In my previous articles I told you how I had bought an entire wargame for the price of 5 Space Marine Heavy Intercessors and what it was like unboxing, building and painting the models you get inside. You can read that here:
Pillage – Part One: I Bought An Entire Wargame for the Price of Five Space Marines
Pillage – Part Two: Continuing the Viking Adventure
With the Vikings and Irish assembled and painted and the book in hand, I decided I couldn’t wait for my friends to get stuck in (a good sign for the game) and decided to play my other friend Billy Nomates.
All the thoughts I have in this article are based on playing the rules alone and controlling both sides, I will do a follow up article at a later date when I get Ian and Dave involved, and what their thoughts are on the game.
But for this article I wanted to find out whether the booklet could teach me the basic rules and whether the scenarios that taught them were fun.
Learning to Pillage
One of the first things I think needs mentioning is the book itself. It’s not the full rulebook, but it gives you the basics to fight simple games and give you a flavour of what the game is about.
Instead of listing all the rules with diagrams in one massive lump, the intro booklet instead introduces its various rules gradually over the four scenarios in the book. What I also liked about this as well was that the scenarios where all part of a larger narrative of a Viking longship arriving in Ireland and the crew making their first foray into the lands.
The basic turn sequence is easy enough, the players roll for initiative, move their warriors in initiative order, moving their warriors, resolving shooting, fighting and where you can setting various things on fire.
The whole game has an initiative order, as mentioned, where the player who has initiative, moves or shoots with all their models in that phase before their opponent does the same.
I mention this, as I have seen posts on Reddit etc where new players have been confused by this rule and have assumed that initiative order means that the controlling player chooses a model to act with first and then the two players alternate.
Each scenario adds something new, which allows you to concentrate on learning one or two game mechanics before moving on to the next scenario.
Most of the mechanics revolve around the armour and weapons rather than wounds and weapon skill like Warhammer games. Armour will determine how far your model can move and much defence it has, and the game is simple with this having only Unarmoured, Some Armour and Full Armour. The weapons all have different chances of hitting these different armour types and as expected some are more effective than others.
This all makes it easy to understand the different warriors movements and weapon profiles without constantly referring to a book.
Everyone Gets to Fight
In Pillage the melee combat is simultaneous, both warriors make their attacks, and both can potentially die in that combat. So winning a fight isn’t about who’s turn it is first.
It makes every fight dangerous even if one warrior has an advantage in equipment. It can also give you some moments when neither fighter can land a hit for several turns.
Scenario 1 – First Encounter
Unflar disembarks on Irish shores soon enough. He sets up a temporary camp and sends a few men out to scout ahead.
Erik heads north. Seeking a village or other settlement that his crew can plunder straight away, he finds himself face to face with Cian, a young Irish sentry on patrol.
A fight is unavoidable; Erik needs to silence the Irishman before he raises the alarm!
This first scenario is all about using the basic movement and combat mechanics. Initiative, movement and melee are introduced without asking players to worry about anything else.
By the end I was comfortable with movement and fighting.
And for those who are interested, Erik managed to silence Cian. First blood to the Vikings.
Scenario 2 – Ambush
Now Unlfar knows the Irish are close, he sends out a group of warriors to prepare for a larger-scale attack.
Unfortunately for him, the Irish are a step ahead, and Unflar’s men are caught in an ambush! They need to alert the camp and get reinforcements.
With the basic rules around initiative, movement and fighting being more familiar we now moved on to a game where we really focused on initiative, shooting and an objective to the game (in this case, getting a Viking off the Irish side of the battlefield).
It introduced the different armour types and two types of ranged weapons as well in the form of the sling and the javelin. The sling having a greater range but less likely to kill than the javelin.
The shooting rules were just as simple as the combat mechanics, with each weapon type having a range and needing a different to hit roll against the various armour types.
For those who are interested, the Vikings managed to fight their way through the Irish and warn the camp.
Scenario 3 – The Attack
Having been thwarted by the Irish warriors (or not in our case), Unflar accompanied his men to the battlefield. Surrounded by his most faithful fighters, he launches a lightning raid to avenge Vikings who fell in battle.
His goal is clear: to overawe his enemies enough that the locals give up without a fight. But he hasn’t accounted for a young Irish chief called Aodhan, who has been preparing his defences for some time…
The third scenario was a lot of fun and had a simple objective for the Vikings of burning down the Irish house.
This was a great way to introduce the Chieftains and the Fire phase of the game. Chieftains are a little different in Pillage, as they’re some of the few models with multiple hit points, and they can also make two attacks instead of one in the fight phase.
The Vikings has burning brands and the defenders just had to stop them getting to the house to set it alight.
In my game the fighting quickly became a number of smaller one on ones allowing the Viking brand bearers to pass through and get to the house.
The two Chieftains fought each other in personal combat . There were some interesting dice rolls where at one point the Irish leader rolled snake eyes for his attacks while the Viking leader hit twice, the Irish leader then rolled double 6s for his saves.
The Viking javelin thrower picked out the slingers defending the house allowing his and another to set fire to the house.
The objective gave the battle a sense of purpose and it was a good introduction for the chieftains and the fire phase.
