Wyrdwars makes miniatures enjoyable again

I t’s been a while since I’ve written a post, but that’s not because I haven’t been writing. In fact, a lot of my spare time has been going into Wyrdwars, and you can read my write-ups of these battles over on my Wyrdwars page. The game itself is a great tabletop miniatures game with small bands of troops (up to 15) and a fairly simple rule set. The game itself is a community driven modification of the old Games Workshop Mordheim, which is set in their fantasy world with armies such as humans, dwarves, all kinds of elves, orcs and goblins, etc. I’ve been writing the battles as short stories, which has been almost as fun as playing the game itself.

Why Wyrdwars?

The biggest downfall to miniatures is their cost, with armies requiring hundreds of dollars to fill. That’s where the skirmish style of Wyrdwars comes to the fore. With a maximum army side of 15 units, it’s cheap and easy to create an army with some friends and start playing. Where the game really shines is in the campaign. This adds an RPG element that includes the possibility of a unit’s permanent death or even a lingering injury that reduces its combat efficiency. On the plus side, hero units can become more powerful with extra skills and stats, so the trade-off makes for interesting play.

Of course, with any campaign there is the chance of going backwards, which I did for the first couple of rounds. Perma-death requires the recruitment of replacement characters which requires gold. So after rounds one and two, the gold I earned was less that the cost of unit replacement, resulting in less equipment after round one and then one less unit (albeit a very cheap one) after round two. Round three saw my head rise above the waterline, getting back to the original number of units and all outfitted as per their starting equipment. This was followed by, quite frankly, a huge windfall in round four which allowed me to catch up to the other warbands in our play group as far as equipping units went.

Playing Wyrdwars

If you’ve played any other tabletop wargames, you’ll easily pick up the somewhat simplified rules of Wyrdwars. After creating your army from one of the available warbands, you can begin. Each battle revolves around a specific scenario, randomly determined at the start through dice rolls. Each of these have different win conditions, though winning the scenario is secondary to the all important Exploration Dice (capitals to impress upon you their importance). Exploration dice are earned for various objectives in the scenario, and the more you earn the more you roll at the end of the battle. You receive gold depending on the dice roll, as well as the possibility of discovering a “location”. This is just a nice way of saying earning a random bonus, which may come in the form of gold, experience or items, both normal and magical.

You also level-up heroes at the end of the battle, where the RPG element gives you a chance to have defeat mellowed by a powerful new skill or stat point. Of course, for any character taken out of action during the battle, you must roll for injuries which can result in the dreaded perma-death.

If you like to read some short stories based on each battle, or just want to know how I’m going, don’t forget to check out my Wyrdwars page!

Who is this for? If you’ve played tabletop miniatures before but can no longer invest the time taken for a daylong battle then this may be right up your alley. Conversely, if you’re interested in trying it out, this is a great, low-cost starting point.

Who is this NOT for? If you’re a casual gamer then given the hardcore geekery that is tabletop miniature, you might want to stick with boardgames for a while.