Mayhem Mass Battle system as a skirmish.

After last week's Mayhem game, one of the guys asked "why couldn't this be a skirmish game?".
Why not? A stand of troops just becomes a single mini.I statted up my usual suspects who have seen many a skirmish rules set: Song of Blades and Glory, Pulp Alley, GASLIGHT, Mordhiem, the list goes on and on....
This fight would have two sides with 3 players each. The evil faction consisted of Orcs, Barbarians and Chaos.The good, Elves, Humans and Norse.

 Sir Boris and his Retinue.

 Inaar Redhand and his men

 Aeleorth and the his silvan brothers

 Korgoth of Barbaria

 Krug the Ogre and his greenskins

Malldor the Blackhearted and fallen dwarves

At a bend in the river stands the ruins of an old church. Over the years evil has crept into the this part of the land. The old church has now become a site for Chaos worship. Players have to not only claim this site but another in each of their start zones.
The forces of evil went first. My barbarians risked a leader roll and got a one. We let up to 3 models within 1" of each other use the "advance" rule so I at least got 3 guys moving.
The Orcs got to the ruins first. There they took on all comers.
My boys were the first to break. They took out a few of the enemy, but the mounted knight proved our undoing.

 Evil gets on the move

 Run!!!!

The elven sorcerer failed his Summon spell so miserably that the Chaos wizard got to steal his summoned Ent and use it against them.
The only thing we changed were the rules about leaders. They fight, and the game doesn't end when you lose them. A new leader takes their spot and the Leader die drops a level.
Movement is also less restrictive without stands.
I gotta say, this was most fun we had out of all the rules so far. There is something here....

Thursday night Mayhem.

We had a visitor from the far away land of Minnesota, CluckAmok himself. Chris is a big fan of HoTTs, and wanted to try Mayhem. Both having lots in common, and much that isn't. Mayhem must have sparked even more curiosity because we even got MIA Basement Genral Chad to show too.
Chris brought his amazing Undead HoTTs army that let us field 3 separate Mayhem 200 pt armies. Combined with two orc armies and 3 human, we had 8 commands.

We've played Mayhem 3 times before but never with this many or with magic, or hordes. Worked great. Only problem was I should have started the armies closer to engage quicker.
I did some things horribly wrong rules-wise. But, everyone agreed it was a test game.
Biggest AHA! moment was when Bill suggested we  could use Mayhem as a skirmish game. Simply make the units single miniatures. A play test is in order!

Mayhem 2.0

We had fun with the first play of Mayhem, a fantasy combat war-game. It's like a better version of HOTTs to me. Although Cluck Amok would argue the opposite.

The basics are easy to pick up, and the most enjoyable part is the risk vs reward aspect. Each stat a stand has is given a d4, d6, d8 ,d10, d12, or d20. When moving, fighting or shooting, you have, as the owner, the option of playing it safe and taking the default (half of the die type, so a default for 6d is 3), or risking and rolling, taking the chance you'll roll lower than, or higher depending on what you need than the default. The same goes each round with generating Command Points, which are need to move/attack.
So for instance, during the game, my pikemen needed to close quickly with bowmen across the river. I decided to risk it and roll their move die of d6 instead of taking the default 3". I spent 3 of my CPs (1 to move, 2 for crossing a difficulty Level 2 obstacle) and moved 6". This paid off as I contacted them. I still needed to fight. That would cost 2 more CPs (each time a unit does something else after the first, it cost more. Second action costs 2, Third: 3, etc). This ate up 5 of my 6 rolled CPs for the turn, which effective left my other troops standing around, but I rolled and killed the bowmen.

One thing we did wrong the first play was Volley Fire. Longbowmen can give up lethality for a chance to drive back enemy units. You get to roll 3 dice instead of 1 to hit, and 3 to harm (always only keeping one) but can't harm the unit. You may drive them back instead. Before we allowed them to count disorder and kills, and they of course, were vey deadly.
In our battle I successfully punched thru the middle, but in doing so lost my ass. I killed, but was killed in turn. That left the flanks to duke it out.

The Orcs on the enemy left slowly trudged forward. They did little damage until the ogres finally got int the fight. The general in charge "risked" his move roll every time and was rewarded with a roll of "1" six times in a row. He literally moved 6" over the course of 6 turns. Whereas taking the default would have got him 18" in the same time.
I've decided these are the rules I want to use for my dream Greyhawk Wars battles.

Thursday Night Mayhem

Three straight weeks of Fantasy! This time, it's big battles using a set of rules I've been wanting to try for awhile: Mayhem! by Brent Spivey. Mr. Spivey gifted me his earlier work Havoc. It was a great read that I found almost Zen-like in it's approach to wargaming. Alas, I never used them in battle, but I was determined to try Mayhem.

My War of the Roses troops which are veterans of 20 years of battle would stand in as fantasy humans, and my small force of Orcs would be the only true fantasy elements. Mayhem works at any scale as each base is a unit. Not a new idea, but one I personally really like. The smaller the scale, the better o make each stand a vignette.
Mayhem uses different die type to represent a stands Movement, Combat Quality, and Ballistic Armor Rating. The lower the better. So a d6 is better than a d10. Sounds opposite of what you normally think, but it works well.

The core of the system is the Versus System. Risk vs Reward. For just about every roll you have the option of taking the default, which half the value of the die (so a d6 would be a "3", a d8 a "4") or try danger and roll the die for whatever comes up.
If your Movement value is d8, for example, you decide, do I use the default and these guys just move 4 inches, or do I risk it and roll hoping to get 5,6,7, or even 8. There's a lovely gambling element to it.
In our game, some heavy cavalry with lances charged some orcs that had just crossed the river. Because of modifiers, the knights were rolling a d4 vs the Orcs d8. The knights decided to take the default of "2" as their roll. In Mayhem, roll have to roll below your opponent in order to do them Harm. A roll of "1' always kills. This first hit, for most troops, Disorders them. A hit on an already disordered unit eliminates them. So our knights had a 25% chance to outright kill the Orcs, or take the default and almost certainly put a hit on them and drive them back into the river.
The Orcs rolled a "1". Oh, the best laid plans, etc.....

The other mechanic of note is Overdrive. Your leaders randomly (or take the default!) generate a pool of Action Points.Most Actions only cost a point. Move a unit, shoot arrows, etc. But, you can choose to make a unit go again, and again, but each subsequent action costs more. A second Action is 2, a third 3. If I move my Orcs 3 times, that's 6 points! This is great if a certain unit has the chance to turn the tide of battle, but it will be to the detriment to the rest of your force. Turns go very quickly.
We played a game with 6 players and 50 stands in about 1 1/2, including the whopping 10 minutes it took to teach the rules.
All in all, highly recommended. Would be great for a convention game or campaign. It does have some similarities to DBA or HotTs, but I found Mayhem had a lot more depth and a fun, gambling element to it.