Now That the Fog Has Lifted A Bit

Having had my 3rd or Booster anti-Covid shot on Tuesday, the after effects yesterday, including a rather fuzzy brain, meant a rather unproductive day. Still, one must do one's duty for community, family, and self so I don't begrudge the 1/2 lost day or the result of trying to be productive with a fuzzy brain. 

After a long pursuit, Lord Rosius, Satrap of Ballimont, caught up with the remnants of the Roman expedition. He had an uncanny feeling that he had been here before, in a dream perhaps, or another life? He shook his head, muttered a prayer and ordered his troops to advance.  

Today I'm more or less back to par and had a quick replay of my watering hole scenario using the updated, fog-bound, version  of the Gathering of Hosts rules that I had worked on yesterday. It went OK, fast with some tough decisions and moments of tension and choices outweighing luck, but obviously the rules were nowhere near ready or complete. Even I couldn't quite follow them and had to improvise.

The Hunnic mercenaries seemed rather reluctant to tussle with the Romans when not under his direct eye but their attempts to flank the enemy helped force them back sooner than they attended. If the mercenaries defending the watering hole would hold, he could wipe out this band of brigands!  

To skip over the details, it still feels like the right path for me to get to where I want to be, but they need a helluva lot of editing to make sense of them and I need to expand them with nice clear troop capability charts. I also need to guard against some bad habits such as tweaking things to conform to a pattern at the cost of a reduction in flavour and tactical options, and unintentionally hiding stray rules in introductions or thinly related places leading to questions like "what the hell was I thinking?" and "I thought I had...". 

It'll help if I go back to pairing simple core rules with army lists giving unit stats including any special rules, rather than working with generic movement and combat charts with scads of modifiers. Luckily I still have copies of several of those from the early versions of The Gathering of Hosts.      

The mercenaries put up a stern fight but the Roman infantry cut them to shreds. The fighting in the centre had also been fierce and bloody for both sides. There was still a chance that one last charge could crush the Roman scum.

Lastly, I need to focus on the aim: simple, flexible rules, clearly written, which can be easily adapted to various "Shock Era" (to use Joe Morschauser's term), armies.  The resulting games should be quick to play with the emphasis on tactics (in the general sense) and a contest of wits, spirit and luck, between the players, with enough colour to inspire a story. 

Alas, it was not to be. The Huns declined to do more than shoot while on the right, some barbarian knight in Yellow, an ally or mercenary perhaps,  charged out with a few companions and slew one elephant while spooking the rest. With such a Hero, he could have won he thought to himself while ordering the trumpeter to sound the retreat.  

Is that too much to ask?