Game Notes:

1.Scenario: I thought the game would turn into a route, so I gave the Crusaders the Holy Spear as a Relic (Historically, this wasn't available until Antioch was captured, which postdated our game). I also gave them 5 wagons, each 2 stands wide, to anchor the Pilgrims behind. Although the Turkomen light cav and Askari heavy cav managed to slaughter a lot of them, for the most part, they didn't flee off the board. If and when I put this on at Southern Front (Raleigh's convention in NC), I probably won't give them the Holy Spear....

2.Modifiers: I did split the shieldless modifier between shieldless and unarmored. This worked well, probably better than the simple +2 for shieldless. It did give the largely unarmored foot on both sides some additional vulnerabilities. I didn't want this to make the Turkomen more susceptible to missiles, so I designated them (and several other types) as "lightly armored" (no +1 for shooting at "unarmored"). Knights and the Askari were heavily armored and warranted a -1 modifier for shooting and fighting. I can't honestly say this made for a better game or that it proved a decisive factor in any given battle. Phil's game design works fine. Still, I think this is one change I'll keep.

3.Rules: I standardized ranks shooting/fighting to 1.5 for all, except bows could shoot up to 3 ranks. Likewise, foot spears and knights in conrois could fight 2 full ranks (conrois was a bit more vulnerable to arrows, a +1 modifier applied). All this worked well. It did give the Pilgrims a bit more fighting power, but I deducted 1 from their melee value to equalize this.

4.Rules: I simplified the Leader casualty checks to a simple dice roll with a 10 killing. If the Leader was checking because of a melee, a +1 was added to the dice roll (+2 if the unit lost the melee). Remarkably, no leaders died! Still, it was simple and clean: no messing around with wounded leaders.

I had thought to put in an uncontrolled charge rule for fanatical types (knights, etc.), but decided with the consent of the players not to use it. As much as I thought the game would suffer from not having it in, it didn't. It probably gave the Crusaders more control, but since there were so few knights, this benefit was limited.

With 10 players, we finished the game in about 5 hours. Overall, the rules were well received. Mechanically, it was the turn sequence— specifically, placing the shooting segment before charges rather than after movement—which caused some confusion. Since there were a lot of bow-armed units (both Turk and Pilgrim—the latter were designated as armed with slings, although in reality, my missile-armed peasants are armed with a mix of bow, crossbow, slings and stone throwers), this came up more than once. I warned everyone that missile fire under the Hack rules are fairly impotent, even with my having dropped the long range shooting modifier. I allowed players to hold fire until after charges if they elected to stand as their charge response. This seemed to minimize the problem of shooting at chargers who commence their charge outside shooting range.