War is Our Homeland is a set of Historical miniature wargame rules that will allow you to play the big battles of the Thirty Years War, English Civil War, Dutch Revolt, The Deluge, and more. The game is meant for 2 or more players to be able to learn in a few minutes, play in an evening, without a ridiculous amount of miniatures, and do all of those things without sacrificing historical fidelity.
- Brand new players can finish a game in under 3 hours.
- Most scenarios can be played on a 6×4′ or 4×4′ table with 8-20 units per side.
- Players feel like the great leaders of the period such as Wallenstein or Mansfeld.
- 4 Historical scenarios included, Mingolshiem 1622, Lutzen 1632, Zusmarshausen 1648, and Edgehill 1642.
- 2 Scenario books available at release, with 3 more to be released in the coming months.
QRS Download
Scenario Books
The Game
What inspired me to write War is Our Homeland was the itch to be able to play the big battles of the Thirty Years War during a club meeting or at a convention. This spiraled into me playing around with a large variety of other rules, which were all great but not quite what I was looking for. The result is this set of rules. They will allow you to fight any of the great battles of the Thirty Years War, the English Civil War, the Polish Deluge, the Eighty Years War, the Long Turkish War and more in a reasonable amount of time, with a reasonable amount of space, with a reasonable amount of units.
You focus on the command and control of you units in this game, with the units influenced by the management of two “resources”. Those “resources” are your leaders, such as Oliver Cromwell, Albrecht von Wallenstein, or John Sobieski, and a hand of cards, drawn from a standard poker deck. Your leaders are physically present on the table and can influence units nearby, and your cards can influence any unit, though their effectiveness depends on the luck of the draw
What makes this game different from others is the Posture system. Units are always able to make restricted moves, shoot, and defend themselves, but in order to do anything decisive a unit must be put in one of 4 Postures. The exact uses of the Postures are explained the rules but in short, Offensive Posture allows a unit to charge, Defensive Posture gives units a bonus when they are attacked, Mobile Posture allows units to move farther and conduct maneuvers, and Firing Posture doubles the shooting dice of a unit. The Postures of a unit are changed by using the resources mentioned in the section above, leaders and cards.
The Posture system is an easy and quick way to represent the fact that you cannot be everywhere and control your entire army at once. It forces you to make tough decisions on where you will allocate your attention, and it leads to nail-biting situations where you have to choose where your big push will be. It is different type of pike and shot wargame, which often have an activation roll of some sort.
The combat, movement, shooting, and morale systems are very simple to allow players to focus on the command decisions for their army. For the nitty gritty details, ground and timescale are up to scenario, but they are scaled to allow large battles to be played on a 6×4′ or similar sized table in 5-8 turns. A unit is either 1500 infantry or 1000 cavalry, but this is flexible. For example, in English Civil War battles, units represent either 1000 infantry or 500 cavalry. Units are single elements, I base my minis on 60x30mm rectangles, with a single base being a unit. If you had 25mm square bases for example, I would use 3 bases per unit.
Please fill out the contact form with any other questions you have, I hope you enjoy playing the game as much as I did writing it!
-Josh
