Aquila
A skirmish
Round four. Yrsa is dead, a blow to the brain. Dagmar is still in the line with a wound to the chest, losing about 426 ml of blood a round.
Two small companies meet on a hex field. There are no hit points.
A swing carries joules that depend on the muscle behind it; armour resists in megapascals; whatever gets through cuts skin, fat and muscle in turn, opens the vessels that lie in them, breaks bone, and can reach the organs beneath.
A man goes down because he has bled too much, or because the shock of a blow has outrun what his will can carry. A man who has dropped senseless is not dead: he is helpless, until it ebbs.
Your first battle
- Muster. Arm up to eight men within the purse, or march with the company you are given.
- Form up. Before the first turn, pick a formation, or take hold of a man and stand him on any hex of your own ground.
- Fight. Each man acts in his turn. Arm a stroke, choose a ward and an aim, then pick the man you mean. Select anyone, friend or foe, to read what has been done to him.
Most of it has a key. 1–9 arm a stroke, R turns the ward, A the aim, [ ] turn a man, C closes in and X breaks away, F looses an arrow, W holds and E ends the turn. Esc puts down whatever you had in hand.
The rest is in the manual: every screen, every rule a player meets, and why a blow did what it did. A first battle is the place to start.
What is modelled
- MaterialsDensity, shear yield and fracture strength, impact yield, the finest edge a metal will hold. Copper rolls its edge on iron; steel does not.
- ConstructionPlate bridges a blow to its edges and passes little on until it dents; mail bends only a ring's width; padding simply crushes.
- AnatomyEvery part is an ellipse in cross-section with named vessels and nerves at known angles and depths. A blow cuts a chord through it, and opens whatever that chord passes.
- PhysiqueMuscle and fat per body part, in grams. The same grams decide how hard a man hits and how much a blade has to cut through.
- The kinetic chainWhich muscles a movement can recruit, learnt per movement. A yeoman draws a war bow with his back and may still swing an axe like a farmhand.
- MeasureEvery weapon fights at a distance of its own, and a dagger must buy its way inside a spear's point before it is worth anything.
- WardsFour guards from the German manuals, each shutting two lines and offering the third.
- NerveFighters break, run, and sometimes rally.
The muster. Every choice is paid for from one purse, and the metal matters: a bronze mace and a steel one are not the same weapon.
Download
Version 0.25.0, free. Each download is the whole game: unzip it and play, with nothing installed and no connection needed.
The apps are not code-signed yet, so Windows and macOS will each ask once whether you trust them. The README in each download says how to go on.
Talk to us
Found a bug, or a blow that landed wrong? Say so on the Discord: an alpha is built from what its players notice. Aquila is on itch.io as well, if you would rather follow it there.
Support the development
Aquila is free. If you would like to see it go further, there are three ways to help, and only one of them costs anything.
- Put something towards itOn itch.io you can pay what you like for it when you download it. Whatever you give goes into the next build.
- Say where it breaksPlay it hard and tell us on the Discord what went wrong, or what felt wrong. A good bug report moves an alpha along as surely as money does.
- Pass it onRate it or leave a comment on itch.io, or send it to someone who would like a game that does its sums.