Hard Boiled Armies is a 35 page pdf published by One Bad Egg. Part of the company's Hard Boiled Idea lineup, Hard Boiled Armies, or HBA, covers how to simulate those armies battles found in literature such as Glen Cook's gritty Black Company or the finale in Return of King by Tolkien (and Hollywood).
Breakdown:
Though there are 35 pages, content is 22 pages. The rest is the simple cover, terrain maps for the Invasion! scenario, game tokens (to represent armies), and power cards. Art is sparse, making it easy to print out the supplement (except the front cover).
Layout and design is similar to the Players Handbook. There are no table of contents, index, or lexicon in HBA, but there's an excellent bookmark breakdown.
There are no chapters in HBA. Instead, the content is broken down by topic. The most important ones include:
Everything is a Character
This is the central concept for HBA. Basically, a military unit is treated as a singular character, or "military unit character" (MUC). Think of the mob and swarm rules from the Monster Manual. Thus, the military unit is composed of its racial membership; relevant ability scores and skills; speed; class; defenses (AC, Reflex, Will, and Fortitude); Hit Points; Powers; and Equipment, if any.
Scale
But obviously an army is not a character. That's where Scale, or Size, comes in. A medium size unit, for examples, can be composed of hundreds of soldiers. And the square on that battle map is now a square mile or even a town. Time also changes, depending on the military operation. An encounter could be a year long campaign.
Attributes of Military Units
In this section, HBA discuss what happens when one's MUCs get, well, into military action. Healing surges, for example, can be thought as the unit replenishing its forces with fresh meat, er, recruits. Streetwise is your friend when engaging in urban combat. Powers, like Camouflage Training, help the unit get full concealment while Forced March doubles one's movement at the cost of a healing surge.
Okay, so we know what the military unit characters can do, but how does that affect the PCs? That's covered in the section, Characters on the Fields of Battle. Suggestions include having the PCs assume command of the MUC to using their skills in military situations to, well, keeping the two separate "And that's okay."
Sample Forces provides three MUCs: the Doomkeepers, composed of halfling witchdoctors (watch that Chains of Spirit power!); the mercenary Laughing Skull Brotherhood; and the classic-with-a-twist undead Corpse-Child Army. Yes, it's composed of animated dead children. That's reason enough alone to gut the necromancer.
Invasion! is a 5th level scenario where the PCs take control defending a city against an army. Maps, Army Tokens, and Power cards are used for the scenario.
In My Opinion....
I was pleasantly surprised by this product. On the one hand, I half-expected/half-dreaded a lot of crunch, or rules, similar to miniature war games like Warhammer or the late D&D Miniatures game. Instead, HBA offered a simple concept and lots and lots of options: want to keep combat at its personal PC versus individual monster level while the war rages around them? Done! Use the PC rogue's Stealth check to lead his entire troop unseen into the enemy fortress? Done! The paladin's Lay on Hands affects her 500 man army? Done! (That's one potent Lay on Hands....) I think even hard-core rule fiends will find it useful once they've stopped arguing over the definition of "round" in their campaign.
I like the design.
I like the casual tone of the writing.
This review is based on review copy provided by One Bad Egg.
Breakdown:
Though there are 35 pages, content is 22 pages. The rest is the simple cover, terrain maps for the Invasion! scenario, game tokens (to represent armies), and power cards. Art is sparse, making it easy to print out the supplement (except the front cover).
Layout and design is similar to the Players Handbook. There are no table of contents, index, or lexicon in HBA, but there's an excellent bookmark breakdown.
There are no chapters in HBA. Instead, the content is broken down by topic. The most important ones include:
Everything is a Character
This is the central concept for HBA. Basically, a military unit is treated as a singular character, or "military unit character" (MUC). Think of the mob and swarm rules from the Monster Manual. Thus, the military unit is composed of its racial membership; relevant ability scores and skills; speed; class; defenses (AC, Reflex, Will, and Fortitude); Hit Points; Powers; and Equipment, if any.
Scale
But obviously an army is not a character. That's where Scale, or Size, comes in. A medium size unit, for examples, can be composed of hundreds of soldiers. And the square on that battle map is now a square mile or even a town. Time also changes, depending on the military operation. An encounter could be a year long campaign.
Attributes of Military Units
In this section, HBA discuss what happens when one's MUCs get, well, into military action. Healing surges, for example, can be thought as the unit replenishing its forces with fresh meat, er, recruits. Streetwise is your friend when engaging in urban combat. Powers, like Camouflage Training, help the unit get full concealment while Forced March doubles one's movement at the cost of a healing surge.
Okay, so we know what the military unit characters can do, but how does that affect the PCs? That's covered in the section, Characters on the Fields of Battle. Suggestions include having the PCs assume command of the MUC to using their skills in military situations to, well, keeping the two separate "And that's okay."
Sample Forces provides three MUCs: the Doomkeepers, composed of halfling witchdoctors (watch that Chains of Spirit power!); the mercenary Laughing Skull Brotherhood; and the classic-with-a-twist undead Corpse-Child Army. Yes, it's composed of animated dead children. That's reason enough alone to gut the necromancer.
Invasion! is a 5th level scenario where the PCs take control defending a city against an army. Maps, Army Tokens, and Power cards are used for the scenario.
In My Opinion....
I was pleasantly surprised by this product. On the one hand, I half-expected/half-dreaded a lot of crunch, or rules, similar to miniature war games like Warhammer or the late D&D Miniatures game. Instead, HBA offered a simple concept and lots and lots of options: want to keep combat at its personal PC versus individual monster level while the war rages around them? Done! Use the PC rogue's Stealth check to lead his entire troop unseen into the enemy fortress? Done! The paladin's Lay on Hands affects her 500 man army? Done! (That's one potent Lay on Hands....) I think even hard-core rule fiends will find it useful once they've stopped arguing over the definition of "round" in their campaign.
I like the design.
I like the casual tone of the writing.
This review is based on review copy provided by One Bad Egg.
Last edited:
