Field of Blood - Warrior Heroes - Legends

Here's a battle fought last night using Warrior Heroes - Legends and the Heroic Combat option. I wanted to see if using 40 figures was a stretch. Well, it wasn't. The entire game was over in 30 minutes. I believe the main reasons that this could be fought to a satisfactory conclusion in such a short time is due to three changes in Warrior Heroes - Legends.

 

The first one is the new In Sight mechanic tweak. Instead of each figure taking an In Sight only the group Leader takes the In Sight. This means for the 40 figures involved only two figures, the Leaders, rolled In Sight.

The reasoning for individual In Sights was to get a more realistic feel and look to melees. Part of that is the confused look during the melee as members of each side win and move forward. All order in formations is lost when smaller numbers of combatants fight. Unlike large units where there's someone to step up and occupy the place of a fallen comrade in the smaller melees this doesn't happen. Instead of four or eight ranks these would have one or two as everyone tries to get involved.

The way I solved this and gained the confused swirling mass of combat was by tweaking the Charge into Melee Test. It's simplified to three results. Charger scores more successes and charges into contact. Charger and Target score same successes and Charger charges into contact. Target scores more and charges into contact. The following pictures show the result.

Another tweak was a result of "6" when scoring damage actually pushes back the loser 2" and another round of melee is fought with the winner getting a bonus. Scoring a "1" allows the winner to kill the loser outright and move its remaining move and attack another enemy.

Smoothing this is the tweak that once in melee any subsequent melees with the same enemy group does not require another Charge Into Melee Test. So A charges B and C. He kills B and can now move into combat with C without either side testing.

Another change using the Heroic Combat option also available to Warrior Heroes - Legends is changing the Recover From Knock Down Test for melee only.
Pass 2d6 is loser falls back 2" and winner gets a +1d6 bonus when the melee continues.
Pass 1d6 the lose falls to the ground and must spend one full turn of activation prone before it can regain its feet. This gives any attacker a +2d6 bonus in melee.
Pass 0d6 the figure is Out of the Fight.

This means Stunned is gone.
Obviously Dead can only be inflicted by the winner.
Loser can die from their wounds using the After the Battle Recovery Test.

This battle concluded with a Tereken (Irish) victory over the Mirholme (Vikings). The Viking Leader was knocked Out of the Fight and the subsequent Reaction Tests caused the Vikings to run away.