siegerules

These rules are designed to let player fight around (and through) structures without getting bogged down in minutiae like who is carrying ladders, where each person is standing on a wall, etc. It is primarily designed for fighting around walls and castles, but will work from the smallest hamlet to the largest tower.

Basic principles

Each section of a structure is given its own stats for number of wounds, armor, and models it can hold. Where the models are actually standing in the section is not considered important. All combat within a section is considered to be part of one large skirmish, where everyone can effectively fight everyone in the course of a turn.

A structure will offer defensive benefits. Some are already discussed in the normal AoA rules set; models get a –1 penalty when firing at models in cover, or –2 penalty when in full cover, such as a crenellated wall. However, the efforts to climb and break through or into a section give defenders advantages when fighting those trying to get in.

Anything that has to climb ropes or ladders to get into the fight is considered to have last strike, even if they normally would have had first strike. Models which ignore terrain or fly don’t suffer this penalty. Such models may directly enter an enemy controlled section during the movement phase if there is room for them. Otherwise, they must wait next to the section until the melee phase when they can try to force their way in.

Anything that is defending from a defensible position, such as through doorways or crenellations, may reroll misses once.

So, trying to climb over the front of a castle wall means the unit will be suffering first strike attacks from the walls defenders, where misses are rerolled!

Every model in the game is consider to have some way to climb a wall – grappling hooks or ladders for example. Players probably should do a common sense rule that cavalry cannot climb walls, though the riders could dismount to do so. Common sense rules are scary things in wargames, so try to agree before the game so you don’t get into a big fight about whether the elephant can scale the wall when it is actually critical to the game’s outcome. In general, if it has hands, it can climb. If not, forget about it.

Walls and structures can be battered down. They have a set number of wounds, and an armor value (usually, a really high armor value). When attacking a structure in melee, do not roll to hit. Walls don’t defend themselves, so all hits are automatic. The question then becomes one of can your hit penetrate the armor.

Building your castle

There are many very nice castles on the market to buy. There are also an infinite supply of websites that will show you how to make your own.

Once you have the model, its time to work out its stats. Divide up the castle into manageable sections – 4" to 8"wall sections are good, and each tower as its own section.

Determine how many base units could stand and fight in the area. This is easily done by filling the area up with miniatures, though players may want to add or subtract for extenuating circumstances.

Decide what the armor levels of the sections should be. In general, light wood is armor 5 (like a house or light palisade), heavy wood is armor 6 (like a cabin of thick logs, or a heavy palisade), mortar and stone is 7, carved stone and metal is 8. All structures are missile immune, but artillery and magic weapons do not roll subtract from and armor 5, they subtract from whatever the armor level really is.

Example: a Str (3) cannon ball hits an armor 6 Wood wall. Because the ball is artillery, the wall can be affected, and so the wall must make an armor save of 6 – 3 = 3.

The wounds an area has is generally based on its size, and can be pretty arbitrary. Since the greater the wounds the higher the cost, players can add or subtract wounds from the same structure before the game in order to make the piece fit the game size better. In general, a section should have between 3 and 6 times as many wounds as base units it can hold.

Example – A player has a section of stone castle wall that can hold 8 bases. He decides he castle is really well made, and so it has 6 wounds per base size, or 48 wounds, and an armor of 7 (mortar and stone).

The only thing left is to decide how defensible it is. There is a VP charge per base unit the section can hold, depending on how well protected those defenders are:

3 points if attackers must climb

3 points if the defenders have a defensible position

Then each section pays for its armor and wounds. Because castle walls are not creatures, do not move and do not attack, they pay much less per wound than a normal troop:

Armor 5 – 1 per wound

Armor 6 – 2 per wound

Armor 7 – 4 per wound

Armor 8 – 6 per wound

Example – In the wall section described above, it would pay 6 points per base because it is defensible and requires climbing to enter, or 48VP. It has 48 wounds at armor 7, costing 192 VP. That section of wall is 240 VP.

