Thursday, December 18, 2008

Legends of the High Seas

Today I would like to give my impression of one of the Warhammer Historical games that is available. The game is called Legends of the High Seas(LotHS) and is basically about playing pirates. Personally for me this is a great adventure. I love pirate movies and paraphernalia, so when I found out about this game, it was an instant 'I must own this game' reaction.

For an early Christmas present I treated myself to the rulebook, ordered through www.thewarstore.com which I always recommend for buying gaming material not normally found in your Local Gaming Store(LGS). Please though, continue supporting your local gaming stores also as they are your local location to gather and play games!

Anyway, I digress, so to continue on, last night I finally got a chance to play out a basic learning game of the mechanics of the system. Lucky for me, I was able to match off against not just anyone, but the author of the game himself. This was great as it gave me a little found opportunity to pick his brain when I encountered situations that I had questions how a rule was worded versus the intention of the rule. This was great for me, not that many circumstances came up, as the game plays very smooth!

As to the game play, we only played the skirmish level stuff facing 5 basic navy men against 5 basic pirates. Sorry I don't have any pictures, as the models we used with Tim's so I didn't have any shots of them. The game played very similar to the Lord of the Rings(LotR) game style, which makes the learning curve very easy as I am very familiar with that game system already.

Overall the game was great. I did learn a couple tactical tricks that will help me in future games, mainly in movement and placement of models in confining locations(such as town streets ;) ), which I will be able to use in both LotHS and also my LotR games! By the way, thank you Tim for those lessons.

The only somewhat cumbersome part of the rules was the reloading of weapons which had the effect of having to handle counters. This was a necessary part of the game(flint lock weapons weren't fast to reload) but having to manage the counters was kind of annoying, but understandable.

Final thoughts on this game are: If you like historical gaming, but do not want the size of say Warhammer Fantasy Battles and instead prefer skirmish gaming, this game is for you. If you like pirates and the thought of playing a pirate army and managing a pirate ship sounds like fun, this game is for you. If you enjoy the LotR game system, and want an opportunity to play something new that uses the same rules to play, this game is for you. Basically, this game is for you!

Look forward to future posts as I start working on my pirate band of cut-throats!

~Aaaaargh!!!!!

Let me know your thoughts. Have you also played LotHS? Have you entertained the idea of getting into this game or other Historical gaming? I want to know.