The muster
The muster is the first screen, headed Choose the fight. Here you choose who marches, arm them, and choose what they will meet. The men are already rolled when you arrive, and their cards tell you what they are.
The two tabs
The screen has two tabs. Your company, n marching holds your eight men. The opposition, n on the field holds the eight you may face. Each man has a card, and the card's checkbox decides whether he goes: Marches on your side, Takes the field on theirs. Up to 8 can go on each side, which is every man on the tab.
Take the road with n, beside March, sets out on a season with the men ticked Marches instead of fighting one battle. See The road.
A man who is not ticked stays behind. His card is dimmed, he costs nothing, and his kit waits on his card for another battle. Unticking a man is how you make room in the purse for a better-armed one.
The button at the top right says what will happen: March n against m. It refuses, and says why, when nobody on one side is ticked or when your company costs more than the purse. After a battle has begun, a second button takes you Back to the battle. Marching again abandons that battle.
The muster remembers your company, the opposition and the two toggles between visits.
The purse
Your company has 1800 crowns to spend. The purse beside the heading says how many of them are spent, and turns red when you are over. Only the men who march are counted. Each card shows what that man's kit costs and how much he carries, in kilograms.
A kit's price is the sum of its pieces. Every weapon, shield and piece of armour has a price of its own, and a piece made of metal costs that price times the metal's multiplier. Copper is ×1 and steel is ×3, so a copper arming sword costs 60 crowns and a steel one 180. Bronze is dearer than iron. A piece that can only be made of one thing (oak boards, boiled leather, the quilted linen of a gambeson, a club, a war bow) costs its own price and no more. The full list of prices is in Arms and armour.
What a man's kit cost matters after the purse is spent, too. When his nerve is tested, a man whose kit is worth more than the enemy's average is steadier for it, and one worse armed is shakier. See Nerve.
Two checkboxes sit in the toolbar of your tab:
- Ignore the purse lets you march whatever you like. The purse line then says (purse ignored). It is for trying things; the opposition is not changed to match.
- No one ever runs turns nerve off for the battle. Nobody's nerve is tested, nobody wavers, breaks or runs, and the nerve bar is left off the panel. Men still fall to blood and shock.
Against about n
Beside the purse is the worth of what you will face. A man armed by hand counts his kit's price, a beast counts the crowns its card says it is worth, and a man left to the lot counts 360, which is what the lot is allowed to spend on him. The wording says how sure the figure is: against n when every foe is fixed, against roughly n when some are left to the lot, and against about n when all of them are.
A man's card
The line under a man's name gives five numbers:
| On the card | What it is | Where it counts |
|---|---|---|
| Skill | His skill with the weapon he holds (its art, below) | Every chance to hit, how squarely a blow lands, closing in and breaking away |
| Form | How much of his legs and trunk he can put behind that weapon, as a percentage | The joules of every blow he strikes with it |
| Guard | How hard he is to hit, whatever he holds | Taken off every blow, cast and shot aimed at him, and off attempts to close with him or throw him |
| Strength | How much muscle he has and how much of it he can call on | Wrestling, closing in and breaking away; it does not include form |
| Nerve | His own courage | The starting point of every test of his nerve |
Skill and form are shown for the art of the weapon in his hand, so changing his weapon changes both numbers. For a man whose kit is left to the lot, the card shows his skill at arms in general, because his weapon is not known yet.
His body
Every man is rolled a body of his own: a height, a frame, and grams of muscle and fat on each part. His weight, his strength and his blood are sums over that body, never set by hand. The card does not show it; once the battle begins, the panel shows Build as his height in centimetres, his weight in kilograms and his share of fat.
What the body decides in play:
- Muscle is where the joules of his blows come from, and it is what a blade has to cut through.
- Weight, with the weight of his kit, is what a blow has to move. A heavier man is harder to stagger and knock down.
- Fat is laid over his parts as a layer of its own, which a blow crosses on the way in.
- Blood is in proportion to his weight. The reference man, 172 cm and about 73 kg, carries 5000 ml. A bigger man carries more.
- Height and frame set how wide and deep each of his parts is.
Women
Berta, Dagmar, Frida and Hilde in your company, and Sigrun, Yrsa and Gudrun in the opposition, are women. Her name decides it: each woman is rolled a woman's body instead of a man's. Her skill, guard, nerve and arts are rolled exactly as a man's are. Only her body differs.
That body is rolled around a reference woman who stands 159 cm and weighs about 60 kg, with about three fifths of the reference man's muscle above the hips and two thirds below them, and about a third more fat, carried at the hips and thighs rather than the belly. In play this means:
- Her strength is usually lower, so wrestling, closing in and breaking away are harder for her against a man.
