Playtest: Feudal humans versus Undead

We held another playtest today, with Michel's feudal humans versus his Undead.

The feudal humans were loosely based on english medieval troops, with generous amounts of heavy cavalry, archers and spear armed infantry. They had some pretty good troops and good commanders even if a bit rash - giving the overall commander some grey hairs in keeping them from going on the attack at unwanted moments.

The undead had a large horde of skeletons, some giant skeletons and a brigade of cavalry, a chariot and a skeletal dinosaur monster.

 

My 2 prime goals were to playtest the undead, and to see how the proposed list for the feudal troops worked.

I may write a full report later, but for now the main observations:

* Feudal list worked fairly well. Their knights are scary, but not excessive. Remainder is a fair mix. The rash commanders will promote an agressive game style - good for a cavalry army. For more "english archer" type armies, slightly different commander ratings would be applicable.
* Undead worked okay. I graded them as D across the board now, that may be a bit too harsh. The undead will not walk over any oposition easily, but they will wear them down. Used in successive waves they have potential.
* Need to work on infantry/light giants vs cavalry dynamics. Right now, if infantry charges cavalry they die (get disordered the moment cav countercharges). However, with attack orders they HAVE to charge. I am considering allowing unshaken infantry in good order to push cavalry back without disordering them, instead. In a similar vein I may have to do something to allow blown cavalry to evade if charged by slower troops.
* Monsters are now 'heroes that can also fight entire units'. Dick made a case to instead classify them as 'units that can also engage individuals'. I'm still torn there.
* Chariots. They're not in yet. I'll probably make them a subclass of cavalry.
* Multiple moves outside 16". I only allowed this for blinds. Dick made a case to also allow this for deployed troops. Looking at the past few games, there is something to be said for this as we tended to have a few brigades not making it into contact. Is that a bad thing? Undecided still.