Soldiers of God

No, not them. That is just some friends playing a beer-fueled game of Pandemic on the weekend.

Soldiers of God is a new card driven set of rules for the Crusades. Bruce hosted a 15mm game on Tuesday and it was very interesting. Each turn comprises 14 alterating impulses (so seven moves each). Each impulse requires you to play a card to activate a section of the field (left-centre-right). 

The interesting part is that three cards (one for each of the sections of the field) are fixed for the game. They represent your battle plan and, each turn, each section of the field will execute their predetermined move. You can influence when by playing the four cards randomly drawn each turn from your hand. But eventually your army will carry out its orders in each section (whether you want it to or not). 

I chose double envelopment which means that the left and right flank charged forward each turn while the centre marched. This was, perhaps sub-optimal, but I made the choice with inly a partial grasp of the implications. My centre and right sections came into contact with Bruce's troops while the centre commander charged the town all by himself (ahem).

I eventually managed to win on the grinding battles and break Bruce's army (barely) before losing. My brave centre commander acquitted himself well (i.e., did not die) and the infidel was pushed off the field by my soldiers of God.

Overall, very neat mechanics suitable for any medieval battle. The chrome in the system is crusades specific but you could ignore that as the mechanic will work fine without it. The unalterable (except by special event card) battleplan is an interesting bit of command and control rigidity to introduce to limit the helicopter god phenomenon.

Up next: Some 20mm WW2 and then some 15mm fantasy.