Horizon Wars learning game

I picked up the Horizon Wars rules a long time ago. I think when it was first released. I liked what I read and it was enough of an impetus to break out some of my old Dystopian Wars figures and paint them up to use in some test games. I had a mixture of British, French, Prussian and other figs but I gave them all a similar paint scheme and they appeared to work well together.

For some reason though, I never pulled the trigger and got a game in. Part of it is that I never finished painting up an opfor for the VSF minis to fight against. I have some Heavy Gear mechs that I assembled but something about the design of them didn’t really do anything for me. It might be the anime influence in the design but while they are very well produced minis they are oddly smooth.

A few weeks ago Jeremy mentioned giving the rules a try and that solved my opfor problem so we arranged a game for today. We decided to start off small(ish) with a 15 point battle and since neither of us were familiar with the rules we just faced off and started bashing on each other.

I recently finished my cache of Adeptus Titanicus terrain so I brought it out to The Sentry Box for our game. I recently found some 6mm scale ‘road tape’ on Amazon and I am looking to find a local source to pick some up and use to add some quick roads with these buildings. We played on a 3′ x 6′ area made up of two mats but I doubt we actually ever went past the extent of the 3′ x 3′ mat.

I brought out a P3 and a P2 mech along with two Heavy Cav and two Heavy Inf. The P3 mech was using the Transport ability from the Over the Horizon expansion that was recently published. The P2 Mech had the Assisted Targetting ability to help it score some hits.

I did a quick army sheet in Numbers and printed it out. The Damage boxes turned out to be very useful as veterans of the game will no doubt know.

The P3 Mech was my CHQ and I had two CR points to use due to my four conventional units. I chose to upgrade the F values of the two Heavy Cav. The ‘transport’ mech would be carrying the two P2 Heavy Inf elements but I failed to realize that the Mech couldn’t make a Rapid Move and so the M value of 2 was really quite low for the task. To be honest, in future games I will find other ways to move infantry and will do so with lighter infantry since the Heavy Inf could withstand a few hits and still move pretty quickly.

Jeremy brought two mechs, an Armoured Arty, a Heavy Inf and two Heavy Cav units. I don’t think that he added any frame or ability options to his two mechs. I also don’t know if he used any CR points when building his force. Since both of us used a Mech for our CHQ we didn’t get any cost bonuses on any units so each force was priced at the P value of each unit.

So how did the game play?

Horizon Wars uses alternating activations, which is a big plus in my books, and also allows you to save actions for later reaction fire. I am sure that we did things wrong, in regards to reactions, in our game but it is an important part of play and we started using them more and more as the game went on.

You track damage to your units as well as have the damage affect the systems of the unit. So your movement, fire and armour degrade as you take damage until you are a smoking, immobile wreck on the table. Units don’t just take a hit and explode. One of my Heavy Cav elements was rendered immobile and stuck in the open as I tried to save its firepower and armour to keep it as a threat to Jermey’s force.

When you read about this system you see the potential for it but you really don’t get a sense of how the decisions about where to apply the damage can impact play until you get some minis on the table and start shooting. It is an interesting system and it requires you to make decisions based on the battlefield, the unit and its role. Decisions are the gateway to an exciting game and Horizon Wars is filled with points where you have to make critical decisions.

The game uses D12s for firing but unlike almost all games, the ‘to-hit’ mechanic of the game requires you to add the dice together in order to determine if you hit. You also roll D12s when defending and, in this case, you remove dice from your opponent’s pool that match what was rolled to hit. You can sometimes hit at long range but one lucky roll by your opponent can cancel that.

What is really interesting is how the fire dynamic changes once the range shortens. As your opponent gets closer and their armour takes damage you go from having to combine dice for a hit to having each dice be a possible hit on their own. Getting close in Horizon Wars can be quite deadly but also allow you to crush your opponent.

We played for four or five turns before calling it a day. The game moved quite quickly (alternating activation games are like this) and even though we had to look into the book a few times it wasn’t really necessary that often.

We really didn’t scratch the surface of the game in our quick game. There are air rules, scenarios, campaigns and all of the new rules in the first expansion. My first task is to go through the rulebook again and see what we missed. Then I want to get a few more games in before adding the air rules. My goal now is to get up to speed and add some of the large airships from Dystopian Wars to the game.

I really liked the rules. Quite a lot more than I expected that I would and I am looking forward to getting in more games and expanding the non-Epic 6mm troops I have. If you have been looking for a ruleset for small scale sci-fi games then this is it. Quick, fun, strategic and easy to use.