Assault on Sokol Keep - Commentary

Good game, good game. It was alright. I have discovered that my random generation of PEFs does matter. I got a massive number of Petty Demons (5 or 6) having changed from the Demon cult list when I rolled a lot of possessed mages and thought that wouldn't be fair. The large number of actual demons rather than horde or winged men, worked both ways. If there had been no good guy casters there may have been problems with three blasts a turn tearing into them. With the casters though I lost control of one of my petty demons and my minor demon when he came on the board.
I also realised that while bad guys took their crisis tests, the good guys didn't. Not once, even though there were maybe half dozen OOFs and ODs. Oddly, the players always remember that bad guys need to take crisis tests but conveniently forget their own...
I also think I may have done the Banish Demon spell wrong. I'm fairly certain we used the result of the spell on the Test of Wills when we should have rolled separately. So the good guys were getting bonus dice by caballing the test of wills.
I've also worked out why it is so easy for the good guys. They're not facing anything like enough bad guys. I randomly generated the PEFs for four Raid scenarios. I randomly determined the Force Composition and How Many Of Them? using the tables on page 54. This assumed the eight stars (I forgot Danny) and the available force at the beginning of Sokol Keep (roughly 84 CV for the good guys). A couple of the random rolls were CCA and CCB. There was only one CBA. All assumed there were no reinforcement PEFs. The results were as follows:

Summary	Raid 1	Raid 2	Raid 3	Raid 4
Archers	6	19	33	47
Goblins	6	10	17	27
Ogres	4	4	5	6
Riders	9	8	13	20
Black Moon Goblins	4	4	11	16
Chariot	5	8	10	11

I don't have any chariots and even at the best price would never have 11! Normally I would have around the forces available in Raid 2, but several of them would be tied up in reinforcements and so may never see the table. Patently though, I'm not putting enough bad guys on the table (that said for most encounter forces I don't have enough bad guys...)

Prelude... Additional commentary

The Prelude... encounters are over, the good guys from the south have met the good guys from the north and so the circle is complete.
The last game was good, still way too much stuff on the table though. Tne heroes are very reticent  still and don't seem keen to skirmish unless they have a unit of troops around them. I had a fair number of troops (but actually not as many as I should have had based on the dice rolls, but once I got to 70-odd CV...) and it got very untidy very quickly. I think I will roll up forces and then assign them to PEFs/Bodies rather than use the tables. In theory I could have had in excess of 140 CV which might work in Big Battles but would have been undoable in WHAA.
I need to take the initiative more often. In the last couple of encounters, when the good guys dithered and I just went hell for leather, much death and destruction ensued (on both sides). In the last encounter, when I let the good guys on the western side of the river go two knights decimated my warband. Bad guys have got to get stuck in.
Rules-wise, bad guys took more crisis tests, and more importantly correctly took crisis tests. Good guys less so (even though there were at least four OOFs/ODs). It's amazing how often the good guys remember that crisis test need to be taken when a bad guy gets hurt!
PEFs in line of sight aren't PEFs, they're bodies of troops, so they don't need to be hidden, and more importantly don't need to move randomly!
I've generated or lifted from the last encounter the personal warbands/comitatus of the main bad guys (the lich, the demon, the goblin, the wraith and the vampire) and from now on these will form the core of any encounters.
I've added the AC rule to the house rules page and updated some of the skills. See this post, House Rules, and this post, WHAA Skills, respectively.

Prelude... Commentary

A new set of players join the campaign... sort of. These players are/were in the city of Ailech at the southern end of the Redwake River. As the story progresses it transpires that Psammon has already put in motion a diabolical plan to turn all of Southern Altengard into a bastion of Unlife in alliance with Black Moon Incarnate demons and malicious Goblin tribes from the Western Mountains. The (new) heroes have so far had to eliminate enemy artillery bombarding the city and then rescue the Lord of Ailech, Erkenfried, from the clutches of Black Moon Demon Cultists.
Things we have learned:
The games played well, although new players took some time to get used to the uncertainties of Test of Wills and Charge tests.
I've now realised that if a figure is forced to take a Control test and fails, the figures either side also have to take a Control test and so on... The rule was there all along I've just never noticed it!
After the disastrous magic from the possessed mages I either have to cabal my mages more wisely, learn the intricacies of the spell lists more carefully or go back to using Big Battle magic.
Some of the players were concerned about the way melee works when a nasty beast rolls against attackers. They were concerned that if the bad guy rolls well then all the opponents stand very little chance. I'm not sure this shouldn't be the way. If it was a Rep 6 star who rolled three successes and a shield die against a horde of Rep 3 Goblins, most of whom would be OOF  or OD then there would be no issue but because the bad guy had the "good" Rep some questions were asked. I suspect this is supposed to be the way. See Sauron at the beginning of TFotR. If you don't have the Hardiness for it don't tangle with the Lord of Darkness!

