Lord of the Dark Ages

I’ve spent this moring looking at statlines that could be suitable to use as Dark Age fighters.

I’ve started of using Rohan as the basis of most of the main units as, personally, I feel they have the most Dark Age feel out of all the factions in LoTR, I then spread out to other factions for stats i thought may be more appropriate.

For now i’m keeping unit types simple, using the generic unit types from Saga with some of the faction specific units. However I have split the Warlord type into King and Chieftain, to represent the idea that an army could consist of the King who has called all of his Chieftains to war.

The unit types and the LoTR units ive based their stats on:

King – King Theoden
Chieftain – Captain of Rohan
Hearthguard – Rohan Royal Guard
Warrior – Warrior of Rohan
Levy – Ruffian
Viking Beserker – Urak Hai Beserker
Irish Curaidh – Dunedain
Irish Wolfhounds – Grip, Fang & Wolf from Farmer Maggot profile
Wolfhound Handler – Warrior of Rohan

I also checked the special rules that were associated with the units and kept or discarded them as i thought appropriate.

I haven’t looked at wargear options yet, but again I will begin basing these on the options available in Saga. I think this is where wargear options will start effecting the statlines and therefore points cost. (For example, hearthguard assumes the unit has armour, but not all Welsh hearthguard had armour)

Attached below is the pdf of my work so far detailing what I have talked about above. You are welcome to look at it, and suggest alterations, more appropriate statlines and so on. Apologies for those reading this that do not have the Middle Earth rulebook some of the file may not make sense, but it would have been a lot to type up which I was too tired to do for now. I will be happy to answer questions.

So whilst I don’t know much about the period, I’m very interested in Dark Ages wargaming.

I currently have two rulebooks that cover Dark Ages, Hail Caesar and Saga

For the game I have in mind, Hail Caesar doesn’t really do it for me, whilst I like rank & file games, this is not what I want to play for the period.

As for Saga? The game is great, brilliant for small skirmishes. However I would like to, on occasion, play something on a larger scale.

As for the kind of game I would like to play, GWs Middle Earth Strategy game is one of my favourite rulesets (at least from GW), and at the moment, is the closest I can think of to the kind of game I want to play. It can be a large scale game, but has the feel of skirmish elements.

So my idea is to take the middle earth rule set, and use that for my Dark Ages game.

The first step in my plan is to take the unit types from Saga: Age of Vikings, and find suitable matches in the Middle Earth game. At the moment, my feel is that the Rohan statlines would be the most suitable to use.

I will keep unit types simple for now, taking them from Saga so:

Warlord
Hearthguard
Warriors
Levies

Plus any faction specific troops, such as Viking Beserkers.

I will also only be focusing on the Age of Vikings in Britain, so Saxons, Vikings, Welsh, Scots, Irish. But may branch out later down the line

For now, I will also be taking the equipment options from Saga, and applying them to the statlines (for example, Viking Levy units can only take bows or javelins).

In terms of streamlining the rules them selves, I will be taking out rules that I’m not bothered by, or feel are unnecessary to the game i want to play, for example, warriors being able to make certain strikes with different weapons (feint, piercing strike, stun and so on).

As for magic, I have the idea of keeping it, but modifying it to represent the different priests of the factions trying to gain the favour of the gods (so for example, I would consider keeping spells that effect morale, restore fate/might/will points, anything that could represent the blessing or curses of the gods)

Overall I feel like this will give me the kind of game that is in my mind, something that can be used for large battles, but then also suitable for village/farm raids etc.

What do you guys think? Am i wasting my time? Has this already been done? (i think it has, but have so far been unable to actually find any pdf’s etc)

As an additional note, I would be happy to listen to people’s suggestions. Whilst I like the period, my knowledge is limited, so would be happy to take suggestions from the more knowledgeable community. However my goal is to make a fun game that has the feel of the period, rather than a historically accurate game.