Thud & Blunder Trial

This weeks activities centered around a trial run through of the Thud & Blunder rules from The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare  chaps.

A five sided punch up with a fairly standard hunt the treasure and duff up nasty Trolls scenario to keep things simple for the first trial.

Andy W supplied most of the war bands for the trial and Cardboard Ken providing the terrain for the punch up. Myself. Andy W, Ken, Eck and Dougie sat down for the run through with Ken supplying his own band and Andy providing the pre-generated bands for the rest of us.


The five sided game went pretty well and provided a fun evenings entertainment and lots of food for thought for making up our own bands, which was the point of the trial after all. I was playing the Town Watch with generic knight and guard types with a wizard thrown in.

The wizard died almost instantly being a big target for obvious reasons but with limited range spells was easy bait for Dougie's orc archers. The combats about the town went well and eventually Dougie claimed the victory with the most victory points having killed almost all of my band, escaped with treasure and killed a troll.

I took a consolation prize for my knight being the last man standing after everyone else had left, but that was just me, everyone else was leaving anyway.

The rules use the well worn IHMN mechanics which work fine. The introduction of heavier armour types do make some problems with some match-ups being impossible, like my archer shooting at Ken's knight with heavy armour (AV14) could only hope to hit him on a 10 (d10) if he stood in the open and not moving saying 'shoot me'. But if you know the limitations then perhaps not much of an issue. We'll see.

The main thing noticed and agreed by all was that you need to make up your own band to suit your play style and play to strengths. Some well crafted scenario's would certainly make the game a must.

Will be playing the rules again definitely to explore them further and looking forward to some enjoyable games in the process.