First Game of Cry Havoc in Years

Monday night saw me dig out Cry Havoc for a game. I had a quick look through the rules before the game and they were just as simple as I remembered. A couple of minutes explaining the rules to Chaz and we were ready to go.

We decided to play Scenario 1 first to get the hang of the game as it only used a few characters. The scenario was a fight between two bands of local thugs, each vying for the position of top dog in the village. Then we hit the first minor problem, sorting out the counters. There are two counters for each character (four for mounted knights) showing the different states they can have, so it took a while to go through all the counters picking out the ones we needed. Once we got that sorted out the game went pretty quickly. A few checks of the rules later and we started to get the hang of the tactics, ganging up on opponents, steering clear of archers and using the terrain to advantage. I lost my bowman early on and never recovered, with Chaz gaining an easy win.

Having got the hang of things we moved on to a more complex scenario played on the same map, shown below.

This time a few knights with a mix of archers & billmen were protecting the Lady Edith after her town had fallen to a seige. They were hiding out in a poorer quarter of the town hoping to survive till reinforcements arrived to rescue them. I played the dastardly attackers.

Again it took us ages to sort through the counters, I'll have to get a tray for the counters or label some bags to help sort them out. I outnumbered Chaz but he had more crossbows and archers. Having suffered at the hands of Chaz's archers last game I took great pains to avoid them and they were a lot less effective this time. As the game progressed I managed to use my superior numbers to wear down Chaz's forces and it soon became clear that the Lady Edith was in for a rough night so we called the game as a win for me.

Having played a couple of games now we could see how things could have been done better by both of us. For a simple set of rules there are some complex tactics in play. But it was an enjoyable night and I look forward to playing Cry Havoc again soon.