From: Roberto Chiavini Subject: Two BSO reviews A Kingdom for a Horse (BSO Games) The first production from Richard Berg's own DTP firm is a fun, fast and furious wargame on the battle of Bosworth from the War of the Roses. It uses a small 11"x17" map, 140 counters (both the map and the counters not really bad, even if they are toward the bottom of the spectrum of DTP today's graphics) and a few pages of rules, really concise, but without any serious errata (I think - there are several obscure points - like for example, if you may re-activate the same Battle over and over : it seems so, but I'm not really sure) and easily grabbed in a few minutes by every veteran wargamer out there. Units (that come in several type from Men at Arms to Handgunners) are rated for a Melee DRM and movement, while Leaders have an activation value, a movement value and an individual command rate. The latter is used for hand to hand combat against another leader (a nice touch of chrome, taken probably by remembrances of Great Battles of Alexander). Each army is divided in several Battles (the medieval equivalent of modern divisions), that are individually activated in the game, and have movement/fire or melee combat. There are also two possible reinforcements for both sides (Bosworth was the final battle of a bloody civil war, more similar to a family feud, in fact, so allegiances were mostly based on the situation of the day or the whims of the fighters), while the Yorkish side has an almost inutile Battle (Northumberland), that is in practice not activable if York is not already winning clearly the battle. At the start of the game York has the initiative and may activate any one Battle. After that, he rolls a die for activating another Battle (possibly even the same one): if the die roll is equal or lower than the activation value of the leader of that Battle, he may activate it; otherwise play passes to the Tudor who may freely activate one of his Battle and then repeat the procedure with one of his Battle. So, there are no turns in the game, as the game flows freely from one side to the other, without phases different from move, fire and melee. And this is peculiar. Even more peculiar is the method to dertermine victory: both sides have a Loss limit of 20. At the end of the activation of any Battle, both players that are in range of a possible defeat roll a die, adding the number of losses suffered till then (with the side with less losses subtracting one): if the result is 20 or more, that side loses the battle (even if it has less losses than the opponent - and as the game uses a ten sided 10, the margin attribuited to luck is not small). In its simplicity and few rules, the game takes in account several aspects of combat, from facing (only for combat sake, mostly), ZOCs, disorganization (a pre-condition of elimination, that cannot be recovered, another really peculiar design decision), several melee die roll modifiers (with the one on the counter used only by the defender in the battle), a fire table and more chrome. As the units cannot recover, the mortal rate is higher than in most games of this period (like for example, the numerous Markham's quadrigame for 3W), while the activation system (even if a little problems of balance, if a player is really lucky in his rolls, is present in any such randomized system) makes the game really playable solitaire and definitely fast and furious to play. For the wargamers, like me, that don't have much time or space to dedicate to a game, this Bosworth is a joy, to be played more and more, marking one of the highest point in DTP till today (probably with the Hampton Newsome's games on ACW brigade levels and a few others) for simplicity mixed with playability. I rate the game 8 1/2 in a 1-10 scale.