Starting a battle

1. Present warbands

Take turns presenting your warbands to each other by going over your fighters, their equipment and any special rules that might affect them during the battle.

2. Determine attacker

Roll off. The winner decides which player is the attacker and which player is the defender.

3. Select a scenario

Select a scenario from the scenario list. The scenario determines the victory conditions for the battle, as well as any special rules that might come into play.

4. Set up terrain

Take turns placing terrain pieces on the battlefield, while agreeing on what types of terrain each piece is made up of.

If the selected scenario requires objective markers or treasure tokens, those are placed during this step too. It does not matter in which exact order you place terrain pieces, markers and tokens, as the goal is to create an interesting battlefield for the warbands to fight over.

5. Deploy warbands

Unless stated otherwise, the defender chooses a battlefield edge and sets up a search party within 3” of it. The opposing player then sets up one search party within 3” of the opposite edge. Players take turns setting up search parties until all fighters are deployed.

Search Parties

Each search party consists of one third of a player’s warband, distributed as evenly as possible. For example, a warband of 10 fighters would form two search parties of 3 fighters and one of 4. When deploying a search party, each fighter after the first must be placed within 3” of another fighter in that search party.

6. Optional rules

If both players agree you may add optional rules to the battle, such as twists, contracts or hired swords.

7. The first battle round

After setting up the battlefield and deploying warbands, the first battle round begins.