Build all of the sections of castle this way. The player using the castle will pay VP from his army list to buy the castle for his army.

This is Hamilton Link's castle. With an Armor 7, it would cost 1888 points; 216 per tower, 616 for the donjon, and 156 per wall.

Movement in the Castle

A unit is considered to be skirmished at all times in a castle section.

Enemy infiltrators may never be place inside of an occupied castle.

Models may move from one section to a connected controlled section for 6" of movement, or all of their movement if they have less than a 6" normal move. A model with movement over 6" could move through multiple connected sections.

Friendly models may climb up and down walls if there unit begins its movement in contact with the wall and it is controlled by friendly models. Obviously, models which can ignore terrain or fly don’t worry about these limitations.

A section may hold no more than its listed capacity of fighting troop bases. Any number of models can pass through a friendly-controlled section during a movement phase.

Each section can be controlled by only one side of the battle. Control is give to the player who has the majority of troops in the section. If both players have equal numbers, neither side has control. This can be critical when troops are fighting in melee to get into the area.

Models cannot enter a section in the movement phase if it is controlled by the other side. They must wait outside until melee phase to determine if they can fight their way in.

Magic and Castles

All castles are assumed to have a magic resistance of 2, from enchantments cast on the castle when built and before the battle. Castles may pay to have a higher magic resistance, at the cost of 1 VP per point of magic resistance per wound.

Castles use their magic defense only to defend against spells that affect the castle. Lightning bolts directed against the wall would be saved on the castle’s resistance, while one targeting an archer unit on the wall would be saved only by the unit’s magic resistance.

Templates placed over a section of castle wall would be saved by the castle’s resistance and any contacted unit’s resistance if the spell normally allowed a save.

Many spells exist in the list that could be employed against a structure. This leads to another scary common sense call, but in general, any spell that would be expected to affect a castle section will do 1d3 wounds per level of the spell if the castle fails its magic save. For instance, if a player puts a Pond under a castle wall, each magic phase the castle must make a magic resistance save or suffer d3 wounds as its foundations are weakened. If a third level sinkhole is placed under the wall, the castle section will suffer 3d3 wounds each turn it fails to save.

None of the "insta-kill" spells will destroy a whole section, but will instead do the damage listed above. This includes spells like Chaos Vortex and Combustion.

Castles and Missiles

This is another area where common sense would go a long way, if there really was such a thing.

In general, everything in a section that could be affected by missile fire can fire out of the section. Normal line of sight rules apply, but with the following additions:

Line of sight is limited by the castle itself. Archers on a wall can see in an arc defined by the wall, and sight can be blocked by larger towers.

Units on raised sections can see in all direction over lower walls. There is a "shadow" caused by lower walls, with a distance out from the walls equal to the height of the walls.

Example: A 5" tall tower stands surrounded by 3" walls. Models on that tower cannot fire at targets within 3" of the other side of those walls. Trigonometry may tell you that the shadow distance should be greater or less than that, but this is a wargame, not a math test :)

Towers on the corners of walls can see down the length of those walls, without shadows.

Units firing at targets on crenellated or parapet walls suffer a –2 penalty if they are equal to or lower in elevation. If they are higher they only suffer a –1. This also applies to flying models, who can blast down on top of a tower much more effectively.

When firing between sections of a structure, there is always a -1 penalty for cover if the crenellation bonus does not apply. This even includes when firing from one wall section to another.

Castles and Melee

Control of a section makes a huge difference in melee combat. Control lets the player better defend against enemies trying to break into or reinforce the section. Whoever has the most base units in a section at the start of the phase is the player in control. If tied, neither side has control.

A section can only hold so many base units. This applies to the total of attacking and defending models. For attackers to wrest control of the section away from the defenders, they must kill defenders and have models left over to occupy the space of the fallen. Since the defenders get several advantages, this can be quite challenging.

To attack a section, the attacking unit must have models in contact with that section at the start of the melee phase. The attacker may attack with as many base units of models as the section can hold. The defender can attack with every model in the section. The defender may also allow models in an adjacent section reinforce up to the base size limit of the structure.

