A couple of questions were asked in various Comments about wargaming Tekumel, and I thought it would just be easier to answer them with a proper post than in the comments sections...
Mike C asked about Tekumel rulesets - I have not played any of the official Tekumel wargaming rules. There are three that I know of: Missum, Qadardalikoi, and Legions of the Petal Throne. Copies of these rules can be found at Tita's House of Games - or at Noble Knight Games. Also, Hordes of The Things has army lists for Tsolyanu and Yan Kor armies. One of these days I will get copies of all of these sets, for yet more background info and maybe some information on how the magic system 'should' work on Tekumel.
Maksim asked about the army books - these can be found at Tita's House of Games - or at Noble Knight Games.
The 'official' rules, for which the army books are written seem a bit complex. Each legion is broken down into components - cohorts if you will - and each cohort of a given legion can have completely different stats from each other. In the highly organized Tsolyanu and Mu'ugalavyani empires, the legions are homogeneous and will have only one type of troop in them, be it heavy, medium, or light infantry. Yan Kor 'legions' tend to have a great mix of units together. Throw in the non-human troops and it can be very complicated!
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Further to what Greg says: The Army books stats are written for the Missum rules. These rules are of the pre-warhammer/pre-DBA/DBM era of wargames rules. Persoanlly, I don't think they work very well. The stats in the army book assume that some cohorts (a legion might have as many as 20 400-man cohorts) are better equipped or more experienced than the others. The system of D&D-style levels is used to differentiate the different skill levels. The army books are more useful, IMO, as a listing of all the units, with brief histories or tidbits of info and the value of the stats is to guage the relative prowess of the legion against it's peers and foes. The morale ratings, for example, allow me to come up with Warhammer-based equivalents for the various units. I know which are fanatics, which are new recruits, etc. For the Yan Koryani which use combined arms in their formations (known as Gureks) the army book has all the information about the composition of each Gurek.
ReplyDeleteThe old Tekumel rules are useful in that they contain hints about how Tekumel warfare differs for historical ancients, but myself I will be using a system like Command & Colours or Warhammer Ancients for my battles.
Best Regards,
Howard Fielding