Blood Regiments with a single Conquest expansion, making it ideal for newcomers.
- The play style of First Blood is much faster (faster even than Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings!) mostly due to allowing fewer Models on the field.
- It requires a table smaller than your average Mass Battle game, making it both easier for newcomers and an excellent option for veterans, offering fast and easy-to-setup battles.
- Utilizes Characters in a different way than Conquest – while in the Mass Battle game of Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings Characters are leaders of Regiments, here they are “Units” of their own right and do not join normal Regiments, followed rather by their retinue or fighting on their own. They also provide access to fewer Regiments, so more Characters appear in a small army, playing a far more active and pivotal part on the field.
So, if you've perhaps jumped into Conquest with us right now to undertake the Path Of Conquest 2020 then maybe you want to give your miniatures a run out on the tabletop with these skirmish rules right now?
Conquest: First Blood Gameplay // Para Bellum Wargames
Whilst I am all for big mass battle wargames I do always appreciate there being a more focused entry-level option for people too. Having something like First Blood in the mix means that you can get wargaming with just a handful of miniatures and begin to tell stories which develop and change with the growth of your army.
Conquest: First Blood Rules PDF
Of course, you could always link your First Blood and The Last Argument Of Kings games together as well in order to tell the unfolding narrative of your army as it goes on campaign. Now, more than ever, I am very tempted to dive in and get my hands on some Dweghom!
Are you going to be checking out this free download?
"Having something like First Blood in the mix means that you can get wargaming with just a handful of miniatures..."
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Got the e-mail of Parrabellum yesterday on this not looked at it, but interesting, had thought of using my 100 Kingdoms figures done so far for retinue skirmishs between knights , will have a go at downloading this tonight when get home.
Seems interesting. I might have to download those and take better look.
So I downloaded this as soon as I read the article.
Lots of great art. Well organized. Worthy of being printed professional.
143 pages.
I’ll have to give it a careful read this weekend
I chatted to the Conquest folks at a Games Expo back in the days when we’d leave the house. It looked a fascinating setting, and the content on this site shows it as a great game … but I’m aware of my ability to paint a full rank and flank army with my current free time. This makes it a lot more accessible to me.
Excellent, I can now justify a Jotnar! I already have 100 Kingdoms and was a bit daunted by painting another full army, a skirmish force of Nord this now doable!!
@hazyboy75 good idea!
Looks good I’ll down load the rules for a read through.
Really incredible! They’ve really pulled out all the stops for the book. Many were expecting a 10 page pamphlet but this is a game all by itself! Superb and a great entry level for people wanting to dip there toes 10/10
Right. I had a quick look at the rules and I’ve bumped into this… Page 33, ‘Defence and Casualties’: Now, your opponent rolls a number of dice equal to the number of Hits your Models have inflicted – the Injury Roll. Any roll that is less than or equal to their Regiment’s Defence or Evasion Characteristic is a successful Injury Roll; your opponent will decide whether they will use their Regiment’s Defence or Evasion Characteristic. So when opponent is rolling Injury Roll he chooses which Stat to use. Obviously the choice will always be the better stat. The Regiment’s armor… Read more »
There are rules that might modify either your Defense score or (much more rarely) your Evasion score.
Generally speaking, Defense is usually higher than Evasion, but there are more rules that interact with the Defense stat than Evasion, essentially giving you a backup save.
If you roll higher than the stat, you fail. 1s are king in Conquest ?
Yes you will always choose the best stat. However other rules will affect those stats.
So if you have a model with armour 2 and evasion 1, you will of course choose armour to defend.
However if I hit you with a unit with cleave(2) that reduces your armour to 0, so most models then have no scar cos they don’t normally have armour abs evasion, but a special unit with evasion 1 is not affected by that cleave.
So armour is 0, so you can choose to use evasion and still save on 1’s.
Played my 1st few games of this with my 9 year old son last night.
It went down very well. He’s now looking through the army lists to see what he can use his AoS models as ???
We have a convert ??
Great to hear 🙂
Nice, read the rules at the weekend and all is pretty straightforward. This is pretty much what I was after as I would not collect and play Conquest at the main game level. Too many models and too many I just don’t like. Ideally they might think about putting out skirmish starters with a combination of models, but I get why they might not. In any case I would be happy to try this out, the barrier is only finding the time to do everything.