Playtested the rules found here:
Skirmisher House Rules. With one exception. We played the dice rolled for Free Attacks is 1/3/5 for slower than, equal to, and faster than skirmishers (respectively).
We played without using the stamped version of Foresight, which we think is an inelegant hack and instead determined that in the deployment rules it should state: a player never sets up more than half his army due to Foresight.
The mission was Border Defense. Here's deployment:
I played Carthage and took: 3 Libyan Foot, 2 Balearic Slingers, 1 Scutarii, 1 Elephants, 1 Hannibal's Chosen, 1 Numidian Cavalry, & 5 Foresight. In the above picture, I have chosen to hide the Hannibal's Chosen in the forest nearest to me.
He played Ravenwood and took: 2 Spearmen, 3 Wolfkin, 2 Stag Cavalry, & 1 Treant. (To be honest, I have no clue what he was thinking here. My guess is that he wanted to take the Treant and so sort of locked himself in to an army build that was just a bad idea)
The Elite show up from their hiding place. Really, I just used it as an advancement deployment. Not really sure I had to.
For the record, I have no idea what he's doing here. I would have tried to delay as long as possible engagement on the left. My guess is that he was thinking that since he only needed 601 pts to get off the table, he was better attempting a breakthrough than playing the waiting game. Or it could be the constant breaks while I get a good picture breaks his concentration.
The lines clash...
And the skirmishers flee.
Worth noting, this was the Turn of Courage. He played Aspect of the Wolf during the free attacks on my slingers, pass their Rout check with the help of a card. Then he responded by passing every single rout check (black dice), each needing an 11.
This is where things get ugly for Ravenwood. His Wolf Kin were not able to evade as well as he'd liked against the Libyans and his Stag cavalry got ground down. Note the skirmishers have been rallied and charged again. Throughout the night, my friend literally did not get one single extra hit from nets. Not. One.
The Treant gets double flanked in a pinch. On the previous turn, my Libyans failed their Courage check and quickly became Treant-Toe-Jam. This turn, the Treant smacks the Libyans on its flank and I promptly fail their Rout check. Free swings and the Libyans blow the second Red check. Buh-bye Libyans.
Also, on the left flank (bottom of the screen), my Libyans flank and pinch the Wolf Kin. They fail their rout check and are D-O-N-E for the night.
Okay this is where it gets interesting. In the center-left (near the bottom), one of the two skirmishers is destroyed (failed its Yellow check). The other one, in the Red, makes his. Meanwhile, Treant put the Elephants into the Yellow, and they fail their Courage check. Free strikes doesn't do enough to put them in the Red.
This is important, because early on in the game, I had to burn my only Green card to make sure the Slingers didn't flee. And then, every turn I had to spend 2 CAs to get my slingers back up in the faces of Ravenwood Spearmen (lest I expose my flank). I did that for 3 turns, meaning I lost 6 command cards doing this. At this point, I pulled the next 6 Command Cards. Sure enough, Surge to Victory is in there (would have made those elephants fearless for a turn).
On my turn, I rally them and then comes the Treant:
Elephants go into the Red, fail their rout check, and are run down. The Treeman then gets pinched on the flank and rear and dies horribly.
At that point we called it. He had one unit of Ravenwood Spearmen that would get off the table and one that was going to get flanked. So it was a 4-2 victory for me.
Okay, so our conclusions. First off, the skirmisher house rules have promise. However, 1/3/5 isn't going to work. Our feeling is that at the "faster than" its almost an autokill on the unit (easily could put them into the Red) and at the "slower than" it was just a touch too hard to kill the skirmishers. My friend felt that 1 die was too risky to spend a Command Card. I would have done it, but I think he has a point. Our feeling is that had the skirmishers died a turn earlier the game would have been closer.
As it turns out, I don't think he played this one terribly well from army design on, but I also am not sure using 2 skirmishers to tie down an enemy is a great idea, as it sucks up half your CAs. I ended up netting like 300 pts out of the deal, which basically allowed me to get the pinch, but that was probably more because the free attacks for skirmishers was more generous to me than it probably should have been.
I toyed with not posting this, but decided to do so to show that sometimes ideas don't work out exactly and also hope to show that while the specific tweak isn't right, I think we're on the right path. Only more playtesting will show.
