The Battle for Wesnoth is an open source, turn-based strategy game with a high fantasy theme. Originally a complex computer game, this project is an attempt to make it available as a classical board game.
Recruit your army, conquer villages for income on the hextiled map and let your units fight! Place your units strategically on terrain providing good defence.
We tried to keep it simple and to the core gameplay, so it will actually be fun without tracking all too much stats. The only thing to track is your gold, your villages and each units hitpoints using simple clips and markers.
German Readme / Deutsch: README-de_DE.md
- Print out the source material (either on thick paper or glue it to cardboard afterwards):
Einheiten-r.svg: front side of unitsEinheiten-v.svg: back side of unitsSpielertafel.svg: table for players showing all unit stats and also a panel to track gold (there is also an english version available).- The units have some white space below them. You can either place them into plastic slots or cut the white in the middle and glue it down to a piece of cardboard.
- Map to play on:
- You can find predefined maps below the
maps/folder, and/or use custom tiles: Kartenteile-1.svg: A set of tiles. The castles are supposed to be one big tile.Kartenteile-2.svg: even more tiles!- Especially for the hex tiles it is good if the cardboard is a little thicker.
- You can find predefined maps below the
- Get a ten sided dice marked 0-9 (either an online dice or buy a physically one).
- Get some small markers in players colours (i use thread pearls, but strips of paper will do also)
- one for the gold panel
- several to mark conquered villages
- Get some paper-clips:
- in players colour to mark units side and track units hitpoints
- one other colored paper-clip (or attached paper stripe etc.) per player to mark the king unit.
The game is played turn by turn on a hextiled map. Choose who begins, for rematch the looser should start.
A turn ends when the player announces so or has no performable actions left.
The game is won immediately when you finish the enemy king, or lost if your king got finished.
You first need a map to play on. Either use a predefined map or build one yourself. The map is built from the hex tiles. You can of course also alter a predefined map with custom map tiles. Look at them closely, there is only one position they link nicely (horizontally edges north and south, points west and east); refer to the village or castle tiles where this can be seen best.
A good map is balanced and does not favor a specific side. It should have some areas which are easy to defend and others easy to conquer. Make a fair ammount of villages and place them so, that the movepoints to conquer them are the same for both players. When placing villages, make some hexes with good defense values (woodland) around. It's okay to also have water adjacent, but avoid bunkers that are not attackable anymore.
Prepare the game materials (dice, the units, the paper-clips, the markers).
Place a marker on your gold panel at 25 gold.
Select your king unit, mark him with the king paper-clip and place him on the castle hex tile.
You are now ready for the first turn.
Each turn follows the same principle flow: 1. Get income -> 2. Heal units -> 3. unit actions.
You get 2 Gold per held village. Subtract the count of your normal units (the king is free). Adjust your gold marker for the resulting ammount (which may be negative).
Now each unit staying at a village heals one hitpoint. Adjust the paper-clips accordingly.
Now you can choose amongst several different actions. You can end your turn at any point, including a complete pass if you feel everything is still fine. Once you are done, announce it to your opponent.
You may recruit units if your king stands on any keep (not castle!) field and you have the necessary positive gold ammount:
- Subtract the gold ammount and update your gold marker
- You can choose a fresh unit from the pool
- Pick a paper-clip in your colour and mark the units full-hitpoints position
- Place the unit at your chosen castle hex which must be connected to to keep.
Freshly recruited units have zero movepoints; you can neither attack or move them before your next turn.
Units can move freely across the battlefield. Each unit has a fixed ammount of move points. To enter the next hex field, a unit has to "pay" with these movepoints. The "cost" is depending on the terrain type and the unit in question.
Units can pass trough friendly units when moving but cannot hold on an already occupied field.
Zone of control
Each unit has a zone of control around it. If your unit enters the hex field adjacent to an enemy unit, it looses all emaining movepoints for the current turn. This allows units to block off access to areas on the battlefield and even to capture enemy units so they can't flee (put two units on opposite fields and the enemy has no uncontrolled fields left to move on).
Employing zone of control can be a significant factor in winning a game.
Conquering villages
To conquer an empty village you just simply move a unit onto it. Place your marker on it so it's visible that it now belongs to you.
The conquering unit looses all remaining movepoints for the current turn when taking a village.
At the next round the village will provide gold to your side (at least if it still belogs to you).
A unit may attack any adjacent enemy unit. You can attack only once with a given unit and it looses all remaining move-points by doing so.
- Announce clearly what unit will attack which other unit and the used attack type (melee or ranged).
