Talking a bit about CLASH of Spears ( well more than a bit )

[seldonParticipant 691xp 1]

Ok , on tables and basing..

First of all, basing.. I will say something interesting, we don’t even ask that all figures have the same basing. If some are on round bases some on square bases .. it doesn’t matter. We paid extra attention to that. The reason is very selfish…
We started playing fantasy with warhammer fantasy battle 3rd edition, our orcs are all in 25x25mm while the rest of the troops are mostly 20x20mm and we eventually want to release a fantasy version and be able to use our armies so we work to ensure that we don’t have the requirement “as long as all troops are based the same” 🙂 !!!

Tables. So because of the deployment and how the rules work you will notice that most table set ups provide a good game. There is no requirement to have X% covered with terrain. You can play a game on a city where you cannot enter buildings ( rules for entering buildings/fortifications will be in future supplement ) and fight in the streets that are open terrain and they are still a lot of fun. Also table symmetry is not critical because the hidden deployment phase balances that out. The victory conditions in the scenarios though are indeed carefully planned measured and playtested to make sure that the game is fun for both side.

But here are some pictures of some tables of games:

Some of the pictures I’ll post are part of battle reports so they will be in a “report/comic” format:

 

 

Does that provide a good idea of tables we use ?

For a standard game we use 4×4′ tables but the scenarios are prepared so that you can also play on tables that are only 3′ deep if needed since you don’t have the typical “deploy 6″ in” , because of the deployment phase !

 

Hope that helps…

 

[torros 23808xp 0]

Good to hear  about the basing

[seldonParticipant 691xp 1]

And I can tell you it is not a random comment, we have playtested that..

We have played CLASH with:

Warhammer FB 3ed armies ( where cav are in 25×50 and orcs have bigger bases than others )
Current GW Lord of the Rings ( where cav are in round bases )
Multi based ( 4 figures per stand ) ancients
15mm ancients multibase
6mm treating one stand as “a figure” ( as I mentioned from our playtesting group in Spain )
Dark Ages and Ancients individually base in round and square bases

Every time a rule appeared to be susceptible to abuse through basing we adjusted the effects so that it would be truly base agnostic..

Example, command range is a circular area centered on your hero, now I don’t need to worry if your hero is on a big Saga style scenic base or a simple 20x20mm base…  ( initially it was the standard measure base to base 🙂 )

That is just one example..

[limburger 21654xp 0]

@seldon thanks for the info 🙂

Are those Romans herding sheep ? 😀

 

[seldonParticipant 691xp 1]

Indeed they are, it was a foraging scenario..

Raid in Taranto !!

 

[captainventanusParticipant 4933xp 1]

Scale – having the options to chose from is always good. Personally I prefer 28mm for skirmish and this gives me the reason to paint up some legionaries which is something I have wanted to do for decades. Having them on sabot bases gives some flexibility for both individual and multi-bases. For any larger games 15mm it is, and one day I will do that too.

Having a few example set ups for terrain is always useful to understand the intent of the designers. It need not be too detailed like the Kill Team or War Cry cards, but a bit helps. Pictures, like the ones in the batrep comics do this.

We tend to play on 3×4 or 3×5 simply because that’s what the dining table is. If necessary we tend to adjust the first term movement a little to compensate for the smaller footprint.

The initial army lists don’t quite do it for me as its the late Republic and Empire rather than the Punic or Macedonian wars, but pretty everything is pretty open here but the sounds of it. A fantasy version would be interesting as I would not mind a universal system as I have an elf and dwarf army here in boxes that otherwise will never get used. If you can fit in a tree-peoples army to be able to use an AoS Sylvaneth you’d tick all my boxed.

The actions versus fatigue choice sounds rather good to actually play out. I probably would be guilty too of always trying to get the maximum out of any activation rather than holding back.

The hidden deployment is something I am on the fence about. I get the idea behind it, but until playing its hard to estimate its impact on gameplay.

[seldonParticipant 691xp 3]

mm… the lists cover the romans from the early republic to the late republic.. so far my armies have always been pre-marian reforms

hastati are great troops due to being less heavily armored

we have stats all the way from leves to triarii even if triarii are rare and not abundant in skirmishes

if you wanted to do even earlier romans you can use the italian tribes lists

punic wars and even macedonian wars are well within the scope

 

but as I said full point design system will be available…

[captainventanusParticipant 4933xp 0]

Sorry long day and it came out wrong – meant to say I was more interested in Imperial Rome. But that’s really a minor detail as there isn’t a huge difference between Republican and Imperial forces as far a troops are concerned for this type of gaming.

[seldonParticipant 691xp 0]

Ah ok, well late republic in scope, early empire will be in the free online playtest compendium…

You will meed some auxilia and skirmishers to support the legionnaires.. It is tough for heavies in the game when they are not supported..

[seldonParticipant 691xp 5]

An Italian force for CLASH of Spears

This is a 600 pts pretty standard force from the Italian tribes list.

Civis troops:

large unit of 9 tribesmen ( heavy shield & throwing spears )

two units of 6 samnite warriors each ( partial armor & heavy shields, throwing spears, guerrilla type troops )

Milites:

One unit of 6 campanian hoplites (full armor and heavy shields, long spear, these guys prefer to fight in the open if they can they would rather overlap shields in close order, but they are tough hombres so if they go in open order they can still kick your butt )

Rare:

6 mercenary cretan archers, their fame precedes them

 

The army is lead by a Chieftain ( Lvl 4 ) and a Leader ( Lvl 3 ) , this provides 7 command points. We’ve seen through extensive playtesting that having at roughly 50% more CPs than units is a good reference. It is open for players to try what they want, but that seems to be the optimal choice so far.

 

[seldonParticipant 691xp 4]

The battle of Cannae is over… small groups of roman soldiers roam the fields looking for sanctuary…

A small band of Triarii have been found by Hasdrubal’s mounted body guard who have joined the chase to help prevent the Romans from regrouping …

This is their last stand !!

[limburger 21654xp 2]

It’s great to see your kickstarter getting funded 🙂

And an awesome kickstarter video too.

[phaidknott 7023xp 0]

Didn’t even know this kickstarter had begun (for shame BoW, perhaps if it had been exclusive to Barnes and Noble we might have seen a news article (or even three)….sorry but that just me being an evil grumpy git)

But all snarkiness aside, I hope it gets into the news stream (for website update summaries) and wish the chaps great success 🙂

[avernosKeymaster 33946xp 1]

@phaidknott you mean this one? https://www.beastsofwar.com/news/clash-of-spears-kickstarter-countdown/

[seldonParticipant 691xp 5]

Thanks for the support guys, the performance of the KS so far has been fantastic, we are very excited…

Everything is on track , we hope to start shipping in January…

Only thing I need to find this week is a way to reduce shipping to our Australian backers, they have supported the project quite a bit and if I can figure out a better logistics path it will help them.. ( given that I’ve been doing logistics strategy for over 8 years now in my regular job, I hope I can find something 🙂 )

 

Can’t wait for people to start playing the game end of January… and next year will have to go visit the British Isles 🙂

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