Swordpoint

Swordpoint is Gripping Beast's new big battle rules for the ancient and medieval period. This is a pretty crowded space, but one chased by many WAB gamers looking for a replacement.

You certainly get a very nice rule book, with the production values you would expect from Gripping Beast. Plenty of eye candy, but not overly gratuitous.

Units are made up of variable numbers of bases. Typically 4 figures to a base for foot, 2 for cavalry and 2 for skirmishers. The 4 to a base (in two ranks, 40mm x 40mm) for foot is a bit irritating for us ex-wabbers who usually start with 3 to base on a 60mm frontage. However, as a typical unit will have six bases it's not a huge problem and doesn't require rebasing. There are a number of army lists in the main rulebook to get you going and the first separate book is for the Dark Ages. The standard army is 1000 points and that means around 150-200 figures a side on a 6' x 4' table. The profiles for each base are much simpler than many rules with factors for defence and cohesion only.

The first innovative mechanism is Momentum Points. You start with five and can gain more as a result of successful combat and shooting. You can then spend them to give an edge in combat or to grab the initiative when you really need it. Moves are generally simultaneous, rather than 'I go, you go', although there are exceptions.

The phasing is also unusual. After the initial admin phase you shoot before movement and combat. This means that shooting can soften up your opponent before charging in. However, because you don't remove figures unless a whole base is killed, this means long range shooting is rarely effective. Shooting is fairly conventional, hitting on 4's +/- modifiers, and then saving depending on armour, shields etc. Shooters don't get the value of shields if they are firing, which I like. The use of percentages to calculate if you have to test, requires more mathematical agility than I would prefer on a Sunday afternoon, but it's not that tricky.

Movement is pretty conventional, although there is an interesting mechanic limiting manoeuvres. It's important to get the order of events right, but otherwise it's all fairly normal.

Combat is also fairly conventional, with hits and saves as per many rule sets. You have to lose badly to be routed quickly, so melee can be prolonged. There is an interesting mechanism to encourage armies to fight in line of battle, by allowing defeated units to dissipate their casualties to supporting units in the line. The maths of this is a bit more than I can be bothered with, but it does mean that armies fight as you would expect ancient armies to do, and it reflects Dark Age scrums very well. It also encourages the formation of big units with depth, as these are pretty tough to budge. Being pushed back is damaging, but not necessarily a disaster you can't recover from. Commanders add dice to the melees they join, but they don't overpower the game as they did in WAB.

There are special rules covering all the obvious ancient troop types and tactics.

There is a useful discussion with the authors on the Meeples podcast(182), although the usual health warning, allow plenty of time, there is little script discipline on this podcast. They can ramble on for hours! Gripping Beast are supporting the rules with a range of materials.

Is this the holy grail of a replacement for WAB? Clash of Empires remains the closest match for me, but it doesn't seem to have taken off. Swordpoint offers a few interesting mechanisms, and few irritating ones as well. However, I can't say it grabbed me with the same level of enthusiasm as Lion Rampant, albeit for smaller games. For the occasions when I have the time to set up a big battle, I suspect Hail Caesar will remain my first choice.

In fairness, playing either side of watching Fulham getting knocked out of the FA Cup, may have affected my judgement! So I will play them again.

On to the tabletop. My test game was Christians and Moors in Spain. The army of Al-Andalus triumphed.