Whimsical fantasy! Not as often encountered as high- or dark-fantasy. But still, wargames of the type exist. We already covered and extensively praised Moonstone. Now, it’s our turn to do Arcworlde, 2nd edition!
Listen to the Fortified Niche episode.
What if you took a map of Europe and carelessly expanded the region of Central Europe so that it deformed the rest to near unrecognizable shapes? That how you’d get Mildaark, the continent-spanning dark forest and the main point of interest in ArcWorlde. This deep, dark wood houses arcanite, a magical resource everyone – slightly magical, but more melee oriented Napoleonic Brits, halflings, Overlord from Overlord, really Wild Elves, etc. – wants.
ArcWorlde runs mostly on alternating activations, AP (action points) and d6s. Most characters have but two AP which is mitigated by basic movement being free. You can push your movement distance with Leg It rolls! By paying but a single AP, you can roll for movement, running further and further until you either change your mind or faceplant. The first roll fails on a 6+, but the target gets lower for every subsequent roll. So you are really pushing your luck with it!
Combat is less fraught. All characters have at least two attacks, you choose one, pay the AP cost, and roll the attack’s Power in dice. 4+ are hits. You subtract the target Armor value from the hit amount, and the rest are then rolled by the defender for defense. 4+ cancels out a hit. Since a hit only takes down a single HP – and even weedy hobgoblins coming with 5 HP – combat may take a while.
But there comes in the ArcWorlde-ian magic, which, again, encourages the player to push their luck. A wizard has access to any spell in their lore, they just have to draw a good enough score on playing cards to cast it. Draw more than 21, however, and the spell will still be cast, but the wizard will also be zapped for D6 damage. The spells are pricey (with top-tier ones clocking in at 20), so drawing but two cards is rarely enough. You can draw more by spending AP or arcanite (the resource may also exist as a scenario objective), but risk the aforementioned head explosion.
Building a warband for all this blundering is fairly easy. Each faction list has, at most, a unit of every type (leader, elite, troop, monster, etc.), but they also often allow recruitment from other lists. The Bestiary – containing, surprise, beasts – is the ally list for everyone, and a good way to get a yourself a different Monster That Costs 1/3rd Of Your Points than your faction provides. There’s little in the way of inventory purchasing, but each faction has some bespoke items in addition to generic equipment.
The weirdest feature of ArcWorlde are narrative feats. While “feats” is used as a term to describe most of the tests in the game, narrative feats are for those that aren’t described. The only guidance given is how much HP damage a narrative feat of given difficulty should do. But if the narrative feat is non-lethal – that is, you’re swinging on a chandelier or climbing trees – then the players should just agree on what happens if it succeeds and fails. And while rules like that are always hard to adjudicate, ArcWorlde would benefit from having more than just a handful of examples.
ArcWorlde is a neat fantasy skirmish games that want a light system that features more conventional army building than Moonstone. And while it doesn’t have the frankly brilliant features of that game, it still has a lot going for it.