Example: 5 swordsmen guard a wall section that could hold 10 base units. The controlling player decides to move 5 more swordsmen from an adjacent section to help defend the wall.

If the attacker is having to climb into the section (such as up a wall) and does not fly or ignore terrain, the attacker suffer with all their attacks becoming last strike. If the section has defensive structures such as doors, windows and parapets that the attacker must attack through, the defenders may reroll misses once.

Example: A unit of barbarian swords men is attacking a wall section that has ten dwarf double axemen. They are going to have to climb, and then crawl over a parapet. The wall section can hold 12 bases normally, so the barbarian player send 12 barbarians up the ladders.

The dwarves strike before the barbarians, because the barbarians get last strike from having to climb. They roll 24 attacks (2 per models), needing 2’s to hit, and score 8 hits. Because they are defending over the parpapet, they pick up the 16 misses and reroll them, scoring another 5 hits. The barbarians have suffered a total of 13 hits, which the barbarians need 2’s to save (armor 2, no strength). They save 6 hits, suffering seven wounds, so seven models never make it over the top.

The remaining 5 barbarians now get to attack. They roll 5 dice, needing 2’s to hit, and score two hits. The dwarves get 3’s to save, and save one hit, so one dwarf is removed.

The barbarian player may now fill up the empty space with his surviving models. There are 3 empty base unit slots on the wall, so 3 barbarians occupy them .The tally is 3 barbarians to 9 dwarves – the dwarves retain control!

If the melee phase begins with the section being contested (as in the turn following the example above), things can be a bit more complicated. Both sides can try to reinforce the area with additional troops, with the advantage again going to the player with control. However, the controlling side now has to decide how many troops will be attacking models in the section already vs. those still trying to break in. Note that those attackers already in the section will NOT be suffering penalties from climbing or attacking through a defensible position, and so will be much more likely to kill.

Both sides can add as many troops as will bring their total involved in the fight up to the sections capacity. Reinforcements can only attack models that are already in the area, they may not attack reinforcements coming from the other side. When deciding which reinforcements can occupy the space of the fallen, priority first goes to those survivors that started the phase in the section, then goes to whichever side has control.

Example: In the turn following the example above, the dwarven player decides to reinforce with double axemen from the next section. He already has 9 base units in the section, so he can send 3 more double axemen in. Since the dwarven player controls the section, he does not have to fight those reinforcements into the area.

The barbarian player again tries to assault up the ropes. He has 3 models in the area already, and so sends 9 more up.

The dwarven player now decides how his force is going to split up its attacks. He decides to put all 9 that can against those climbing up the ropes, and the three reinforcements against those barbarians already in the section (which are the only ones they could attack, anyway). He rolls 12 total hits against the climbers, of which only 4 hits are saved. This kills eight of the climbing barbarians, leaving one to strike back. These models do not get to attack back. The three dwarf reinforcements swing to hit the barbarians in the tower, but score no kills. The three barbarians already in the tower make their attacks at the same time as the dwarves do, killing two dwarves. Finally, the climbing barbarian gets his attacks, killing no dwarves.

This leaves 10 dwarves and 4 barbarians in the area. Since the 3 barbarians were already in the area, they cannot be forced out without being killed. However, since the dwarves still control the area, their extra reinforcements have the advantage over the barbarian reinforcements, so the dwarven reinforcements get priority and fill up the last remaining base area with one of theirs.
Morale

Broken units may roll to rally as long as there are no enemy units in an adjacent section. Enemies to the outside of the structure or in more distant section to not block a rally test, even if they are otherwise within 6".

Units take morale test just like they normally would.

Units failing morale tests and fleeing must use their movement to escape to non-enemy occupied sections, or to flee the structure entirely. If they pass through a section occupied by the enemy, they take casualties as if fleeing through an enemy unit, even if the enemy doesn’t have control of that section.

Pursuers may move to fill up a section vacated by fleeing units, but may not pursue through enemy controlled sections.