Of gods and mortals: a review

So one of the things our gaming group likes to do is test out new game systems. We will play pretty much anything from dreadball to Gorkamorka etc. Last year Ado picked up a book called "Of Gods and Mortals" from Cancon and brought it along to one of our weekend meet ups. I flicked through it then eddie took it home and read through it and by the next weekend we were ready to give it a go.

 So what is “Of gods and mortals”. Osprey publishing describe it as a skirmish wargame that gives players the opportunity to command the greatest heroes, warriors and monsters of legend – and the gods and goddesses that ruled over them. Whether you want to lead the forces of Greek, Egyptian, Celtic or Norse mythology to battle, or build your own pantheon.. The book presents 4 different pantheons of gods, legends and mortals but the most interesting portion for us was the back section that allows you to build your own army.

To get started you have to select a god (There can be only one) Then you may have up to 5 legends with no more than a third of your points spent on them. Then you can purchase mortals. They are grouped in units of 4 to 8 in either closed order (ranked) or open order (Skirmish) on a movement tray like a cd or coaster.

The setup system is different as well. The player that goes first places his unit then I goes in order from then on with you not allowed to place a unit closer than long (approx 7”) from an enemy unit. So combat can be joined by turn 1.

Now the turn is also fairly unique. You get to use up to 3 dice to activate a unit. Each unit may only be allowed to be activated once per turn. Your activation will depend on you units quality. Each unit has only 2 stats. Quality (A god would be the Highest of say Q2) and combat (You poorest troops would be combat 1). Now to activate, you select up to 3d6 and roll against your quality. In the example of your God he is a Quality 2 so you need to roll a two or more to carry out an activation. So the choice comes with the fact that if you fail a roll your opponent gets to respond and if you fail 2 or more times you will cause a turn over. It’s a great system and great fun as it adds that little bit more randomness to the game.

So an example of a turn would go like this. A player has Zeus as his god and wishes to activate him. Zeus is Q2 C4. SO he needs a 2+ to pass an activation roll. The player rolls a 1, 3 and 5. So he has failed 1 roll but passed two so no turn over but his opponent gets to react first before Zeus does. Once the opponent had responded (he will roll the appropriate number of d6 and if he passes he can activate the selected unit.). Now Zeus can do two activations. They may be a special power, or 2 movements or a combat action etc.

This is such a great system that Eddy and myself decided to give it a go. But rather than use the pantheons in the book we saw this as a way to use all those miniatures that had been sitting around for years and never get used (warhammer 8 anyone). At the end of our warhammer days both myself and eddy were working on deamon armies. He was going for a nurgle army, whereas I was heading in a different direction with Tzeench and slaanesh.

Eddie put together a Nurgle list and mine was an “Angel” army. Heres a rough guestamate at the list as we kind of made these on the fly.

Eddies Nurgle army

God
Grandfather Nurgle:
Q2 C4, slow, cull the weak, gargantuan, armoured, no retreat, poison about                            240 pts

Legends 
Herald of Nugle:
Q3 C4(40), poison(3), armoured(5), slow(-5) pays for the armour but unit cant react               86 pts
3x beast of nurgle:
Q3 C3(30), big(2), armoured(5), slow(-5), mighty blow(10)= 42x2 so 84 and 3 of em             252pts

Mortals
7x plague flies: Q4 C1(8), fly(10) (Nurgles lucky number is 7) 7x18points                              126pts
7x nurglings: Q5 C2(10), group fighter(8), poison(3) 7x21points 147pts
7x plauge bearers: Q4 C2(15), slow(-5), armoured(5), poison(3), no retreat(5) 7x23               161pts
                                                                                                                              Total     1012pts
Your allowed a 20 point leeway and the player with the lowest point cost gets +1 to his start roll.

Aris’ Angel Army
God
Micheal: The Herald of God.
Q2 C3(38), Fly(10), Arm(5)Tremble before my might(10), Long move(8) all this times 4        284pts

Legends (arch Angels)
Gabrielle: The Word of God
Q3 C4(40), Flying(10), Arm(5), Combat master(10),Long Move(8) (Very expensive legend)   146pts
Uriel: The Light of God.
Q3 C3(30), Flying(10), Armoured(5), Burst of light(5), protection(4) 54 x 2                              108pts
Rapheal: Gods Gift Q3 C3(30), Flying(10), Armoured(5), heal(5) = 50 x 2                                100pts

Mortals
Fanatics x 8 OO: Q4 C2 (15), Fanatics(4) = 19 x 8                                                                      152pts
Hoplites x 8 CO: Q4 C2(15), Armoured(5) = 20 x 8                                                                    160pts
Acolites x 4 OO: Q4 C1 (8), Shoot med(5) = 13 x 4                                                                      52pts
                                                                                                                               Total      1002pts

Here are a couple of the minis I had laying around that I used for this game.

I love this mini. First time he got

For my god I used a Tzeench chariot I built to represent flying and long move.

As Eddie had 10 more point than me I get +1 for set up but eddie still won the roll off. I wont go into the details of the game , mainly because I cant remember them but it occurred to me about half way through that I could win this by killing all his troops.

Being a mostly slow army changed how Eddie rolled for actions. Usually one die because he couldn’t move more than once and reactions were limited also because of slow. Eddies bearers are rock solid in combat but needed support from his god. Eddie deployed his god out of position and he needed to use his weaker mortals in a different way instead of throwing them into combat.

 I went a different way early and smashed up his troops. A lot of lessons were learnt here like get more and better mortals because once they are all gone your god cant exist anymore. Also they can add dice to your gods turn making him even more epic.

We had a ball with this game. I went out and bought the PDF straight away. I hope to get a heap more games in and hopefully justify the many wasted hours and money on all those minis I bought and never used.

Some of the things we would like to look at with this rule set is things like Game of thrones and Lord of the rings. This system is so flexible you could use it for nearly any setting. Your God doesn’t necessarily had to be a “GOD”. It could be the goblin King and his entourage.

 Next game I will record and put on youtube hopefully with some colourful commentary. I highly recommend this game. It took maybe an hour to play and maybe the same to read the book and get enough of the rules to play a game. Give it a go or drop in sometime and see how it played.

Cheers