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Aquila › Manual

A first battle

This is one battle, walked through from the muster to the first exchange of blows. Every step has a chapter of its own; the links go to the long version.

March

The game opens on the muster, headed Choose the fight. Leave it as it is for now.

The first tab, Your company, holds eight men, five of them ticked to march. Each is already armed, and the company's weapons have been dealt so that each man carries one he knows well. The second tab, The opposition, holds eight more, five of them ticked to take the field against you, each with a kit drawn by lot worth about 360 crowns. You will see what they drew when the lines form.

Press March 5 against 5. The muster explains everything on this screen.

Form up

The battle screen opens with your company standing on the left edge of the field in the loose line, and theirs on the right. Nothing has moved yet and nothing can be spent. The first lines of the log, under the map, say who marched and the weapon each of the other side is carrying.

The bar across the top already shows the order of the first round: whoever is first on the left acts first. You could rearrange your men now, or pour them into another shape; the loose line will do. Press Begin the battle. Forming up has the rest.

Walk

If one of theirs is first in the order, the game plays his turn and you watch.

When one of your men comes up, his hex is outlined in brass and the bar under the map shows his name and his action points. The pale hexes around him are where he can walk this turn. Hover over one: a dashed line shows the way, and a label says how many action points it costs. Click it and he walks. The two companies start at opposite edges, so the first round or two is mostly walking.

When he has gone as far as you want, press End turn. Points left over are lost, unless he holds them back instead; see A turn.

Strike

Sooner or later one of your men starts his turn with an enemy close enough to hit. That enemy has a faint dashed red outline: he is within reach of your man's weapon.

Take the swordsman. His bar has a Strike group with a button for each stroke of his sword. Press Slash (4), or the key 1. Every enemy he could reach with it is now ringed in red, and nothing else on the map is lit.

Before you click, hover over the ringed man. The tooltip is the blow told ahead of time: the chance to hit, the chance his shield takes it, the three places it is likeliest to land, what each layer of armour there would do, and how much of the blow would get into him. The Aim and Ward groups on the bar change what you are asking for; leave them at Body and Pflug for now. Striking explains every line of it. Click the ringed man, and the blow is thrown.

Read the log

The newest line of the log is at the bottom. It says who struck whom, where, and with what, and after it, in small grey figures, the joules the blow carried, how fast it was moving, and how many joules landed. Then it follows the blow inward: what the armour did, what flesh it cut, and what it opened or broke underneath. A line with a red bar down its left side was a grave blow.

On the map a word rises over the man struck (miss, blocked, or the part it found), and the panel on the right turns to him with that part picked out on his wound chart (unless you have chosen to keep another man in view). The battle screen tells you how to read the log; Wounds reads the panel.

End the turn and watch

If he has points left, strike again, or step away, or hold. Then press End turn, or the key E.

The other side now acts, one man at a time, with a pause after each act so you can follow it. The bar says who is acting. Watch the log as much as the map: it says what each of their blows did to your men, and whose nerve moved.

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