In late 2025 my son drew my attention to a post on the Lead Adventure Forum in which Jeff noted that he had recently moved to Delaware and wondered if there were any historical gamers about. I sent him a note and we arranged a French and Indian War game just before Christmas, during my blogging hiatus. As can be seen from Jeff’s blog, linked above, he’s interested in a variety of periods including ancients, French and Indian War, and Age of Sail, so we’ve had an interesting series of games since then.
I picked up a copy of Midgard a while ago, based on the discussions about it online and the fact that its basing system is compatible with my 60mm square bases I use with my 25mm fantasy/historical mass battle miniatures. Jeff has been wanting to get his ancients on the table, and I have been wanting to try it out, so I eagerly accepted when Jeff proposed a few weeks ago that we test it out with a Trojan War game using his 28mm Foundry and Redoubt figures.
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| Athena watches the Greeks…”Where did Odysseus get to?” |
As with any new set of rules there was a lot of rules referencing. I had read them when I first got them, but life intervened before the game and I didn’t end up rereading them, although I did rewatch some of Too Fat Lardies’
introductory videos. There’s a lot of information on the net regarding Midgard’s mechanics, so I’m not going to go into them in detail, at least in this post. Army morale is handled by a system of “reputation” points, which you lose by losing heroes and units, and gain by having heroes perform brave actions such as charging at the head of their troops or challenging enemy heroes to single combat. At the end of a turn in which an army’s reputation reaches zero, they lose.
Jeff set up the two army lists and we tossed for sides and attacker/defender status in an open field battle. I ended up with the Greeks, so I figured I would give the system a test by charging into combat with Achilles, my best hero, and challenging Hector to single combat. The overall result was that a lot of reputation was at stake, and Achille’s death (though after slaying Hector, keeping The Iliad historical, though not correct in all the details…) took the heart out of the Greek army and the Trojans won the day.
As noted, there was quite a lot of rules referencing, but the core rules are pretty simple. You throw dice for command tests and combat, and you have a 1/3 chance of failing a command test and a 1/3 chance of succeeding in a combat roll. Movement rules are likewise simple; heavy infantry gets a full move if going straight ahead and half if doing anything else; skirmishers can move freely in any direction; etc. We didn’t run into anything in the rules that really upset us, so we agreed to schedule another game.
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| Jeff’s DIY Trojan War reputation marker containers |
We played a second game yesterday, using Scenario 2 from the book, “None Shall Pass”, and Jeff’s collection of Romans and Gauls. This is an asymmetrical scenario, which the defenders having few troops, but defending two crossings of an otherwise impassible river. After some discussion we assigned the Gauls the role of defenders and then tossed for sides. I ended up playing the Roman attackers. After considering the lessons from the first game we both played the leaders a little more cautiously; we charged with them to gather some extra reputation points, but avoided challenges to single combat.
Due to the limited avenues of approach I ended up with my light missile troops in the middle, shooting across the river and the heavy infantry assaulting the two crossings. It was a slugfest, but Jeff was suffering from a case of cold dice, and the Romans eventually ground the Gauls down in the approved Roman manner. Since the first game I had a chance to read the rules, so we only needed to look up more unusual and complicated situations. Management of the leaders seems to be the key skill to the game, and I believe that’s what James Morris intends. I feel like one or two more games would put me in a position to fight the battle and not the rules, so I am anticipating seeing more of this on the table in the near future.
I have plenty of fantasy figures I could use with these rules, as well as a large collection of 1/72 scale plastic Punic Wars figures. Those would want some additional leaders painted up. I think I’ve got a couple of extra Roman command stands painted up on speculation many years ago, but I am pretty sure I’ve only got one Carthaginian general painted. It should also be possible to use a smaller collection such as my Dux Bellorum troops with a 6cm base width rather than a 12cm width, although that might make the 3cm half measure used in some places a little fussy. It seems that some additional experimentation is in order.
