Swordpoint Ancient and Medieval wargames rules

Note: The text below is the transcript of our Flipthrough video (for those who would rather read than listen). OK so let’s flip through the new ‘Big Battle’ rulebook from Gripping Beast – Swordpoint First off there are two important points to note 1) This game has nothing to do with SAGA, other than dealing in part with the same period of history, although Swordpoint comes from Gripping Beast it’s not from the SAGA stable and shares none of the same rules. And 2) wargames Illustrated have been involved in the photography and graphic design of the game, so we won’t be passing any judgment on the great aesthetics of the book, leaving that for others to comment on. So, opening up the book we begin with a few pages of contents, Introduction, Choosing Forces and Setting up the game. It’s always worth taking a look at what the rules designer has to say in the Intro and here Martin Gibbins (the author of Warhammer Ancient Battles Two by the way) tells us – “Swordpoint is intended to Provide the players with the feel of a sizeable formal engagement of the ancient and early medieval period” a little further down the page we learn “The game can be played in multiple scales and with armies of several sizes, including multi-player games. The standard sized game is between two players on a 6’ x 4’ foot table.” It’s clear from early in the book we are dealing with a ‘fluff free’ set of rules. We don’t get any potted history it’s all rules and (at the back) army lists. Clarity is also something the author has strived for throughout with blue boxes pointing us to relevant related ‘Special Rules’, or other box outs underlining particular rules. ‘Basic Concepts’ begins with a look at troop profiles and then base sizes. As both are key components in the game let’s take a closer look at these. We have a matrix for base and unit sizes, picking out some of the standards, we can see that ‘Formed Infantry’ need to be based four figures to a 40 x 40mm base and ‘Formed cavalry’ two figures to a 50 x 50 base. With regard to a unit’s profile, we have three stats; Defence, Cohesion and Points. Where’s the ‘attack’ stat I hear you think?! Well that’s included in the leader’s profile, clearly underlining the importance of commanders in the game. The next page introduces us to other key factors in the game, including ‘Base Strength’ which is important when determining combat and moral results and ‘Momentum’ – a factor that builds during a game and is tracked using tokens, which are gained and ‘spent’ during the