WHAA Skills

In line with the Skills house rule, this post will contain the list of skills and will be updated when new skills occur to me or are suggested.

Warrior - character is Elite Trained
Caster - character can use magic
Healer - character can use the healing rules
Thief - character can carry out thieving type skills (e.g. picking locks, checking for traps, hiding in shadows)

Alchemist - character can create potions as per the rules
Marksman - character can take two shots per activation as though he had fast moved (-2d6).
Blademaster - only elite trained characters can choose this skill. The character never suffers the outnumbered penalty.
Assassin - as long as the character approches from behind the target he may backstab the target with +1d6 and the opponent's armour cannot count as protected.
Sniper - Missile fire from beyond twice the target's movement rate will always count as Armour Pierced if it hits.
Cleric - Clerics are warrior priests of the Red Sun (and occasionally, but more rarely of the Black Moon). They have limited casting powers and can Turn Undead. Clerics can cast the following spells as though they were a caster of the same Rep: Air of Strength; Stench of Weakness; Resist Magic; Entrap Demon; Banish Demon.
Turn Undead - only cleric characters can Turn Undead.

TURNING UNDEAD TABLE Roll cleric's Rep d6 v. Rep d6 of Undead -1d6 from the cleric if moved in same turn.

Number of Successes	Result
Cleric scores more successes	Undead in target group all take a hit on the Firing Damage Table as though Armour Pierced
Cleric scores same successes	Turning attempt fails
Cleric scores fewer successes	Turning attempt fails and all Undead in target group take a Control Test

Paladin - a Paladin is immune to the effects of terror and dread both for reaction tests and for melee.
Athlete - an Athlete rolls an additional 1d6 for Fast Move tests.
Agile - no shooting penalties for fast moving
Tactician - character can choose when to activate rather than activating in strict REP order.
Persuasive - Add a 1d6 bonus to the Talk the Talk test
Disciplined - Add a 1d6 bonus to the Crisis test
Scout - Add a 1d6 bonus to the Terrain Scouting table???
Inspire - once per game Pass 2d6 all characters in the group are fanatic for the rest of the game; pass 1d6 all characters in the group are fanatic for the turn; pass 0d6 No effect
Battle Cry - pass 2d6 all characters in the group are frenzy for the turn; pass 1d6 all characters in the group are frenzy for the player's activation; pass 0d6 all characters in the group must take a crisis test.

Thief type skills to follow

Underlined skills have been playtested or have limited implications on game-play and so are very unlikely to be changed. The effect of other skills hasn't been determined and so may be subject to change or removal.

House Rules

This post is growing out of the ongoing commentaries and reflections, alongside the way some things work in other THW rules or just other rulesets/milieus. I'll update this post with new rules and point to it from other posts if necessary.

Casting - first of all because of the unmitigated power of the Big Battle magic for a cabal with 20-odd REP it's going to have to be NPC spellcasters use spells normally. Big Battle magic only happens in Big Battles.

Stars don't count as part of a Group. This grows out of the nature of the game we play and a little bit of vagueness in the way the relationship between Stars and Grunts is explained. So, a star lives or dies by his own dice rolls just as the Grunts do. It makes the outcomes of reaction tests easier to interpret and it overcomes the issues where the Star chooses his reaction successes. To help mitigate the disaster for my PC's groups(!!!) I'm going to allow Stars to activate on any valid REP they want (i.e. instead of activating at 5 REP, they could go in any order on their side, thus allowing them to wait and see which groups or fellow stars need their help before having to weigh in).
On reflection this won't work, so I'll just have to find other ways to split stars from their followers. Admittedly with my lot of players that won't be easy 'cos basically the stars are frightened of being separated from their groups. I think only the Black Moon Elves have ever tried to be more tactically flexible.

Skills - I'm going to start a separate post with a list but the way we discussed it skills can be gained by giving up progression rolls. The tariff we thought might work would be to give up as many rolls as you have skills. Stars all have a skill already (Elite Trained, Healer, Caster, Thief) so to gain the first additional skill would cost two rolls, to gain a third skill would cost three rolls and so on.

