John Nebauer and I played our first game of Demonlord on Friday.  This is
one of the series of now-downloadable microgame from Dwarfstar Games.
Designed by Arnold Hendrick in the early 80s, with Dwarfstar's usual very
nice and colourful map and counters.  This was my first try at one of
their two-player games, but like their solo games I've played in the past
(Barbarian Prince and Star Smuggler), this one proved a very enjoyable
experience.  The game is set at strategic level, with units rated for
movement type (foot, cavalry, or wings), missile and melee combat
strength, morale, and actual movement rate.  Characters (leaders) which
are needed to make a force march at full speed, have the same two movement
ratings, a battle morale modifier and, if they are capable of magic, a
level of magic power and a range at which they can project it on the map,
ranging from dabblers like Prince Timur who can apply strength 1 in his
own hex, to the Wizard of the West who applies strength 4 up to 7 hexes
away, essentially covering up to a quarter of the map, or the Demon High
Priest with strength 5 up to 4 hexes away. Both sides also pull a
semi-random set of special spells at the start of the game that can be
used in different situations.

In his turn, a player moves, invokes magic, fights battles or (if the
non-phasing player hides in a fortress or castle) sieges. Sieges are
decided by a slow process of mutual attrition (with the level of magic and
army leadership you can bring to bear playing a role). In battle, you line
units up (with the width of the line being determined by the terrain, a
really neat mechanism) and then both sides simultaneous fire (magic or
physical) missiles, followed by melee. The basic mechanism is the same,
you roll against your strength, and if you hit, the enemy unit tests
morale to see if it routs, dies, or survives unhurt.  All this modified by
a number of simple and sensible modifiers based on terrain and other
factors. Units that are free because their opponent died can then be
redeployed to double up (you can also bring in units from the reserves
that had no space in the battle line).  It's the doubling up that shows
who is starting to have an advantage.  A battle can end by annihilation or
more likely by one side withdrawing, which means troops roll against
morale to get away and all your troops routed in the battle become
prisoner (which may possibly be exchanged later).  Interesting in light of
the discussions here is that the penalty for withdrawing, while real, is
usually light enough that one prefers getting away to making a last stand
while causing losses.

There is a host of interesting neutrals with special units and abilities
(dwarves, the lizard race of "The Ancients", different types of forest and
mountain dwellers, and the zombie- and dragon-leading "Cloud Prince") that
one can try to ally with. Depending on the outcome they may become your
permanent ally for the whole game or temporary, until they suffer some
reverse in your service. (Of course if you attack them while neutral they
join the other side permanently.)


Victory points are scored for killing units, having fewer (!) allies than
the other player, delaying a call for reinforcements (in the event neither
of us used them), having more fortresses, and individually for each enemy
city you conquer.  The game length is uncertain, but essentially a player
can call for a truce (normally this attempt will be made by the one who is
ahead :-), and if he rolls a 6, negotiations have started and the players
roll again according to some formula to check for the end of the game
(which even if it occurs, is then still a number of turns in the future).

When we started to play, the Hosars (humans - there were various jokes of
why the demons were not named Gozars or the Hosars led by Yossarian), who
move first, moved the Duke d'Ansar quickly to forge an alliance with the
Dwarf King (that worked), Prince Timur to ally with the Cloud Prince (that
didn't) and the Wizard of Rabat to sway (by remote magic) the Forest
people (this was a disaster and sent the Forest people into the enemy
camp).  In return the Demons allied with the Cloud Prince and also the
Ancients.  We decided this last actually proved their undoing as the
Ancients are not that strong and since they were the Demons' third allied
group, they consistently leached 1VP/turn away from the Demons for the
length of the game.

After the Cloud Prince allied with the Demons under Lord Erush, Prince
Timur decided that it would be a good idea to strike them quickly while he
had slight superiority in numbers and moved on their army while in the hex
of the Cloud Prince's fortress, Lyung. The Hosar High Priest meanwhile
distributed garrisons among the hinterland towns and collected a sizeable
force in Timur City (including the Gunthoz militia) in case of a swift
strike by any flying demons. Unfortunately Prince Timur's force had
slightly worse morale overall than his foes (did I mention that the game
also has a nice but effective fog of war rule, of course negatable by a
magic spell?) and his morale rolls were abominable, so in a major battle
before the walls of Lyung castle he was forced to withdraw. Losses were
2:1 in the demons' favour and he left a number of troops behind as
prisoners as well as the Wizard of Rabat.  With the Hosar position thus
demonstrated as quite weak for the moment, Timur fell back towards the
approaching Dwarf army. A slight relief was that meanwhile the Duke
d'Ansar had allied with the Altu'Han people in the far north (spelled as
"Aleutian" in one place in the rules :-). Having their support, he
immediately raced eastwards to fall on the Ancients at their temple. The
Ancients hadn't had time to invoke their leader, the Old One.  Most were
taken prisoner, the rest ran away and were mopped up the next turn. The
first Hosar battle success!  Lord Nish, coming up from Nisshar, was too
far away to give support to the Ancients.