- Her blows usually carry fewer joules, because there is less muscle behind them. Form counts for her exactly as it does for a man.
- She is lighter, so a blow staggers her more readily.
- She carries less blood, in proportion to her weight. An opened vessel bleeds the same millilitres from her as from a man, and she faints and dies at the same share of her own blood, so the same wound brings her there sooner.
None of this is fixed: women are rolled over a range as men are, and a big woman can be stronger than a small man. Her card says what she is.
The joules line
Under each card's price is one line for every stroke of the weapon he holds: the joules the blow carries and how fast the weapon is moving, in metres a second. Those numbers are his own, worked out from his body and his form with that weapon, not from the weapon alone.
Two men with the same sword hit differently for three reasons:
- Muscle. The work of a blow is the work of every muscle that takes part, from the legs and hips through the trunk to the sword arm.
- Form. His arms are always his to use, but his legs and trunk only as far as his form with this weapon's art. A man with no form still gets 20% of them.
- Quickness. An arm can only move a light weapon so fast, and a man with more fast fibres moves it faster. A light sword soon reaches the speed of the arm, and past that more strength adds little. A heavy two-handed weapon keeps rewarding strength much further.
The weapon's own mass matters as well: a heavier head takes more of his work into the blow. That is why the metal changes the line. See What a blow does.
Arts
A weapon is learnt as one of nine arts: sword, dagger, axe, mace, hammer, spear, bow, throwing and wrestling. A man is as good with a weapon as he is at its art. A swordsman takes up a longsword as a swordsman and a hand axe as a novice. A mode of a weapon can belong to another art: throwing a spear or a hand axe is throwing, and swinging a war bow like a stick is a mace's blow. Bare hands are wrestling.
Each man has his own skill and form at every art. His skill at each strays up to 10 either way from his skill at arms. His form at each is rolled about what that skill would give: the least, a twentieth, at skill 40 or below, all of it at 80, and some men are well above or below that line. So a man can have more form than skill with an axe (a woodsman who has never fought with one) or the reverse.
The row of arts on each card lists them best first. Each shows his skill, the rule beneath it is as long as his form, and the art of the weapon he holds is lit. Hover over one for both numbers.
How the company is dealt its weapons
When a company is made, its kits are handed out so that each weapon goes to the man best at its art. Of every way of handing out the kits, the game takes the one whose men are best at what they carry, all told, counting skill and form together. A kit stays with the man it was drawn for wherever moving it would do no better. Those who march share out their kits among themselves, and those who stay behind share out theirs, so dealing never moves a crown across the purse.
Kits are dealt this way in your default company, in a warband or a mirror chosen for the opposition, and in the kits the lot draws for the opposition before each battle. They are not dealt again when you tick a different man to march or change a kit by hand. If you move men about, read the row of arts and hand the weapons out yourself.
Restore the default company makes your company afresh. The same eight names come back as new men, every number and body rolled anew, with the default kits dealt to them and the first five marching. Their packs are empty. The opposition is left as it was. It cannot be undone.
The kit
Each field on a card has a pair of lists: what the piece is, and what it is made of. The material list is greyed out when the piece can only be made of one thing.
- Weapon. Every weapon in the game, with (2 hands) after the two-handed ones, and its metal. The club and the war bow are oak.
- Shield. None, Oak boards, or Metal in any metal. A two-handed weapon leaves no hand for one, so the field is shut while he holds one.
- Body armour. None, Leather jerkin, Mail shirt or Cuirass.
- Head. Bare, Leather cap, Mail coif, Helm, or Great helm and gorget.
- Arms, shoulder to glove. Bare, Leather, Mail sleeves or Plate.
- Legs, thigh to boot. Bare, Leather, Mail chausses or Plate.
- Padded gambeson underneath. Quilted linen worn under everything else, the innermost layer a blow meets.
A blow meets armour from the outside in. What each piece covers, how thick it is, what it weighs and costs are in Arms and armour. Why an edge bites one metal and turns on another is in What a blow does.
Weight is the cost you pay in the field. Every kilogram he carries makes each step and each stroke cost more wind, and puts him later in the order of every round. A heavier weapon also costs more wind with every stroke.
Spares
Pack spares opens a man's pack: a grid 6 wide and 4 high. Choose something from Add something… and press Add. A harness is sold whole and arrives as its pieces, and whatever does not fit in the grid is not bought. Drag pieces to arrange them; while dragging, right-click, scroll or press R to turn one. Select a piece to see what it is, to Turn it, or to take it out again with Take out, refund n. Press Done when finished.
