Yesterday, Mike and I got together to play Wars of Ozz. Wars of Ozz is a Blackpowder Mass Fantasy Battle game inspired by L. Frank Baum’s world of Oz. Units are represented by five bases of figures, Brigades typically comprise of 4-6 units and games can either be played with a single Brigade per side or as multi-player games with multiple Brigades per side. The rules also have extensive solo options built in against an ‘intelligent’ opponent. There are currently seven armies available Munchkin, Quadling, WInkie, Gilikin, Land of Harvest, Impkin and Nomes.

Mike had not played Wars of Ozz before, so we elected for a simple introductory ‘advance to contact’ scenario with Brigades of 30 points each. New armies are under development for Wars of Ozz as part of the ‘War to save Yule’ release. This sees the dark forces of the evil Ice Queen including Ice Trolls, Krampus and Dark Elves attacking Babbo Natale the custodian of Yule whose army includes Toy Soldiers, animated Teddy Bears and of course Elves.

The game uses a neat unit activation mechanism that gives an important role to command figures and poses hard choices to gamers. At the start of each turn we checked to identify which units were in command radius of our Brigade commanders. This is usually 12″, but unfortunately when we rolled up leader characteristics my Leader, Babbo drew ‘Poor Staff’ which reduced his command radius to 9″. At the start of the turn a D6 is rolled for every unit within command radius and placed at the edge of the table as a commanders activation pool. Units that are outside of command radius have a D6 rolled for them and the dice or numbered counter placed next to the unit as these units are outside the leaders sphere of influence so they can not decide when they activate. Activation cards are then turned. These cards have black 1-6, red 1-6 and two jokers. When a ‘4’ is turned for example, and out of command units with a ‘4’ next to them activate and if the commander has some ‘4’ tokens in there command pool this can be allocated to units to get them activated.

My unit of Toy Soldier Cavalry has been sent wide to attack the flanks of the Ice Queen’s army. Because it is a long way from Babbo, he can no longer influence it so it has been randomly given a number and will activate when the ‘6’ card next comes up. The cavalry has already successfully charged and fought with the unit of Krampus that was to its front.

Both armies have now advanced to musketry range. Babbo’s army has the edge as the majority of his troops are armed with muskets. The Ice Queens army relies on aggressive close combat troops, supported by Nomes with Blunderbuss and the Ice Trolls ability to throw rocks (or were they snowballs?). Wars of Ozz has a unique set of activation mechanisms. Each army has it’s own quick reference play sheet with unique reaction charts. This means that different styles of armies will react differently to events around them (like being fired upon, being charged, being asked to charge home etc.). An army whose troops are mainly armed with firearms, is more likely to react to being fired at by returning fire, and a unit like the Krampus is likely to react to being fired at by charging the firing unit.

Mikes unit of Krampus (which is in column) charges my line of Toy Soldier Grenadiers. The Grenadiers react as per the Toy Soldier drill book and shoot a telling volley before the monsters are upon them. The Krampus had to take account of those casualties when they tested to charge home and close the last 4″ to there target. As they are brutal close combat troops they shrugged of the casualties and made it into melee.

The first round of melee was fought, both sides had to take a reaction test for fighting a melee and elected to stay in contact and fight again. This was resolved immediately. I like this feature. Melees can be brutal as they are always fought to a conclusion as they occur, no drawn out fights continuing turn after turn here! At the end of each round both sides check and either continue fighting, fall back disordered, or advance to occupy the ground, so every melee is always resolved immediately.

The Krampus were defeated and fled in a rout! Mike was particularly unlucky all morning at rolling reaction tests! The Grenadiers took heavy casualties as well. Each base takes four hits before it is removed. The Triangular casualty marker shows that there are 3 hits remaining on one of the bases.

The last fight of the battle was between the Ice Trolls and the Toy Soldiers. To the left we can see that a melee had also been fought between the Tinmen (allied to Babbo) and a unit of Krampus which had resulted in both sides falling back disordered.

At the end of the game The Ice Queen had lost 20 bases of troops compared to the 13 that Babbo had lost, so Babbo was declared victorious.

The game had been a lot of fun and was fought to a conclusion within two and a half hours and at the end of it we were very excited about the possibility of using the core rules for some horse and musket historical games as well. I think that a Jacobite Rebellion game could be featuring very soon.

Click here to check out the Wars of Ozz Rules and Miniatures Range

Click here to take a look at the Wars of Ozz Facebook Group.