Open Combat Play Test

     This year I am planning on making this blog a bit more concise and bit less random, I am aware that unless you are following the theme list on the right hand side of the post, my blog can be a bit difficult to follow at times. Saying all that though it won't be all that concise for at least a few more posts as I finish off the remnants of last years projects, and here is a brand new project!

     Open Combat is a new set of rules by Second Thunder. The rules allow you to make a warband sized force of anything to play against anything else, you fill out the stat line and give the model weapons and abilities, all inside a system that is painfully simple and balanced. In this case I am using it to make a club night game that will basically be D&D light. I am building a collection of human warriors, loosely based on my old LARP group, that each player control one of, and a random assortment of fantasy undead as a GM 'bad guy' side.

     So far I have painted up;

The first two adventurers, a ranger type and a full on tank. Both are from Otherworld miniatures.

The first ten skeletons. GW models but I think some of the best plastic skeletons on the market.

     As this is going to be a game I am going to run down at my club, I want to make sure I know the rules inside out, so I have been playing a few testing games on a small scale and I thought a mini battle report would suit this game and really show off what it can do. I am going to do some kind of assassination and/or capture an object mission, but as my necromancer is yet to be finished I am running my test games as full on slog fests to see how many skeletons my two guys can eat their way through, or as just capture an object objective. This game was all about capturing a bottle that was sitting on a shelf next to my painting table.

The objective

      Open combat is designed for a 2' by 2' board but as I am just testing I am playing on a much smaller area. I limited the initial amount of skeletons to stop by warband getting bogged down too quickly, but I rolled a d3 each turn to bring on more skeletons.

The tank does exactly what he is designed to do, charges straight into combat and smashes the first skeleton he meets, while the ranger also charged his closest target but only manages to push it back.

The skeletons then charge the only target they could get to which was the tank and deal a wound.

While the tank heroically holds back the growing skeleton tide the ranger takes the opportunity to run around the outside of the combat and uses his second action to grab the bottle. 

After surviving another round of combat, the tank pushes the skeleton in contact with him back and turns and runs following the ranger who had already made a break for it with the bottle.

      I love this set of rules, I don't think I can express it any differently. This is one of the few games where the reference sheet at the back really is all I would hand out to my players, the rest of the rules are mostly specific stuff that they probably won't ever come across, but it doesn't lose anything by being that simple. I have more figures in the post to bulk out both sides as my club game will be on a much bigger scale, and a big bit of scenery that I plan to use as the objective point coming as well, so this game should get a lot more coverage on this blog. Plus there are all the other weird, modelling projects that I have started that I might, now, finally have a use for.

Thanks for reading.