Planning on puting my Romano-British and Saxon minis up for sale as I dont use them much. Painted them some 15-years ago and they been through some tought battles, last one back in 2018 if I recall right.
So I thougt they would see one last outing trying my matey Dan Mersays "Age of Penda" rules publiched by Wingalf Miniatures. I have been involved in playtesting the system but in the 100-year war version "Arrowstorm" so the Dark Age one are new to me. I like Dan´s Dux Bellorum rules set during the same era of history very much so I have good hopes for Age of Penda to.
I just got the .PDF of the rules so cant say much about the printed book The Rulebook as well as the .PDF can be ordered at WargameVault. The rules are 32-pages in an easy to read layout with out any pictures.
To play you will need 2 armies of 6-15 units (basing or scale dosent realy matter so need for re-basing etc.), some 6-sided dice, 6-10 tacktical tokens that are markers to use on the Tactics Chart (picture abowe) that is one of the main elements of these rules.
You will also need a offset gridded battle fileld that are 5 rows with 5 or 4 squares in each row, a total of 23 squares. I used some markers to show the gridd. Might say im a bit dubious about the gridds, it makes the moving easy but i dont think the game look as good as without.
Each army are made up of a quite narrow amount of troop types, just 4 of them, Mounte Warriors, Armoured Warriors, Unarmourd Warriors and Skirmishers (only unit type that can shoot). one of the units have the Leader includend.
Each unit type has a cost you pay to recruite them in your force.
Despite the low number of different troop types I feel that it is enought to represent a large amout of different dark age armies, Dan has included 4 sample armies in the rules, all with different compossition and tactical chalanges.
Each turn the players start to place their Tactical Tokens on the Tactics Chart when all tactic tokens has been places the player alternate to perform the actions choosen from the tactical chart. Most of the actions activate all unit in a square, you can have no more than 3 units in a square at any time.
there are a bunch of basic actions like Shoot, Rally, Move, Battle but also 8 special actions that gives you the opportunety to get the best out of your units, like get your Warriors to throw javelins etc.
All in all I like the "Age of Penda" rules, they give me fun, fast and managable dark age games, all I need:)
Wont give you a blow by blow AAR but can say that the Saxons managed to win it all, mostly due to poor dice rolling in the combat between the Romano-British Mounted Warriors and the Saxon Unarmoured Warrios with Skirmish support. below a bunch of pictures from our game, the warband composition and lastly a picture of the victorius Saxon taking the spoils of war.
Romano-British warband was composed of 3 Mounted Warriors (one with the Leader), 2 Armoured Warriors, 3 Unarmoured Warriors and 2 Skirmisers.
The Saxons fielded 1 Mounted Warriors, 3 Armoured Warriors (one with the Leader), 5 Unarmoured Warriors and 2 Skirmishers.
