Condottiere in the Spotlight

December 5, 2011 by beerogre

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Andy and Darrell take a look at the latest rules from Wargames Foundry... the historical romp... Condottiere!

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ubiquanon

14 years ago

Meerschaum’s, and maybe some Gin & Tonics. (Ok, Guinness will do as well.) Come on guys, you know you want to. 🙂

Using gear as the main stat modifier seems to be inspired by MMORPGs? I do like the idea that the stat lines fairly similar across all the troops. Makes the game more competitive, and emphasizes generalship over rules exploits. (Will you miss your cheese Darrell?)

Guess you could use a D4 for damage as well, if you don’t feel like using cards?

That evil grin on Andy when he said – “of course you can do treachery,” – you could almost see the horns coming out of his head.

Ok Darrell, Englishmen with longbows are dangerous, but Welshmen with longbows are dead lethal.

Ransoming sounds like a fun idea – very historically accurate, but if you gack one of my ransomed mini’s in between fights, then you’re paying for it with something more commercially viable that dubloons. (I can see this getting ugly, especially if one of the combatants spends a bit more time on the paint than the other.)

I think the problem with cannons in mini games is that of troop to cannon ratios. In battles where cannon were used (say war of roses era) you had hundreds, if not thousands of troops per 1 cannon. So that one cannon, while devastating on its own, really could, not, on its own, destroy the hundreds of troops it was in ratio with. But its pretty hard on a mini table to get this kind of cannon to troop ratio, so you have to really come up with creative rules.

One thing to consider: The official mini’s in this range is pretty expensive. $75 for 10 Knights. Thankfully there are plenty of other cheaper mini’s that can be used. The book retails at $50.

I’d add more comments but my mistress just showed up, and …. what were we talking about?

beerogre

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Reply to ubiquanon

14 years ago

@ubiquanon … If I were a gambling man… I would suggest that Wargames Foundry may well bring out a fantasy version of this game in the near future.

They certainly have the range to support it… I actually played Condottiere using Lord of the Rings minis… using a home rules-bash. It was fantastic!

When the card become things like “Eye of Sauron” and “Cry of the Gwaihir the Great Eagle” it really adds some excitement to the game!

ubiquanon

Reply to beerogre

14 years ago

Cool tie in to the actual LOTR storyline. How did you work out Treachery? It would work great with Sauron, Saurman, but I don’t see the Free People engaging in the treachery tactics that seem to be common to all in the rule set.

If they did use this rule set as a basis for a Fantasy game, do you thing it would work better than GW?

quirkworthy

Reply to ubiquanon

14 years ago

Cannons in Condottiere are fairly ineffective at long range. They are, however, nasty when you’re up close and they’re firing buckets of nails at you 😛

Jake

rasmus

14 years ago

Look worth trying out at some point

netdiver

13 years ago

Well watching this video made me order the rulebook as the campaign and backstabbing elements of the game sounded like a lot fun. Not to mention standing the game appart from the other games like Warhammar Historical.