Melee - not so much a house rule as a clarification. Melee should be broken down into as many individual one-to-one fights as possible, but where outnumbering exists everybody rolls the dice they are entitled to and compares the results with each opponents rolls in turn. So an elf outnumbered by two goblins would roll his dice (with the outnumbered modifier) and each of the goblins would roll their dice. The ONE set of dice rolled by the elf would be compared in turn to each of the goblins' rolls and results applied. This is how Bob says it works on the Yahoo Group and is the implication in Swordplay.
This differs considerably from Big Battle where both sides roll all their dice entitlement and the results are applied to the body.
Armour - AC 3 and 4 is practically worthless, so in order to make it worthwhile I am intending to impose additional penalties on characters wearing AC 5 and above. Foot movement for these characters will be reduced to 4" and Mounted movement reduced to 9" (effectively an additional quarter move penalty).

Escape from Cinder Island - Commentary

A good game. Still loads of stuff on the table and the heroes seem to be averse to losing men to help even up the games and make them playable. I didn't make the best use of my caster and tried to use him as a Star caster when I should have probably used the NPC/Battle magic option. I'll need to study the magic options, as there are at least two more caster NPC's out there in the valley.
I'd checked out the definition of a group on the THW Yahoo Group and a NUTS! example defined the issues beautifully. We also played the rules as written that says that a Star chooses his reaction but a Grunt lives or dies by the roll of the dice. It may not be right but it leads to more HTH and still gives the Star his autonomy although the rest of his group may charge (or be charged) without him.
Rule wise, I think we're playing the game more like it's supposed to be played. I think I may have over-egged the effect of the loss of leader test (in fact I didn't even use the test as written I kind of assumed something along the lines of a crisis test for everyone). I'll give it a look. There were some issues about rules, as a couple of players confused some reaction tests and effects with Rally Round the King. That may be a problem if or when we get around to playing Chain Reaction or 5150.

Out of the Fens - Commentary

Fewer rule problems. Same trouble with amount of stuff on table.
Still, had some discussion about the melee rules, and the test of wills.
For combat, I'll need to remember to print of the adapted Chain Reaction Swordplay melee resolution for the next game and we can give that a try.
For test of wills may need to give the rules on stars a re-read. Because a star gets to choose the result on a test of wills (and a charge test for that matter) and I've been allowing the stars groups to go with the Star reaction then it's possible for the heroes to hold up a bad guy for two or three activations. I'll double check and it may be that bad guys will just need to make sure that they get within half move in sufficient numbers to carry a combat.
As for the lots of stuff on table, I'm thinking I should only have allowed Social Standing worth of CV each at the start, and then I can control opportunities to recruit. But they've all caught lung fever now so maybe I'll be able to pockle some CV away from the good guys.

Into the Forsetta Fen - Commentary

Another good game. Only one significant error. We've been doing combat a little wrong, using base to base combat and running multiple combats where figures are outnumbered. Apparently we should be adding all the dice together and then taking the result. Still a lot of CV on the table and I've now learnt that the bad guys need to work in efficient groups (with more shooty bad guys as well). The good guys are proving to be a little reticent in encounters so I think I may need to push them along a bit.

The Handover - Commentary

Another game, another load of fun, another pile of errors.
Didn't do Hardiness tests properly. We allowed the Rat Ogre to recover form its OOF using a Hardiness test 'cos I'd forgotten to take it and then the thing proved impossible to kill. The main reason was that I was using Rep dice counting successes rather than 2 dice against Rep...
There wasn't much melee, but I'm fairly certain that in what melee there was nobody used shield dice.
We've still got too much stuff on the table with 50-ish CV a side. It works but I don't think it's really what WHAA was designed for. We don't get games finished and the large numbers are actually hindering scenario/encounter completion.
We definitely didn't manage group activation properly (I didn't twig until more than half way through and the adventurers never did). We'll need to be stricter on Rep order and on finishing activations before moving on.
We're not managing multiple combats correctly (more in the next commentary).
Got a feel for magic, still missing minor points like targets, ranges and radius for different spell effects but with channelling, Kev's magic was more successful and had some impact.
Otherwise no other problems :-)

Beginnings - Commentary

A first game of Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures. I hadn't seen the rules until 6.30 and we started playing at 7!
Five brave souls have signed up and each generated a Star. We came up with a simple raid encounter, randomly generated wererats and I made up a scenario on the fly...
We did heaps of things wrong. Mainly reactions (I think we may have done one test of wills), but probably a little bit of shooting and melee as well.
That said we all enjoyed ourselves and the Stars randomly generated some retinues/warbands. That bit we did do right (although not until after the encounter). The downside (and we may have to do something about this) is that the heroes have a total CV of around 54 which will mean around 50 enemy per encounter (and potentially as many as 100 per PEF in an unlucky ambush/raid scenario).
We've gone on to play further games (see later posts) and I think it is a thematic problem. Games take too long to play and the bad guys are an unwieldy force.