Battle Report: Bear Yourselves Valiantly, Some Time in the Middle Ages

This one's a bit late, but on the 27th of February I got together with the gang at Guardian Games to play out a learning/test game of Bear Yourselves Valiantly, the fantasy/ancient/medieval rules set from the Look Sarge, No Charts guys. We weren't recreating any particular battle so much as testing out the rules, but from the disposition of the flags, it appears a Pope had a beef with an Emperor, or possibly the other way 'round.

In any case, we had six players with Alyssa running the game. She'll be using it to run the Battle of Watling Street at Enfilade this year, so this was something of a test run. Victor stood around and provided helpful advice.

Things begin with an advance toward the hill...

I took the right wing of my side, with two battlegroups under my Wing Commander. In BYV, there's a fairly strict chain of command. Your army is composed of warbands, i.e., bases or stands, which form a Battlegroup. These are in turn gathered together into Wings - usually three - which are all under your army commander. This matters for two reasons: Initiative and morale. I rather liked the initiative system - there's a deck of cards containing two sets of 1-6 cards and a joker. Every commander on the table rolls a d6 for their initiative number, then the GM starts drawing cards from the deck. Commanders (and their battlegroups) act on the card corresponding to their number. On a joker draw, the round ends. Thus, a battlegroup might act once, twice, or not at all.

Morale-wise, after this game, I think it's important for the game to have more smaller battlegroups rather than one or two large ones. More on that later.

In any case, the game proceeded mostly as these group games usually do: a series of one-on-one conflicts with a little overlap at the margins of command. On the left, my side did fairly well, pushing the Imperial forces back. In the center, things turned into a vicious slog over a prominent hill. And on the right, things went absolutely to hell pretty quickly.

Enemy forces advance up the hill; my cavalry waits for David's infantry to get into a good charge range.

The view from the Pope's Bastard Son, leading the right wing.

Enemy cavalry takes the hill

The Bastard Son taking a look at his left - he's sent three warbands around the wood to help contest the near hill.

Things are going badly...

 Things were going fairly well until the first clash of arms. Every time a stand takes a hit, if I recall correctly, their battlegroup commander gets a Morale Test token. At the battlegroup's next activation, the commander must take a test for every token on him, needing to roll higher on a d10 than his Morale Value. Should he fail, the entire battlegroup may suffer a result, from OK to a Rout. I managed to suffer a Rout on my first morale test, and suddenly the right half my wing was in mad retreat, as seen above.

The slog in the middle. Note the green initiative dice on the commander stands.

My Routing battlegroup, screened from the enemy by the woods and their more valiant comrades.

 After routing, units will continue to flee - though they needn't head directly for the board edge - until they are either 24" from any enemy units, or they have interposed rough going or friendly units between themselves and any enemy units. As the picture above shows, I was able to swing the wing commander's own battlegroup into position to buy some time. So, now my battlegroup wasn't in Rout; they were Pinned. We all agreed that this was an unfortunate term, as a Pinned battlegroup can still fight and maneuver normally. It only suffers a -2 to any combat rolls (which is quite, quite bad). It can also only activate on a black card, instead of both a black and red card.

Things are going much better on the other end of the field.

Enemy forces send off the screening units, and the pinned battlegroup turns to face. The Bastard Son is about to eat a charge from a covey of knights...

Some point late in the evening, near the end of the game. Now both battlegroups have been Pinned.

We called the game after about four and half hours of playtime. My side, things were mixed - both of my battlegroups were Pinned, and I was pushed very near the board edge. But on the other end of the table, the Bastard Son's hated rival was doing quite well...

As for Bear Yourselves Valiantly - I think I might like it. Like most rules sets, it could be written somewhat more clearly, and we had several questions after the game, mostly about charge reactions and the effect of having one warband directly behind a friendly warband. The authors are quite responsive to questions, though, and responded to Victor quickly. I really like the d10 + special dice mechanic. It's not amazingly granular, but it's very quick and gives pleasing results.

The two things that appear to require special care are army organization and the Morale Values given to troops. As I experienced above, one bad or two bad morale rolls and you can have essentially lost the battle. Having more and smaller battlegroups mitigates this a bit. Morale Values seem to need to be surprisingly low - the lower the better in game terms, and since your battlegroup commanders will be taking quite a few Morale tests, even a 3 is dangerously high. (That's a 30% chance of failure, and on a failure you have something like a 1 in 3 chance of routing or being pinned.) Recovering from Pinned status requires rolling a 6 on your initiative die, so in a game that may only last another three rounds, it's pretty unlikely.

Still, those aren't flaws with the system as such, but things that game referees need to keep in mind. So, I'd give this system a solid B, maybe a B+, and I'd definitely play it again.