Mayhem! Battle Report

Well after much prevarication, this morning I managed to get a non-trivial force of undead painted up and so today I decided to finally give Mayhem by Brent Spivey a proper go of it, pitting the Renaissance Englishmen up against the Forces of Undeath:

Vampirella's Undead Horde

 

Lord President Catte and his Retinue

The first problem (Spoiler alert: OF MANY) is that there are no example army lists included in the book, you are thrown immediately into the minutiae of game mechanisms. The solution is to download a BattleScribe file from WargamesVault and import that and figure the app out. I felt like given the Rulebook is a PDF (either as-is or Print-on-Demand) the extra cost for one page of typical units wouldn't have gone amiss. I know in theory everyone is a unique and special snowflake and wants to make their Elves 'just so', but what a hurdle get anything on the table! 

The game is IGO/UGO, with a roll for command points at the start of each player's turn. Command points can be spent on various actions which get progressively more costly the more challenging they are, or if the same unit is being ordered more than once. 

The main differentiator is the 'VERSUS' system, which means each stat (three for units, two for weapons) is actually a dice type and you can choose to take the midpoint (default) or roll the actual dice to chance getting a higher result at the risk of rolling lower (danger). 

This reared its head early in my game, with Vampirella's pet Dire Wolves getting a turn 2 charge by rolling a 10 for the distance:

Dire Wolves snack on some Pistoliers

Vampirella set up the skeleton warriors with a standing order to advance every turn, but with a default move of just 3" even on this 3x3' board they didn't make it into combat before the end of the game. Where's Vanhel when you need him? Vampirella' game plan was to take out the Pistoliers and horsemen on either flank with the Direwolves, using the skeletons as a .. bone? shield for the mounted Wights.

Lord Catte was planning a refused flank, dealing with the wights by the church first, then presenting an array of firepower against the oncoming foe.

With rolls for command points, and then (mostly) rolls for movement distances, the game took a long time to develop.  The following aerial shot is in the first half, but not much changed until the end:

The Dire Wolves eye up their next snack, while everyone else stands around dithering

The rules are written in a conversational manner and spread throughout the book, and there is a real lack of clarity. For example:

'Move to Engagement' is a unit moving their MOV distance (either default or danger) into an enemy, when it is then 'able to initiate a melee' which costs 1CP.

'Initiate a Melee' is another action costing 1CP - so does a unit that moves to engagement get this for free, or have to pay for it? If they have to pay for it does it count as a second action (and thus cost double for a total of 1+2CP)

'Charge' is the same as 'Move to Engagement' but you can instead roll two danger dice and pick the highest - getting a free Impact hit if you have the rule for it - but no more clarity on the melee afterwards either. 

'Advance' is the same as 'Move to Engagement' but you can do it with multiple units that are in Base to Base contact. 

I may be a joyless grog but surely there is a more straight forward way to describe this?

So I guess that's that?

The end of the game is when one side has either a) lost a general, or b) lost half their units. Unit loss in this game is a 'two strikes and you're out' affair -  a unit becomes disordered if its armour is beaten by a ranged attack, or if it's beaten in combat. Once a unit is disordered any further harm kills it outright - unless a critical hit is rolled which insta-kills it.

In the above photograph, the Mounted Wights had charged the white musketeers, who bravely defended themselves and pinned the undead horsemen down - and the white pikemen were able to flank charge. Their spears are hard counters against cavalry (+2 dice types) and due to charging and hitting in the flank they roll 3 times and pick the highest. Unfortunately, the undead rolled a 1 - which kills the pikemen regardless and that's half of the human force killed, so the game is over.

The rulebook contains rules for Monstrous creatures, Behemoths, more War Machines, Sieges, Magic, etc. and I hate to be that guy who writes off a system after one game - but unless someone has a really compelling argument I think the really rubbish 'print on demand' rulebook is going in the bin. Next up: Dragon Rampant.