- Look at the units stats involved to get the number of attacks, damage dealt and terrain defense values for both units.
- Roll the dice for your attack.
- If the dice shows at least the number of the opposing units terrain defense, you scored a hit (except the mage who always will only need 3 or more).
-> Adjust the hitpoints of the enemy unit according to the damage of the attack.
- The defending unit now makes a counterattack in the same way just described. It uses melee if the initial attack was melee or ranged if it was ranged. If the unit has no such attack, it will do nothing.
- If your unit has another attack left, perform it now.
- If the opposing unit has another defence left, it will be performed now. This is even true, if you had no attack left (like a 1x1 attacking a 1x2 unit).
If hitpoints of any unit drops to zero, the unit is immediately removed from the battlefield and put into the units pool. Any attacks/defenses still left are discarded.
Once the attack is over, the attacking unit has no movepoints left and is done for this turn. Note that it can still defend itself any time it is attacked like outlined obove.
Example 1: A Mage goes to the wood field next to a fighter in a castle and attacks him. He has four ranged attacks and the fighter can try to retaliate one times as he has one ranged attack. The mage begins and the dice shows 3 - a hit (he always ust needs 3 or more)! The fighter looses one hitpoint. Now the fighter rolls the dice: 4! He does not score a hit (mage has 5 defense on wodland) mage stays unscathed. Now again the mage: he rolls 4 and scores a hit again. The fighter now has no attacks left and so the mage can roll his third dice: 2, no hit. The last roll shows 8 and again is a hit.
Example 2: After the fight the mage still has 3 hitpoints, where the fighter only has one hitpoints left. The Fighter chooses to attack the mage with meele, because the mage cant't defend as he has no meele attack. The fighter rolls a 5 and scroes a hit (mage has 5 defence on woodland). The mage can't retaliate now, as already said. The fighter again rolls the dice: 6, hit. The mage now has only one hitpoint left.
Example 3: The situation is very risky now: If the mage chooses to attack, he may die from the fighters ranged attack, which will be a costly loss (mage costs 7 Gold, where the fighter is cheap with only 5). The fighter needs to roll a 5 or more, wich is a 50% chance. However, if the fighter misses, the mage just needs 2 out of his 4 attacks to finish him, where on average he is likely to hit 3 of 4, so this can be assumed with some confidence.
The mage chooses to gamble and attacks: the dice shows 2, a miss! The fighter rolls the dice and scroes a 6 - and finishes the poor mage. He is remvoved immediately fom the battlefield and the remining 3 attacks are discarded.
| Unit | Description |
|---|---|
 |
The mage is the only unit in the game that has the potential to kill full healthy cavalry, fighters and archers in one turn. It is also well suited to attack cavalry and heavy infantry since they lack ranged counterattacks. Its main advantage is that the magical attack always has a 70% chance of hit (throw at least 3 to score a hit) and thus ignores the opponents terrain defence. But it is also very fragile, and as it will probably take at least one hit from a fighter, it is dangerous to attack; especially because it is expensive and has no meele counterattack. |
 |
The fighter is a well rounded cheap unit focused on melee and is usually the meat of your army. It is the most efficient unit to kill mages. |
 |
The archer is also well rounded but slightly better in forest. As it is focused on ranged attacks, it is also a good unit to defend aginst mages. |
 |
Heavy Infantry is expensive but has huge hitpoint ammounts. However it is more easy to hit, you need at least three fighters or archers to kill one heavy infantry with confidence in one turn, where the fighters may take heavy retaliation when using melee. It is a good choice to block off and hold areas, especially if he has a castle or a village. The mage however is the HI's nightmare. |
 |
Cavalry is quick but not a good fighting unit and has bad defence everywhere. It may be advantageous to grab villages or key terrain early, but be sure to reinforce as it will not be able to hold ground for long usually. |
Wesnoth is a fairly complex game involving lots of factions with lots of units with lots of different unit traits and an experience system that levels units, sometimes changing the unit drastically. However, that all involves many calculations that are cumbersome, and not fun in a classical board game.
My son and i tried to strip down the game to its fundamental core features, and in our eyes this is the hex-tiled map, rock-scissors-paper playstyle and the terrain defence as main factor for units survivability.
So we deliberately did not include tracking experience and levelling, many units, some diverse terrain and unit traits.
As each player has the same unit types, the game should be fairly balanced (aside from the chosen map).
The original material was licensed as GPLv2, and so is this game. I really want to thank all the wesnoth developers for making such a wonderful game and especially the graphics designers for providing the foundation to make making this board game easy.