From: Roberto Chiavini Subject: Two more reviews Age of Chivalry (3W) This is another medieval quadrigame by Rob Markham, the real wargamer guru of this kind of product and one of his several effort for 3W. In this game you find the four battles of Marchfeld, Hastings, Lincoln and Bouvines, taken from the obscures meanders of the Tenth to Twelfth centuries A.D. In the box (the cover doesn't look particularly inspired, even if the credits for that are attributed to the great Angus McBride) you get 400 hundreds not very good counters, a 10 sided die and one backprinted standard map, reproducing the 4 battlefield where the battle were fought. The system is a variation of the one used in Markham's early effort on similar subjects (for a more thorough analysis read my Black Prince review), with a few really important exceptions that makes this Age of Chivalry a more user-friendly (or, better said, player-friendly) product than its predecessor. The most important change is the melee combat phase: instead of having a morale die roll before each melee (one for each attacker and each defender, a real die roll slugfest!!) and a slow moving CRT, were you needed lots of inane die rolls before obtaining any interesting results, in Age of Chivalry you get a normal odd ratio CRT, with several differential (for Terrain, Command chit, Unit type, etc.), with faster results that animate instantly the battlefield. Perhaps, the compromise used by Markham in this simulation is more unrealistic than the Black Prince's one, but certainly is better for the gamers among us. However, for all the die roll lovers, the designer adds an interesting rules for berserking units, which is very effective: any time you obtain a 2 step losses or more result on the CRT, all the units taking part in that battle have to check for berserking; if they go berserk they obtain a favorable differential and the possibility to attack a second time, risking exhaustion. All in all, the system works better than the Black Prince's one and is more fun to play. I rate the game 7 out of 10.