Time is a funny thing: I’m writing this before Tentcon, so if you’re wondering where the summary of the Battle of Clontarf Midgard game is, the answer is “somewhere in the future.” I got another game of fantasy Midgard in with the same lists as last time. We played the Mists scenario, where you have to coat the board in mists and deal with their effects.

What’s interesting here is they change a lot about the game. Post deployment you have to roll on each group to see if they actually arrived somewhere slightly different than intended. You can now only charge or shoot at opponents in your killing zone at the start of your turn, among other changes. That’s the biggest one, though: it’s incredibly difficult to get charges off while the mist is there. This led to a very fun and interesting game that was shockingly hard to manage.

For starters, my opponent decided he had to charge a dragon into my skirmishers while he had the opening–this was, arguably, a mistake. He lost the dragon and 8 points of Reputation (hitting 0 loses you the game end of turn and he started with 11) while I only lost 4 points in the exchange. End of turn 3 he was teetering on the brink of defeat.

Too bad I failed to seal the deal. In retrospect I should have played cagier. See, the issue is the mist will clear at the start of a turn on a 5+ D6 roll. I spent the rest of the game positioning to capitalize on the mist clearing… only for the mist to never clear. It also doesn’t help that I decided to accept his obvious ploy to get me to fight in the middle of the rough ground of those ruins there. That, uh… may have been a particularly bad choice on my part.

My ghosts kept trying to pen him in while he kept swirling his skirmishers away. The skirmishers themselves proved shockingly effective by merit of being so slippery. He could shoot then evade the charging unit. Intelligent use of heroic deeds and spells successfully kept me barely at bay for the remainder of the game’s 7 turns. There was also a set of sorceress duels somewhere in there which gained him enough Reputation to stay in the game–once again pushing victory just outside my reach.

Some cool moments: I got off a Cloud of Fear spell that forced him to retreat into my ghosts, which caused three points of stamina loss in a single spell, spread across three units. It made me realize if you can pen an enemy in and then Cloud of Fear them, you can gain a considerable advantage on top of the advantage of having surrounded them. Bit of “winning more” but it was cool to see. I see a lot of potential in how spells are applied in battle here–plus, “Cloud of Fear” could be a magic spell or just an intimidation tactic. Imagine your line of Vikings beating their shields and shouting threats, causing the enemy to back off a bit. I very much think if you’re playing the game historically you should still take a hard look at the spells: they add so much and with a bit of theming they still work in a historical setting.

The last turn saw two of my flagging units get defeated, losing me 6 reputation. The final score was 4-8, my loss. The reality is I didn’t need to engage and could have held back, forcing the impetus of action onto him. I got greedy and lost the game, but it was a fun game regardless. I continue to be impressed with the depth and ease of play here. We did have to look up a few edge cases but the game itself was a full sized game with all the rules in play (dragons, flying ghosts, heavy cavalry, skirmishers, weird scenario rules, etc.) and we took under two and a half hours to play it out including chatter and setup.

I’m close to an impressions post for Midgard but my spoiler is simple: I think it’s great and worth investing in or throwing some of your existing armies at it to at least see how you feel. I’ve had a blast with this game and am just now finishing up printing off my demonically infused Godmarked as my next force to paint this month. If we’re judging on its ability to get me painting, it’s a 10–I have so many ideas swirling in my head I’m struggling to keep focused on just one.

Then again, what else is new?