Dragon Ships & Iron Knights

 

Not so much out of the box, as hot off the printers press! I have just received a prototype copy of Dragon Ships & Iron Knights, to be published by Legion Games.

This boxed game contains the three battles of 1066, Gate Fulford, Stamford Bridge and Hastings.

The Heritage of the package is that I self produced Stamford Bridge and Hastings as a desk Top Published effort back in 2000 / 2001. In 2016, Revolution Games picked up the titles and published them as two separate games under the ‘Invasion 1066’ banner.

Legion Games are about to publish a game called ‘1066 Year of Destiny’ designed by Geoff Noble, which is a strategic covering of the tumultuous events of that year. Randy Lein at Legion Games wanted to publish a second game covering the tactical battles of 1066 to compliment Geoff’s strategic design.

The decision was taken to use my two games for the tactical side of things and that Geoff Noble would design the third battle of that year (Gate Fulford) using the same game engine, so that all three games could be presented in a single package and here we are!

I have taken possession of the prototype tactical game to do a thorough final proof read before publication and I must say the component quality is excellent and if you don’t mind me saying, it is just a lovely thing to see your own efforts given this sort of treatment.

The box is 1½” deep. We get three maps, one for each battle, each measuring 17” x 22” (so what are commonly termed half maps) and they are printed onto card. The hex sizes are 1” side to side to accommodate the big counters. 

Each of the battles gets its own rulebook printed on heavy paper with a nice sheen and in two column print format. The Stamford Bridge and Hasting booklets are 12 pages long and the Gate Fulford is set at 8 pages. All three booklets have the same standard rules presented in the first four and a half pages (i.e. the game engine is exactly the same across all three games), the rest of the booklets are exclusive to their relative game and include set-ups, special rules, historical and design notes.

The counters are lovely (by Ken Demyen as are the maps). You get two sheets of ¾” counters depicting units, leaders and rout markers. Some of the counters are shared across more than one battle.

Rounding out the package are three single sided, full colour, player aid sheets (again the work of Ken) on nice weighty card with a sheen to them. The first identifies all of the counter types and shows what the values on the units mean. The second has the charts for close combat, missile fire, reorganization and feigned cavalry attacks. There are also some illustrated examples on there such as charge arcs. The third card holds the terrain charts, movement allowances and the morale groupings that the system uses and again, there are a couple of illustrated examples on there.

So the next job now is to proof read and further play the games to stress test the charts and set-up information etc and make sure that they are right.

I will get some of that play test stuff out so that anyone interested can have a closer look at game parts and the system etc. 

I run a separate web space that is more snippet based than here. LINK;

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html