Who you will meet

The opposition is whatever you set on the muster's second tab: men armed as a warband, men armed by lot, a mirror of your own company, or beasts. Whoever they are, the game moves them by the same rules, and those rules are worth knowing, because they are predictable.

Warbands

Set them all to on the opposition's tab arms every man there as one warband. The kits come round in the order shown, and are then dealt among the men who march, each weapon to the man best at its art. Everyone wears a padded gambeson under his kit except the pitchfork men and the knifemen.

The full list of kits, and arming men one at a time, is in the muster. The shapes are in Forming up.

What a band changes

A band decides the shape its company stands in before the first blow, and that is all it changes in play. It also marks its men as seasoned or green and sets how much they count each other's blood, but those are read only by looking further ahead than the act in hand, which no one on the field does yet (see Nerve). A company fighting as its band once the battle has begun, a shield wall holding its line or a rabble scattering, is not in the game yet: once the fighting starts, knights and peasants alike fight man by man.

The lot

Drawn by lot each battle leaves every man's kit to chance. Before each battle each of them is armed afresh as one of the muster's twelve types of raider, with random metals, the company kept to about 360 crowns a man. You do not see what they drew until the lines form. A company drawn by lot belongs to no band and opens in the loose line. See the lot.

The mirror

A mirror of my own company fields as many men as you march, carrying copies of your men's kits, dealt among them by their own arts. The men are the opposition's own, with their own bodies and skills, so it is the same kit in different hands. It belongs to no band and opens in the loose line.

The beasts

Choose A wolf pack, Wild boar, Bears or Trolls, or set one man's Kind on his card. A beast has no kit, cannot pick up a weapon, and has no band. It has a body built to the same plan as a man's, redrawn at its own size, with hide in place of skin, and it bleeds, breaks and faints as a man does.

The figures below are for a grown male of each kind. Every beast on the field rolls its own body around them, so the one you meet is a little bigger or smaller.

Guard is the figure on the beast's card. A man's weapon adds to his guard when it turns blows aside; a wolf's jaws, a boar's tusks and a bear's paws turn nothing aside and cost it 5, and a troll's fists neither add nor cost.

Pain is read against size and toughness: the same wound hurts a bear or a troll about half as much as it hurts a man, a boar a little less, and a wolf rather more.

Wolves form up in open order, spread out to find a flank. Boar, bears and trolls form up in no order at all.

Where the trades come from

Each section below says how a beast trades with a man. The trade is blow for blow: what one of the beast's best blows would do to a man in full mail with a steel arming sword, against what one of his would do to it. Read that way, the four stand in one order, from the wolf, which should not take that fight, to the troll, which should.

The wolf

What it does well. It is quick: it crosses more ground in a turn than a bear, and its ten points pay for three bites. Its teeth cut flesh the way a blade does, so a man with bare arms and legs is what it hunts best.

What answers it. Armour. Against a man in full mail it trades worse than one to three, and against a man in plate it can do next to nothing. Its teeth chip on mail, so a wolf that has bitten a man in mail a few times bites with a worn edge; leather does not wear them. Its bite is driven by its jaws: cut the muscle of its head and most of the bite is gone. A broken foreleg hardly touches it. It has the least nerve of the four.

The boar

What it does well. It outpaces the man it is charging, and it has an answer to armour: the gore is its better blow against a man in leather, and the toss against a man in plate. Its hide is thick and its nerve high.

What answers it. Against a man in full mail it trades below level: neither foolish nor formidable, and far better than a wolf. Plate is worth wearing against it. Each attack costs five of its nine points, so it strikes once a turn.

The bear

What it does well. It has the best skill of the four, as many action points as a troll, and three ways to hurt you. Its trade with a man in mail is better than a boar's. Against a man in plate its best blow is the cuff, not the bite.

What answers it. Plate is worth wearing against it. It drives its blows with its haunches: open the muscle of both and it strikes softer. Breaking one foreleg does not help, because it rakes with the other.

The troll

What it does well. Everything. It stands on two legs like a man and is built like one at six times the weight. It is no quicker than a man a step, but it has twelve points to spend, so it goes further in a turn. Against a man in full mail it trades better than two to one, and its nerve is the highest on the field.

What answers it. Plate is worth wearing against it, as against every beast. Blow for blow, one man in mail loses to it.

How the enemy thinks

The same rules move every enemy, man or beast, and they also move any man of yours who has broken and is running. They do not cheat. The chance to hit a man and what his armour does to a blow are read from the same reckoning the tooltip shows you when you arm a stroke, and they do not know how the dice will fall. What a blow that gets through does to the flesh, the enemy judges from a table the game measured from its own blows, by kind of blow, energy and part.

An enemy decides one act at a time, and each act is the best thing to do at that moment. It does not plan its turn as a whole and it does not think about what you will do in reply. Looking further ahead is not in the game yet.

The reflexes

Before anything else, in this order:

1. A man whose nerve has broken runs (see Nerve).
2. A man with empty hands takes up a weapon: from his pack or from the ground at his feet if one is there, or he walks to one lying nearby. With an enemy beside him he walks to it only if the better weapon is worth the blows he walks past.
3. A man bleeding hard from a wound he can reach binds it, if he has 4 points: at 180 ml a round or more whatever is around him, or at 90 ml or more when no enemy is beside him.
4. A man on the ground gets up. If an enemy who is inside his guard is standing over him, he gets up only with 3 points to spare beyond what rising costs, because rising gives that man a blow; short of that, he does what he can from where he lies.
5. A man inside someone's guard wrestles him down when he has the points and a chance of 55% or better.

The ladder

Then it climbs down this list and does the first thing that pays:

• An archer keeps his distance. He moves to ground from which he can shoot a mark with none of his own men in the line, weighing what he could hit from there against how dangerous the ground is. With nothing in range he walks towards you only as far as the edge of his range.
• Close in or break away, when changing the measure is worth more than the blows or shots the same points would buy from where it stands, and it has points left over to use the new measure. A man whose weapon works inside closes on one whose weapon does not, and a man held inside breaks away when getting out is worth the blow he takes going. See Measure.
• Strike, shoot or throw from here. It weighs every blow it could strike at every man in its measure, and every shot and throw, and compares them by what each does for the action points it costs. A weapon is thrown only when the throw is worth more than the blows it gives up by throwing it, which comes easier to a man with a spare in his pack or at his feet.
• Hold. A spearman with nobody yet in his measure but an enemy close sets himself and waits for you to come. Anyone with nothing useful to do and an enemy near holds too, keeping his points to answer a blow.
• Walk. Otherwise it walks to its own measure of whichever enemy it can reach most cheaply over the ground. A spear stops a hex short; a dagger walks all the way in. It likes high ground and dislikes brush, a little.

Whom it strikes

Among the men it can reach, it picks the blow most likely to land and do the most harm, and it leans towards men who are already hurt. A man who has lost a quarter of his blood is worth a quarter more to it, and a man lying senseless is worth two and a half times as much again. It prefers a stroke from a guard that leaves it well covered, and shies away from a heavy stroke that would leave it open to a blow it could not recover from in time.

The enemy does not call a blow at one part as you can (see Calling a part). It aims high, at the body or low.

Where it walks, though, it does not choose: it goes to whoever it can reach most cheaply over the ground. That has consequences you can use:

• A wounded man in reach draws blows, and a senseless one draws them hardest. Get him out of reach, or put someone between.
• The enemy walks past your archers to reach the nearest man, so a line in front of them keeps them shooting.
• It reads your armour as you do. Every blow is weighed by what it would do through what the man is wearing, so it looks for the stroke, and the man, where your armour helps least.