Crack kraks in Crusades: Book I

Meteorologically speaking, Wargame Design Studio’s latest release is as dry as the Negev Desert. In tactical terms, however, it’s anything but desiccated.

The first of a new game series, the released-last-Friday Crusades: Book I transforms the key engagements of the 1st and 2nd Crusades into colourful turn-based tussles. By WDS’ standards, hexes are cosy (just forty metres across), turns brief (each represents ten minutes of action), and military engineers unusually influential. Because many of the 65 standalone scenarios begin with stout masonry separating player forces and victory locations, siege engines and sappers often play prominent roles in what follows.

Having tried the pdf-accompanied Getting Started scenario, and a couple of the simple siege-focused training missions over the weekend, I’m pleased to report that wall breaching and scaling is, on the whole, nicely implemented. While scaling ladders don’t seem to be modelled, and sapping and wall bombardment have been accelerated for obvious reasons, penetrating a citadel with the help of tunnellers, battering rams, siege towers, and rock flingers is both a pleasing and a believable process.

Should players have the ability to split large units so that they can use siege towers and wall tops, both of which have a strict 75-man limit? Arguably, yes. With Fog of War in effect, should a besieger be able to gauge the current integrity of a wall, tower, or gate from distance? Again, probably, yes. But even with these niggles, penetrating fortresses in Crusades is one of the most unusual and enjoyable things I’ve done in a heavyweight hex wargame for a long time.

Hopefully by this time next week, I’ll be able to tell you whether the CPU is as comfortable attacking fortresses as it is defending them, and give you an idea of how capable it is on more open battlefields. I’ve only fought one castle-less clash thus far – ‘Battle of the Meander’ – and in that fight my silicon counterpart acquitted himself well.

Although his swirling throng of Seljuk horse archers failed to stop my troops from securing the scenario’s vital ford during the allotted eighteen turns, they skewered sufficient infidels to persuade the game’s adjudicators to call the battle a draw, and to keep me on the edge of my seat for a good couple of hours.