I've gone with Ravenfeast to start with as a Dark Age ruleset, and have stuck some of my 1:72 Saxons and Vikings onto 25mm round bases with white-tack to use just to get familiar with the rules (in time I'll get some 28mm models, and I personally intend to play Welsh, but might as well use what I've got first). At the moment I'm using the rules for skirmish play as they were intended, but will be introducing some of my own addenda to spice up gameplay once I've become seasoned with the basic rules.
The rules certainly have a fair few similaries to the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game, so I wonder if
@Imrahil would be interested in getting into it? The army sizes are similar and some rules such as scenery being in the way of missiles are direct carbon-copies. However the game is still unique in its own right, with the profiling system being different and players simply needing to roll under the Warrior's Missile, Melee and Armour ratings to hit with a missile, melee weapon or make a successful armour save respectively. Two particularly significant mechanics are the Death Worthy of Song (where if you roll a 1 to hit and your enemy rolled 6 to save, i.e. the best possible hit and worst possible save failure, the enemy model suffers a particularly brutal death and all friendly models within 6" of it have to take a Morale test) and the Shieldwall (models with shields can form a unit that can only move straight forward at half speed or backwards quarter speed, but they all gain a +2 bonus to their Armour ratings) that really amp up the Dark Ages feel to it.
The first couple of games I have played have been featuring two warbands of equal size and points in differing structure:
Vikings:
Jarl (75 points) = 75 points
2 Berserkers (30 points each) = 60 points
6 Hirdmen (18 points each) = 108 points
3 Bondi Archers (18 points each) = 54 points
Total: 297 points
Saxons:
Lord (75 points) = 75 points
3 Hearthguard (36 points each) = 108 points
3 Veteran Fyrd (18 points each) = 54 points
5 Fyrd (12 points each) = 60 points
Total: 297 points
The first battle went very badly for the Vikings, as the Saxons bunched all their lightly-armoured Fyrd and Veteran Fyrd into a Shieldwall to increase their Armour ratings from a meagre 2 and an average 3 to a mighty 4 and 5 respectively, while at the same time sending their super-tanky Hearthguard and Lord to cut down several of the Hirdmen early and pin down the Viking Jarl. It didn't help the Norsemen that their three archers achieved very little during the fight, failing to shoot a single foe and two of them failing both an initial Morale test due to the Viking force falling below 50% strength and their Rally test the following turn, fleeing the board in shame. One of their two Berserkers had terrible dice luck despite being the only model on either side with two attacks and failed to kill anybody before being run through with a Fyrdman's spear, but the other helped to stop the Saxons by getting everything their own way by getting round behind the Shieldwall and killing several of the Fyrd in it over many turns, until a Hearthguard attacked him from behind and beheaded him spectacularly to inflict a Death Worthy of Song. The Viking Jarl was the last to die, having held the Saxon Lord and a different Hearthguard since the early stages of the game. He managed to cut down the Hearthguard toward the end, but by then every other Viking was dead or had fled, and the remaining Saxons piled into him with the aim of killing him, only for the Lord he had been fighting for ages to deal him the final blow. In the end the Saxons had 6 of their 12 original models still standing, but for much of the game they had lost far fewer and 4 of the 6 casualties were cheap Fyrd (the others being a single Veteran Fyrd and the Hearthguard killed by the Jarl).
