Deus Vult play test

Thursday we had a short introduction game for Dus Vault the crusades wargames rules from Fire Forge.

Ken has been collecting some of the Fire Forge crusaders and Saracens quiteley in the back ground and as we had a free night and I had just finished soem arab cavalry we decided a quick test game might work, Steve brought along hs own Teutonic Knights and Seargens along with some earlier figures to use as Poor Knights and we were off.

It was nearly all cavalry as thats what we had and we started by splitting each side into 3 commands or battles to be activated on the turn of a card.

Who goes first is important as when you contact the enemy you only fight in your own turn. So the person who fights first has the advantage that when their opponent goes they only fight with the survivors from the first round where you went. This sounded a bit odd but worked quite well in practice.

We had just over 2 hours and only played the very basic rules so we could get a handle on the mechanics.

Initial observations then:

1. They worked well enough for me to give them another go.
2. Heavy Knights are very tough (as expected)
3. Muslim troops have lots of archers which can be quite effective.
4. Muslim Light Cavalry does not do well when it charges Heavy Knights
5. You need a lot of Saracens to take on the Christian Heavy Knights in particular

All pretty much as you might expect, the slightly more advanced rulles allow for a lot more character so I look forward to using those.

Charlton Heston made a Cameo appearence, his Knights did OK but suffered badly from Lonnies archery.

All in all a fun, light taster and I look forward to a more involved game in the near future.