A couple weeks back my buddy Doak and I tried out Victrix’s new skirmish game Pillage. I had played Saga before and its okay, but the board mechanics get a little too gamey for me sometimes and I feel the game swings way in the favor of anyone familiar with their army/ boards. I will continue to play it since I bought everything for it, but it’s a different experience. I tried Raven’s Feast. Solid game, but a little too rules lite… So now it was on to Pillage.

The theme of the game is Dark Age skirmish battles- raids, pillaging, etc… 15-35 figs. Though there is more to the game than just pillage style scenarios, this does seem to be a fun part of the game’s mechanics. For our practice game we opted to do the traditional “fight” scenario to get the mechanics down and decided not to do anything too crazy.

I set up my small lame excuse for a Dark Age village on my Normandy board and selected warbands. Doak picked the Vikings and I went with the Anglo Saxons. We spent a couple turns maneuvering our troops. The game doesn’t have a ton of mechanics and moves rather quickly.

I picked a pretty standard loadout for the warbands with a mix of armored, some armor and no armor troops. Each side had missile weapons- Archers for the Saxons and Javelins for the Vikings. Archers seemed to rule the day on our battle and their arrows proved pretty deadly. At two shots a turn from range when not moving they proved disastrous for lightly armored Vikings. Granted you pay for them cost wise, but they are deadly effective. My monk healer wasn’t great. I’m not sure if he even did anything. I’m sure he has his uses. I did like the costs for the different factions depending how you armed your troops. Made it easy to get a nice mix and match variety.

There are a few special rules/ tactics that are kind of neat- such as allies helping a combat from a back rank with spears, shield walls (not overly impressive in our game, but I see their potential), volley fire for arrows etc… Fires and pillaging we didn’t use but they seem cool for the scenarios that have them. The special abilities of chieftains added flavor, but were kind of limited as it seems there are a few standouts that would always be picked. But what do I know, I’ve only played one game!

I didn’t care for melee being simultaneous. I felt like each of our armies just decimated each other to the point where it was hard to really say who even won with so many casualties taken out at the same time. Maybe it was just our great to hit rolls and horrible saves. By games end out of 30’ish minis on each side only like 3-5 guys were standing. Seemed a little odd. Didn’t seem like either side won. Maybe that was just our game and not the norm. I know in a more objective based game we would easily work around this as there would be other objectives. I did like the individual morale checks as it is a skirmish game so individuals would realistically take off if it sucked too bad.

Though overall the mechanics were pretty straightforward (which isn’t bad) with not a whole lot standing out, they do their job. I think the game probably really shines for narrative play as it gives some cool scenarios and themes. Looks fun. Plus it would give me an excuse to finish my dark age church and Viking longship. Hmm… river board…

All in all I enjoyed it more than the other two I tried and I will definitely play it again. Next game will certainly be a narrative scenario in nature. Overall good game.

Coming up Deadman’s Hand in the dead of winter. Innsmouth board coming along with more decrepit buildings and streets as I waffle between rulesets for a future con game and creating my own set of Cthulhu based skirmish rules. More Bolt Action games. Work on Battlegroup 15mm terrain and minis. Planning for TundraCon and Adepticon and whatever else rears out of my hobby room as I’m easily distracted!