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I have to say I quite like these rules and would happily recommend them. But please
read the whole review.
Introduction
The CRUSADER rules are a new set of wargames rules for the ancient & medieval era,
written by Mark Sims of Crusader Miniatures. I read a couple of very brief reviews in
wargames magazines, liked the look of them and decided to buy. I must confess one of
the attractions was the reasonable price of just £8. For that price, it was worth a look.
First Impressions
If Mark produced these rules as a vehicle to sell his miniatures (which would be smart
marketing if he did), then I think it succeeds, because there are a number of lovely
photographs of Crusader Miniatures which strongly call out to my wallet! To be fair,
there are some miniatures from other manufacturers illustrated, but the majority are from
Crusader.
One curiosity that has to be mentioned straight away
is that the rules show an incredible 'favouritism' towards Dark Ages/early medieval armies!
I suppose this reflects the fact that the current small range of Crusader Miniatures are
mostly from this period. But this might put off the 90% people that play ancients wargames
outside of this period! On the plus side, I have to say that personally I rather like this
emphasis and it's got me all fired up about a Norman/early crusader army!
Comparison with WAB and WRG
The rules are not a heavy-weight set, and will probably never compete in their own right
against 'giants' in the ancients wargame world like WRG (Wargames Research Group).
The style of the rules is very much common sense, down-to-earth, I can't think of a
better way to put it. It is clear from the beginning that they were written to counter
the current fad for WAB (Warhammer Ancient Battles), they seem to me a natural evolution
following the WRG then WAB 'eras'. Mark clearly hates WAB, and I generally have to agree
with him there. Although I sometimes play Warhammer, I think they are fine for fun, fantasy
battles, but are not suitable for historical battles.
The fact is that the Warhammer mechanisms are those of thirty or forty years ago, and
historical wargaming has moved on a lot since then. I DO applaud the positive boost that
WAB has given to ancients wargaming, by breaking the stranglehold of WRG and saying
"it's ok to have fun!" and celebrating the painting and modelling side of the
hobby, which tended to be diminished by WRG rules with their emphasis on abstraction,
legalistic competition-style wording and technical accuracy. However, do we have to go
backwards to go forwards? They throw out the baby with the WRG bathwater!
What the hell am I talking about? Let's talk specifics, and come back to CRUSADER.
I think it's important to see CRUSADER in its historical context. Firstly, CRUSADER
takes us back to group stands and away from the emphasis on individual stands and those
horrible movement trays of WAB. It also gets away from hero stats lines and a skirmish
feel, to the feel of a grand battle. CRUSADER includes a lot of modern thinking about
wargames rules and picks the best mechanisms from other rulesets.
Having said all that, I don't think the author is either a games analyst or a historian.
Not everything in the rules will necessarily stand up to scrutiny, but if you are a typical wargamer
who wants fun and a feeling of realism, using sensible basing schemes that make your figures
look good, then you might enjoy this set. Think of it as between WRG and WAB.
Basing Regime and Unit Organisation
Mark favours 40mm square bases for foot troops and 50mm square bases for mounted troops
(assuming you are using 28mm miniatures). I can't fully agree with this choice, however
I know it is increasingly popular and in any case these rules can be used with almost
any basing system. Ironically, this is closer to WAB than WRG, and units in CRUSADER
do look a lot like WAB units. Perhaps this is to make the rules attractive to current
WAB players?
One of my criticisms of WAB is the deployment of units, and CRUSADER tends to follow
this rather than move away from it. Firstly, WAB armies tend to be made up of lots
of deep, square blocks of troops (formed into units), which I think is inherently unrealistic.
Most ancients armies did not deploy as units, but as 'divisions' or 'battles',
'wings' or 'battle lines'. Many ancients armies never even had a concept of a unit.
Furthermore, at typical figure-to-man scales, a single miniature represents troops in
something like four men deep. Historical formations would therefore be typically
two figures deep, not the four figure deep formations of WAB.
If your miniatures are based on group stands two figures deep (as favoured by CRUSADER),
then you would need to form up your models in at least two stands depth, i.e. four
figures (the same as WAB), or even deeper. And you will need quite a lot of figures.
In CRUSADER's favour is the fact that ultimately it uses stands and does not mandate
how you base the models in your stands. I would recommend that the rules would work
much better with single figure rank stands (like DBM) than the double depth stands
that are shown in the photographs. In any case, I don't favour 40mm frontage stands
because a 28mm figure in close formation (i.e. all heavy infantry) needs a model
frontage of 15mm to look right. You simply cannot get the look of a Shieldwall or
Phalanx with a 20mm frontage.
As it happens (as you can see in my 'painting table' photographs), my Dark Ages
troops are based on two figure deep group stands, but instead of four models on
a 40mm square base, I have six models on a 45mm square base. Although at first
glance it would seem that this would work well with CRUSADER, in fact I think
I would need to make some minor adjustments. You see, my group stands are too
big to be physically removed as casualties. The gap left would be huge. In any
case, they are designed to form a single rank, so they would literally leave a
gap in the battle line! However, CRUSADER is flexible enough that I can still
use them. All I think I need to do is pretend that my stands are actually half
the depth, so one of my group stands is two 'equivalent' stands, and not
physically remove single stands.
Unit Attrition
CRUSADER uses 'wounds' or 'hits' (similar to Armati 'break points'), but after
typically three or four wounds, a stand is removed (in Armati, the whole unit
is removed). This does mean that some recording is necessary. An additional
marker is needed to show if a unit is 'shaken', which represents a loss of cohesion
and morale. That one of course is quite easy to do with an individual casualty figure
or similar.
Command and Control
Command and control is handled firstly through Training & Leadership tests
(which is the same system I use in my own eighteenth century rules) and also by
the popular mechanism (again, ironically, from WAB) of leader figures granting bonuses
within a 'command radius'. There is no explicit division management, which is
disappointing.
Combat, etc.
Combat is handled by dice and factors, not significantly different to other modern
rulesets, although note you will need a few D10s (ten sided dice), rather than the
more common D6s.
Sequence of Play
I nearly forgot to mention..! The sequence of play is a little unusual, but seems
sound to me. Play is alternate between players, but rather than having shooting phases,
combat phases, and so on, the active player activates each unit one by one, performing
all actions for that unit before moving onto the next. If the unit suffers a bad morale
result or loses a melee (the term used for hand-to-hand combat), then that player's turn
ends. It's difficult to really assess this mechanic without actually playing it,
but I like the way it sounds.
Summary and Conclusions
In summary then, although I've not actually played the rules yet, they seem pretty
sensible and are characterised by reflecting contemporary thinking in a post-WRG,
post-WAB era. If you like basing your models on 40mm square bases of four 28mm
figures, you will probably like these rules, but don't rule them out if your troops
are based for WAB or for DBM. If you are a competition player, or a real stickler
for historical accuracy, they may not cut it. Notwithstanding all of the above,
if you have an interest in the early medieval period, they are worth it just for the
photographs!
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