In the south, Baron Barthek moved eastwards to help the Count of Lojar
defend his exposed castle. The Spirit of Light was invoked at the Southern
Temple of Hosar and by casting a Rain spell, was able to make the nearby
river impassable and so prevent the forces of Lord Taegul from crossing
before Barthek had reached Lojar.  With Taegul then moving slowly along
the edge of the steppe, Barthek then (hearing of Timur's devastating
defeat) took the gamble of crossing the river to attack Taegul's forces in
the steppe.  Initially the battle did not seem to go too well with the
superior Hosar missile fire failing to have any effect and in fact a Hosar
cavalry unit being the first to die, but then some of Taegul's unarmored
units died enabling Barthek to engage in some doubling up.  Lord Taegul
eventually had to withdraw with a shadow of his former force, leaving a
sizeable number of prisoners behind. Barthek used this to march forward
and invest the fortress of Q'pika, something that kept him busy for the
rest of the game. It depleted his force but Taegul was in no position to
sorties from his citadel across the river again.

In the meantime the Worm Lord who had been invoked at the Temple of
Ninnghiz had, with most of the Demons' winged forces, started a campaign
deep into Hosar territory by laying siege to Rabat Castle. Despite the
failure of the High Priest in Timur to open a Spellgate so he could move
forces into the beleagueared castle, the siege was given up when besieger
losses mounted. (Around this time, roughly turn 7, a truce roll indicated
that the game would be over at the end of turn 11.)  The Demons now
switched to assaulting fortresses and began seriously gobbling up Hosarian
strongholds in the north and center of the map. In doing this they had not
joined up the armies of Lords Erush and Nish, and Prince Timur, having
joined the dwarves and Duke 'han, sent his fast forces ahead for a
surprise siege of Erush.  In the north the Mines of Ula fell to the Demons
making both sides equal in fortresses.  Altu'han was too close to the now
quite large army under Prince Timur, taking a central position between
Lord Erush's and Lord Nish's forces, and so Lord Erush moved to assault
D'Ansor which fell quickly, next taking over Gunthoz Keep.  (The Hosar
never managed to cause more than 1 unit loss in an Assault despite good
chance to roll up to 3 losses.)  He did not dare to besiege Timur though.

In the second attempt in the center, Castle Rabat fell to an assault led
by the Worm Lord and the Beast God, and the Worm Lord moved on to besiege
Barthek (the city not the Baron - a siege that was still in place at
game's end). Castle Lojar was weakly defended but never threatened.  By
now Q'pika had fallen to Barthek and the Spirit of Light had joined the
Hosar forces there. With the fall of Erush to Prince Timur in the far
north (the first siege that lasted 5 phases) the balance in VP gains per
turn was restored and while Prince Timur was too far from Nisshar to
threaten the Demon capital, an attack on Lyung (risky - it's the toughest
fortress in the game), a pursuit of Lord Nissh's weaker army, or even a
splitting up to regain some of the Demon conquests would have been
possible to the Hosars.  However none of these would have had a swift
effect on the VP situation.

The VP difference which had opened as far as 7 in the Hosar's favour at
some point had now been reduced to 4 or 5 but even a quick end to the
siege of Barthek (where the besieging force had been whittled down to two
units) would not have brought the Demons to the same VP level within two
turns so with one or two turns still to go we decided that the Hosars
would carry their lead through to the truce to win.

As an aside, the available reinforcements initially didn't look that
impressive to me, but given the semi-depleted stage of both sides (there
were still a few large armies around but Barthek's, Taegul's, and the Worm
Lord's had been almost ground to dust) certainly would have made a
difference in a later stage of the game.  Each side had about 10-15 units
destroyed and about 10 total had been taken prisoner.

Overall, a very cool and tense game, quite engrossing with the occasional
delightful touch of chrome.  Didn't check time but it must have taken us
about 3-4 hours to get through the game (apart from the initial rules
reading).  Neither of us had really read the rules before, there were a
few things we had to rethink during play, and the redeployment rule in
battle is both strange and hard to adhere to (requiring players to keep
track of which units were not in the battleline at the start of the
battle), but we were off and playing very quickly and it was probably the
most enjoyable experience with a "new" game I've had in months, with
perhaps October War coming close.  I think we may come back to this one
again, but we're now also looking forward to trying Goblin and Grav Armor.  
And I think I want to dig out my (purchased, not downloaded) copy of Star
Viking whenever that opportunity arises this year.

Markus

Last 3 games played: Pacific War, October War, Demonlord
--------------- http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/user/mst/games/ ---------------
"Bakayaro! Bakayaro!"  ("Stupid Bastards!  Stupid Bastards!") -- Admiral 
Aritomo Goto's last words to his staff, October 11, 1942