Review: Hounds of War, a Sandbox Skirmish Ruleset

By Mitch Reed

One thing I have learned from playing and covering this hobby is that gamers always have an opinion and are never shy to share it. For the titles I have worked on I dread the comments on social media on things that were omitted or the fact we did not write the game just for them.

While I have never seen Paul Neher make any disparaging comments, he has done what I recommend all gamers to do; create your own game. Paul’s Hounds of War ruleset did something that can make all gamers happy, a set of rules that allows the gamer to create whatever type of skirmish fight they want and include whichever capabilities they desire. Hounds of War is a set of rules that has no distinct genre, era, or set of miniatures to play with. It is a true “sandbox” game that even allows you to play Napoleonic Riflemen against Space Marines if you so desire. A ruleset like this is something I feel we needed in the miniatures community and the reason why it has not been done is simply that it is a hard task to undertake. However, after years of concept development and playtesting, Paul has cracked the code and produced a set of rules that is truly impressive.
Mechanics
Using a deck of cards, players assign a card to each unit on the table which determines activation order. Once a unit is activated, they are allowed to perform as many actions as they have action points for. This includes things like movement, rally, combat, overwatch, prepare a weapon, and perform any special actions the unit has available.
Combat used a d10 and is based on the units “to hit” value and then the defender rolls a save for each hit. This mechanic is the same for ranged combat and melee, which is a change from other games that have two separate sets of rules for each. Factors like unit status, range, cover, concealment, and any optional abilities a unit has. Another twist in HoW is that even if a unit is hit, it may not die. Each unit has a number of “hit points” it can absorb before it gets removed. This adds some stat tracking with a maker in your individual models.
Movement is very straightforward and all terrain is classified into one of four types that can affect your movement. One thing HoW has for all types of units is facing, so units are more vulnerable from the rear and sides, much like real life. This is a departure from rules that give infantry a 360-degree field of vision, in HoW, foot units have front and back arcs.
A unit’s morale is also worked seamlessly into the game and units can rout if they are beaten up too much on the table. Leaders are key in keeping your units in good order and on mission.
Rules that cover things from fortifications, warships, aircraft, spells, spaceships, artillery, snipers, and whatever you can think of are covered in the rules. I was impressed by the scope and range of HoW, and with 38 pages dedicated to all the things you can include in the game, I am sure you will see that nothing was left out.
Something Is Missing
You may ask, what are the remaining 52 pages of the book about? Most of the book is dedicated to creating your units. While some example units are covered in the book, the onus is on the players to do some research and put pen to paper to develop the capabilities of their units. When creating your units, the rules gives you two options, a fixed scale for all units regardless of genre or era, or a game scale that is for units of a specific period or type. This allows you to normalize stats between two forces from any list you desire to play with.
The game also has many charts and tables to help you create your forces and they go into some great detail. The tables help you convert the units you create to enable them to be evenly pointed with other units in your or your enemy’s force in order to balance the game.
Target Audience
This game is not for the brand-new gamer since I feel the mechanics, while streamlined can be a bit overwhelming for some. However, for the more experienced grog, who never seems to find a set of rules they like or that covers a specific period, this ruleset may be what you have been looking for. For a while, I have been really looking for a good set of modern skirmish rules and I plan to give HoW a try. I feel it has all the ingredients that I would need to use my 28mm modern miniatures.

Will these rules stop gamers from complaining, well no, but what would? As I said before, gamers are very vocal and quick to point out issues to games others develop. My reply to these comments is usually along the lines of “design your own game” then.

A few years ago, we asked some developers if we at NDNG can create “user created content”, to add lists to games that have been omitted from past versions of a game. I thought that we would be swamped with submissions, however, we only had a few people take us up on our offer. I came to the conclusion that gamers started to realize that force development is not easy, especially when you want to keep the game balanced.

What HoW does is place the onus for a lot of the content on the gamer.
While example examples of forces are in the book, it is not complete so gamers have to then use the data elements in the book to bring a force to life. This may be too much for a casual gamer who just wants a quick and easy game.

However, for the more serious gamer, especially those who love narrative games, this book is for you. You will never see a HoW tournament at a convention, but you may see many narrative games at a con use these rules instead of adapting other rulesets.

Once you look over the rules and see which will apply to your game, and then determine the characteristics of your units, you will be able to game any conflict in any genre. I hope our community, which often likes to game odd events, sees what a big deal this is and how these rules venture into uncharted territory.

While I will never play my 95th Rifles against my Panzer Grenadiers, it is good to know I have a set of rules to use incase I get the urge. Well done Paul!

You can find out more about Hounds of War and . Or pick it up