A spare costs crowns from the purse like worn kit, and it weighs on him like worn kit. The card shows the pack's share of the price. What a spare is for is the fight itself: a man whose sword arm fails, whose shield splits or whose weapon is lost can take up what he carries, at a cost in action points. See Kit in the fight.
The opposition
The opposition's tab is armed the same way as your own, with more ways of filling it.
Warbands
Set them all to a warband arms all eight at once. It does not change who is ticked, except for the mirror.
| Warband | What it gives |
|---|---|
| Drawn by lot each battle | Every man's kit left to the lot (below) |
| A rabble with pitchforks, clubs and knives | Peasants with iron pitchforks, clubmen with an oak shield and a leather cap, knifemen in a jerkin, and a man with a hatchet, shield and helm; the metal is copper except on the pitchforks |
| A spear levy in leather | Spearmen with a shield, jerkin, mail coif and leather arms and legs, and a hatchet man in every four; all iron |
| A village militia with spears, hatchets and bows | Two spears, then a hand axe, each with a shield, jerkin and cap, then an archer with a war bow; iron |
| Seasoned raiders in bronze and iron mail | A swordsman in mail, a great-axe man, a mace in mail and a spearman, in turn, alternately iron and bronze |
| Hammers and mauls | A mauler in mail, a hammerer in plate with a metal shield, and a mace in mail, in turn; iron |
| Knights in full steel | Hammerers and swordsmen in turn, all in cuirass, great helm and gorget and plate on arms and legs; steel |
| A wolf pack, Wild boar, Bears, Trolls | Every man on the tab becomes that beast |
| A mirror of my own company | As many men as you march, carrying your men's kits (below) |
A warband also decides the shape the company forms up in: see the opposition's shape. Today that shape is the only thing a warband's drill changes.
One man at a time
Each card on the opposition's tab can also be set on its own.
- Arm as gives a man the kit of a type: a swordsman in mail, a spearman, a great-axe man, a mace and mail, a hammerer in plate, an archer with a war bow, a hatchet and helm, a knifeman, a mauler in mail, a short sword and cuirass, a peasant with a pitchfork, or a clubman. The metals of each piece are drawn at random, iron most often and copper and steel least. You can change any of it afterwards.
- Draw n's kit by lot instead leaves him to the lot, and Choose n's kit myself takes him back.
- Kind makes him a beast: a wolf, a boar, a bear or a troll. A beast has no kit. Its card gives its weight, its blood, its hide and bone, what it fights with and the joules of each attack, and the crowns it counts as against your purse.
The lot
A man left to the lot has his kit drawn afresh before each battle, including a battle fought again from its end. The lot picks one of the types above with random metals, and then the kits of all the men it is arming are fitted to a purse of 360 crowns a man. While they cost too much, the dearest kit is cut down, first by stepping a metal down (steel to iron to bronze to copper), then by taking off leg and arm armour and trading mail or a cuirass for a jerkin. While they cost well under it, kits are improved a step at a time, with better metals, a helm, a mail shirt or leather on the legs, and a step that would pass the purse is not taken. Finally the kits are dealt among those men, each to the man best at its art. A man armed by lot carries no spares.
You see what the lot drew when the lines form: hover over an enemy on the field. The log's first line names only each man's weapon.
The mirror
A mirror of my own company ticks as many of the opposition as you have marching and gives each of them a copy of one of your men's kits (not their packs). The men carrying them are the opposition's own, with their own bodies and arts, and the kits are dealt among them by those arts. It is the fairest fight the game offers: the same kit, in different hands.
The material table
At the foot of the muster, under How a blow is judged, is a table of the materials things are made of: the five metals, oak, boiled leather and quilted linen. The numbers themselves are in Arms and armour. The columns decide this:
- Density kg/m³. Every piece has a set thickness, so density decides its weight. A denser metal makes a heavier weapon head, which carries more of a man's work into the blow, and heavier armour, which costs him wind and a later place in the order.
- Edge hardness MPa. On a weapon, how hard its edge is. Against armour, it is set against the armour's own figure: armour nearly as hard as the edge, or harder, costs far more to cut through, and an edge that meets metal close to its own hardness rolls a little every time and grows blunter. With the metal's stiffness, it also sets how far armour springs under a blow before it dents.
- Cut resistance MPa. What an edge or a point has to shear through. The joules needed to cut a layer grow with this, with the size of the hole and with the layer's thickness.
- Dent resistance MPa. What a blunt blow has to overcome. It decides how much of a blow a layer takes up by springing, and how much more before it takes a dent that presses into the flesh underneath.
- Price. The multiplier a metal puts on a piece's price. Oak, leather and linen say fixed: a piece made of them costs its own price.