I briefly considered “Muar Quar” as a title. It’s a new year, so we’ll show some constraint. I had the pleasure this week of playing an additional two games of A Clash of Rhyfles for a total of three games across three opponents. It’s given me a great opportunity to internalize the rules and provide a lot of thought into the mechanics all at once.

The first of these two new games saw my Tollyn Maeryn militia up against the professional soldiers of Gwynt. We elected to play the basic “Kill the enemy” mission type. The small wrinkle in the mission was that you would score additional points for having men on your opponent’s half of the board, so it wasn’t all just “Shoot the other color.”

That said, my personal impression is that the game does best with objectives and this match didn’t dissuade me. It devolved into a bit of a shoot out without any real reason to reposition for advantage. I think part of this was my terrain setup and part of this was the simple mission type. I don’t really blame the game, but it did go very poorly for me. The core issue came down to my militia simply being worse in a straight up fight. Every Rhyfler has the Support skill, which allows them to spend Pluck (a limited resource for special actions) when firing to be supported by another Rhyfler. This gives them a +2 on their 3D6 skill check. You can have multiple Rhyflers support you–you just have to pay more Pluck.

Or at least that was the case for my boys. The Gwynt boys were able to Support without paying Pluck. Add to that their higher base Skill (12 against my 10) and they had a serious advantage in a straight up firefight that I definitely did not overcome. I ended the match fully out of action.

This was bottom of the barrel for me thus far, but it was still a fun match. I took away a few lessons:

1. Leaders really matter. My boys get +1 Skill near their leader. My opponent wisely cut my leaders down.
2. Men rarely die, even in a direct firefight. My Home Dyna has an area of effect medic skill–access to her may have swayed the match for me.
3. I need to take better advantage of the efficiency of leader group movements and think more carefully about positioning.

Queue the next match, where we played the same mission as my first match–a mission I’ve come to like and would recommend as your first when learning the game. In this one, my opponent borrowed by Gloam Hyyn to throw against my Tollyn Maeryn.

This match proved considerably more lively, with both sides maneuvering far more. I was much more thoughtful about using my leaders to move my mass of troops and found myself pegging a few more shots. The very opening shot of the match was my LMG taking out his LMG, though I have to admit that was dumb luck. The point is I finally learned a bit and actually took advantage of my rules to give my boys a fighting chance.

And they really took it! My opponent advanced on the left flank and setup a defensive position I’d find it hard to remove him from. On the right flank, I managed to push a small force forward to contest the objective in Turn 2. This became the focal point of the game’s action, and the proving ground for the hero of the day: a medic braver than any other man on the field.

The Gloam Hyyn countered my counter by unleashing the Sarf-Cyns and pushing us into a swirling melee. One after another, the Sarf-Cyn chewed my men up. I found myself pushing more soldiers forward and desperately trying to pick men up to get an advantage in the melee. Melee in this match was almost oddly inconclusive. We kept falling shy of the rolls necessary (8+ on a 2D6-1 roll) to actually knock anyone Out of Action, and instead left them Gobsmacked. Two Gobsmacks takes you OOA, but we paid careful attention to managing and removing the status to avoid this.

Rather ironically, it wasn’t the Sarf-Cyn that did most of the work. The Gloamers had a very successful medic who finally threw down his first aid kit and started a tear through my force, going from man to man and decisively knocking them OOA in melee. It was delightful to watch, even if it was painful.

My Yawdryl (squad leader) proved the hero on my side, successfully rallying his troops and leading the good fight from the front line. Second up was my Milwer, who charged an entire enemy group firing wildly and managed to down two of them and contest an objective. I had a very fateful turn at the very end where we managed to down a few of his men, then pull a few of our own back up. At the start of the final turn, he had 8 men and I had 6. At the end, he had 6 men and I had 7, allowing me to win 5 victory points for having more men left standing.

Which… landed me with a third loss this week at 10-7 victory points. It was a great match and I had an absolute blast playing it. My takeaways overall:

1. The game is very terrain and scenario dependent. This is exacerbated by the small board size. At 2×2′, terrain is rather unforgiving, and a straight up shoot out doesn’t provide for much tactical interest.
2. I keep saying this: you really have to use your options. Leaders matter, skills matter, LMG positioning matters, and maneuver matters. It’s a thoughtful game if you take advantage of what’s on offer.
3. After three matches, I’ve hit the point where I didn’t have to look things up and have started to internalize the basic charts entirely.
4. I really like it!

I find myself really wanting to play more and play with more objective based battles. I’m curious to see how it plays on a larger board–even bumping up to a 3×3′ seems like it would make for more opportunity for both maneuver and crafting more diverse scenarios. I also need t put some thought into my terrain: my little fenced yards encourage more static positioning. Perhaps some logs, free standing fences, or large shrubbery would help to break things up and prevent the more static positioning of my earlier matches.

I have yet to try out the crewed weapons or tractor (tank) rules, so I cannot speak to those, but if someone stopped me and asked if I recommend the game, for now I’d say: if the Quar appeal to you and you’re ready to tackle a medium complexity ruleset, pick up a box or two and give it a shot. Worst case it’ll be a fun hobby project, but I’d bet with a bit creativity in scenario and terrain you’ll find yourself liking it.

Now, excuse me while I go do some terrain planning. This year may just be the Year of the Quar.

Or, you know, Elder Scrolls. It’ll probably somehow be Elder Scrolls again.