Y&T Soft

Aquila: the manual

Aquila is a skirmish in which nobody has hit points. Two small companies meet on a hex field. A blow carries joules, armour resists in megapascals, and whatever gets through cuts skin, fat and muscle, opens vessels, breaks bone and reaches the organs underneath. A man goes down because he has lost too much blood, or because the shock of his wounds has overcome his will. He does not go down because a number ran out.

This manual is how to play it. Every chapter is short and stands on its own. If you have never played, read A first battle and then Keys, and come back to the rest when the game asks you something you cannot answer.

The game itself explains a good deal as you go. Hover over any man, hex or button and it tells you what it is. Hover over an enemy while a stroke is armed and it tells you what the blow would do. The log beneath the map says what happened, blow by blow. This manual covers what those cannot: why things happen, and what to do about them.

Contents

To the field

  1. What this is: no hit points, and what a battle is instead
  2. Running it: browser or desktop, what is remembered, languages
  3. A first battle: muster, form up, strike, and watch the answer
  4. The muster: choosing and arming your company, the purse, the opposition
  5. Forming up: the shapes a company can stand in, before anyone moves

Fighting

  1. The battle screen: the order of the round, the map, the bar, the log
  2. A turn: action points, wind, the order of a round, and holding
  3. Moving and facing: the ground, passing your own men, and which way a man is turned
  4. Striking: stroke, aim and ward, and reading a blow before you throw it
  5. Measure: the distance each weapon wants, and getting inside it
  6. On the ground: wrestling, falling, and getting up
  7. Missiles: throwing, the bow, and shooting past your own
  8. Kit in the fight: what can be changed mid-fight, and what it costs

What is under it

  1. What a blow does: from the arm that swings to the organ it reaches
  2. Wounds: the wound chart, bleeding, shock, and a body that stops working
  3. Nerve: wavering, breaking, running and rallying
  4. How a battle ends: the three endings, and what comes after
  5. Who you will meet: the warbands, the beasts, and how they think
  6. Arms and armour: every weapon, piece, shield and material, from the game's own tables
  7. Keys: every key the game answers to
  8. Words: the game's own vocabulary

Experimental

  1. The road: a season on a small march, where wounds carry from one fight to the next