Scenario 4 – Pillage
The lightning raid failed (though it didn’t), and Unflar hasn’t convinced the locals to submit. No problem. He’ll steal their livestock and their riches. They’ll keep him going for the rest of the season, and those impoverished peasants can thank him for their lives….
Unflar assembles his whole crew to go pillage the Irish.
This was the final scenario and this time it introduced the looting rules. The battlefield featured everything in the introductory set.
The Vikings needed to capture and carry off enough loot to claim victory, while the Irish are there to stop them (obviously).
It was an interesting scenario, because the Vikings needed to get as much loot as possible without being slowed down by the combat. While the Irish were out numbered and couldn’t chase down every Viking.
It started with the Vikings having initiative but the Irish defenders made a good start and managed to kill one the of the more heavily armed Vikings with a lucky sling shot.
In the second turn the Vikings began getting their hands on some loot, rushing into the farmstead and grabbing a chest and three of the animals in the pen. But the Irish charged into the pen themselves and fighting broke out in animal enclosure. Another Viking fell to one of the slingers while the Irish chief killed the Viking javelin thrower. The Vikings did manage to slay one of the Irish near the house and the raid was quickly becoming very bloody.
The Vikings retained the initiative for the three turns in a row and the Vikings started taking revenge for their slain comrades as they brought down two Irishmen, including the one with the Dane Axe. The Irish chief caught up with a Viking that had stolen a chicken but lost a wound to the chicken wielding Viking.
In turn four though the chicken thief got his just desserts as the Irish chief hacked him to the ground, but did take another wound in the process. The Irish lost another slinger to a Viking javelin and the Irish were running out of men to defend the settlement.
In the fifth turn the last Irish slinger was taken out by a Javelin just leaving the Irish chief who challenged Unlfar to personal combat. But neither of them landed any blows and turn six saw that fight continue while the remaining Vikings made off with their loot.
This scenario was easily the highlight of my introductory experience and it wasn’t because the rules had become more in depth. I can see two players trying to outmanoeuvre each other rather than just charging headlong at each other and I think this is something that Pillage does well. The games, especially the final one, felt like little narrative events.
What About the Rules?
After the four scenarios I came away impressed with how easy they were to learn. The turn sequence is easy to remember and the weapon and armour mechanics make sense and are easy to follow. I also like simultaneous combat and the chance that both fighters have a chance to be slain.
But there are limitations to the book in this box.
During the scenario 3 I had a situation where I could have two warriors against one in combat, and the introductory rules don’t cover this.
I also suspect that while the rules have been streamlined for the intro (as they should be), there are no doubt rules around ranges and moving and firing that may not be covered in this set, and this does raise some questions for me about introductory sets.
Would I rather have the whole set of rules explained to me from the beginning, or would I prefer a simplified version that lets me get playing quicker?
In this case, Pillage has made the right decision and I really enjoyed the introductory book. It meant I could work through the scenarios without becoming overwhelmed.
I do think it perhaps needs a couple of extra points in the set to explain what to do around combats where a model is outnumbered but I appreciate why the designers have kept it deliberately simple.
Does Pillage Work Solo?
Playing the rules solo does change the experience, especially as you don’t have someone to share the story you’re telling with. But that is another point I want to raise, as it did feel like a story was being told within the battles and as a narrative player this was important to me.
But going back to solo play, there’s no hidden intents and no surprise tactical decisions, but as a way of learning the rules, playing it solo worked well.
The individual warriors are easy to manage and the turn sequence is clear with the scenarios providing enough structure to keep things moving along.
Looking Beyond the Introductory Set
Pillage really caught my imagination and I can easily see a campaign in the future with rival warbands raiding settlements and competing for resources.
Loot recovered during battles could be used to replace casualties or recruit more warriors. You could even track the stories of individual warriors across a number of raids.
I did have the Last Kingdom novels by Bernard Cornwell front and centre in my mind while playing this game and I can imagine the game working really well with a campaign set around this.
I haven’t explored the full Pillage rules yet to know if campaign support exists but the fact that I’m thinking about campaigns says a lot for the rules.
Introducing Pillage to the Gaming Club
Perhaps the biggest indication of how much I enjoyed the set is that I’ve already started talking to friends about playing it and I’ve even ordered the full rulebook.
The idea of stealing animals and setting fire to things seemed to appeal to Dave…
I’m going to run an intro game with me acting as a GM to help explain the rules and keep things moving for them. It’ll also let me see how Pillage plays when two people are competing against one another, which I will cover in a future article.
Final Thoughts – Any good?
Yes. I enjoyed the experience especially the final two scenarios with the fire phase and looting added in.
The rules are straightforward and the combat system is interesting with the gradual introduction of mechanics being very effective. It was a great way to learn the rules.
As mentioned, I do think the set could benefit from one or two additional rules, especially where a model is outnumbered in melee, but that frustration didn’t distract me from the enjoyment of the game and the story it told.
By the time I reached the fourth scenario I wasn’t worried about how the game worked, only who was going to look after the chicken.
If you’ve never played a non-Warhammer game, or you’re considering dabbling into Historics then I would urge you to give the introductory set a go, I think the Warhammer fans among you may be surprised at what you’ve been missing.
