Earlier this week, myself and Andy W had a trial game of the 're-invented' Ral Partha Fantasy rules 'Chaos Wars'.
I had noted the existence of these rules somewhere on the blogosphere and of course checked them out when I saw that they were free for download.
With seven fairly chunky volumes available for download including Core Rules, Building Army Lists, Campaign Setting Details, Sample Army Lists, Personalities and such, there is quite a breadth of material produced for the rules.
I'm not completely au fait with the whole story behind the rules, but in short they are the set produced back in the Eighties by Ral Partha, but brought up to date by Iron Wind Miniatures who are now producing the Ral Partha miniatures lines and bringing these out under kick-starter waves.
We trialed a small game (meaning four or five units a side) using their 'low fantasy' setting, meaning small amounts of fantasy add-on's like beasts, heroes etc. and went through the mechanics of the rules which turned out OK though we did make a couple of mistakes in going through things on the first run as you often do, mainly giving heroes attached to units their full attack stats rather than merely adding to the unit stats, but all in all things appeared to be un-broken and worthy of further trials on a grander scale.
The basic mechanic of standard unit sizes ala Lion/Dragon Rampant of 12 figures for infantry and 6 for cavalry being the basis of the game, and generally fairly similar in feel but with the addition of flank attacks etc. and some differences too.
We trialed a small game (meaning four or five units a side) using their 'low fantasy' setting, meaning small amounts of fantasy add-on's like beasts, heroes etc. and went through the mechanics of the rules which turned out OK though we did make a couple of mistakes in going through things on the first run as you often do, mainly giving heroes attached to units their full attack stats rather than merely adding to the unit stats, but all in all things appeared to be un-broken and worthy of further trials on a grander scale.
The basic mechanic of standard unit sizes ala Lion/Dragon Rampant of 12 figures for infantry and 6 for cavalry being the basis of the game, and generally fairly similar in feel but with the addition of flank attacks etc. and some differences too.
All in all, though I am not hugely a fan of the standard 'limited' unit size/element type rule sets, these do appear to give a good feel for this type of rule set and produced a fairly satisfacory quick play game and as such are definitely worthy of future attention.
You can check out the rules and the various supplements on the Ral Partha site.
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