Sherwood is the latest entry in the venerable Cry Havoc system - a man to man hex and counter game of medieval warfare released by French publisher Historic-One with a legacy stretching back to the early 1980s. The system has undergone several revisions over the past decade, modernising the design and making it more approachable for new players. I’ve had my eye on it for a while since I’m always interested in anything medieval but never quite pulled the trigger on any of the recent releases. However, when I saw Sherwood I decided that this might be the perfect time to take the plunge. Sherwood aims to be an introductory volume to the series, with simplified rules to introduce the system’s core concepts but without the same detail. The core rules have been reduced to just five pages and there is even a single page “basic rules” option for playing with children.
Historic-One kindly provided me with a free review copy of Sherwood.
Alan a Dale is performing in the tavern but the Sheriff’s men are not to keen on what he’s been saying about the current administration. But will the people let them arrest him?
I wasn’t only attracted to Sherwood because of its promised simplicity. A man to man hex and counter game about Robin Hood is an amazing idea and that helped to push me over one of the barriers that had held me back from trying Cry Havoc. For those who may not know, a man to man game is one where each piece (counters in this case) represents just one person. In a system like Men of Iron each counter instead represents hundred of men. Man to man scale has felt strange got me for a medieval game. For a twentieth century conflict zooming a game down to be at the level of individual squads can create a really interesting experience while still representing the warfare accurately.
Alan leapt from the upstairs Tavern window, landing safely, and many of the guards have been bogged down at the foot of the stairs or at the Tavern entrance. However, two guards are attempting to flank him from both directions.
However, in medieval warfare where large scale battles generally featured static formations of hundreds of men, you can’t really do that. Now, medieval warfare had raids and border wars at a much smaller scale but I wasn’t sure how Cry Havoc would represent these and as a result I kind of held the system at arms length. None of that really applies to Sherwood, though, because the stories of Robin Hood and his Merry Men are the perfect choice - the scale at which Robin operates is perfectly aligned with the Cry Havoc system. So Sherwood really killed two birds with one stone - it addressed my general concerns about how well a man to man scale could work for medieval warfare while also offering a simplified system that is easier to learn.
At time of writing I have played the first three scenarios in Sherwood. In the first one a group of the sheriff’s men are trying to arrest Alan a Dale and in the second the Merry Men are trying to interrupt a wedding to so that Alan a Dale can marry his love instead of the man who has (presumably) kidnapped her. This latter scenario is lifted from the works of Howard Pyle and I like that the rulebook flags this, telling you which version of Robin Hood was the inspiration for the scenario. Not every scenario is literally drawn from a specific work of fiction but flagging those that were is a nice touch. Both of these scenarios used just one map and they were a fun way to learn the game but Sherwood really benefits from being played at a grander scale. Characters can move and shoot quite far in Sherwood and the cramped space of a single small map doesn’t feel like it makes the most out of these mechanics. That’s not to say I didn’t have fun, but it felt a little more like a tutorial than the full experience. When I finally got to sit down and play the third scenario, which covers three maps and uses a much greater number and variety of characters, that was when the game really began to sing for me. I was also playing against a human opponent for the first time and the game conjured such an exciting narrative in only about 90 minutes of playtime. I wouldn’t say the scenario itself was particularly exciting but when we let ourselves get invested in the game the experience as a whole more than made up for it. I’m in no particular rush to replay the first two scenarios but the third one I would absolutely revisit, but probably only after playing the rest of the scenarios that come in the box.
Alan opts for the protection of being near his friends while the tougher members of the community, in particular Much and Tuck, begin to make short work of the isolated guards. In this scenario characters flee when they’re wounded rather than fighting to the death.
The core rules of Sherwood are quite simple and easy for anyone familiar with hex and counter games to pick up. Each counter has an attack value, a defense value, and a movement value. They also have a little code in their bottom right corner that tells you what faction they are aligned to and what kind of unit they are - the only really important thing to note is whether they are archers or not, but there’s no real detail in this that the art doesn’t convey already. Mounted characters are in double wide counters and have restrictions on the direction of their movement, but otherwise units can move pretty much anywhere they want. Each character comes with two counters which represent their four possible statuses: healthy, stunned, wounded, or dead. Players take it in turns to first shoot with any of their archers, then move all their characters, then resolve combat, and then any of their characters who were stunned on their opponent’s turn recover. It’s a light system and one that is particularly well suited to a casual sort of play. If you encounter an edge case situation or aren’t sure how exactly to rule on something, such as does the balcony block an archers line of site to a target half a map away, you’re better off just agreeing something with your opponent and moving on rather than getting lost in the weeds. I think the rules are clear enough that this isn’t an issue, but I do think it’s also a system best suited to a mindset where you’re looking for a bit of light fun in an evening and not a competitive tournament experience.
The final guard meets a rather gruesome end at the hands of a powerful gang of local villagers and peasants. Alan a Dale is safe, but I suspect the Sheriff won’t forget this slight from him or his friends.
I quite like the sort of Victorian romantic art style used for the characters and the old school D&D vibe of the buildings and terrain. It’s old fashioned but in a very endearing way, to me at least.
Obligatory comment on the rules for crossbows: Well the game has rules for crossbows, so bonus points for that already. I’ve only played one scenario with archers in it and the scenario itself wasn’t very well suited to extended missile fighting so I haven’t really dug into the rules in practice. However, on paper I really like the subtle distinction between bows and crossbows. Crossbows can shoot further and receive a bonus to their damage rolls but if a crossbowman shoots during the missile phase they can’t move that turn. This helps to make the two unit types feel distinct while also reflecting the potentially greater power and slower reload time of the crossbows. This information shouldn’t affect whether you play Sherwood or not, but I can’t help but talk about this kind of stuff!
Opening of Sherwood’s second scenario - this time the Merry Men must interrupt an illicit marriage to rescue the bride to be so she can marry Alan. How hard could it be?
Combat is pretty straightforward. Attacking characters subtract their targets defense value from their attack value and then consult the CRT to see which column corresponds to that figure. There are two separate CRTs depending on whether the target is mounted or not, based entirely upon the target rather than the attacker. Attackers can gang up to combine their attack values and to get a bonus column shift one way in their favour. The attacker then rolls a d10 and checks the relevant column to see what happens. It’s pretty simple and moves things along quickly. There are relatively few modifiers to count when making melee attacks beyond just pure strength, which I really appreciate. I enjoy Men of Iron but the element that I like least is definitely the adding up the many potential modifiers before I make each roll. At it’s best it rewards good play without getting in the way, but at its worse it is a lot of effort for occasionally minimal gain. I prefer the simpler system in Sherwood even if it lacks some of the nuance of Men of Iron.
Robin recklessly leaps through the chapel window to prevent any ceremony from being concluded while the rest of the Merry Man engage guards outside. Was this perhaps a little too reckless?
On top of the above there are the usual rules you’d expect, like movement costs for different terrain, a table for resolving missile fire, and a few combat modifiers governing things like cover and different elevation between attacker and defender. The game also has some nice little bits of chrome, such as rules for climbing trees and, best of all, rules for jumping out of those trees or out of the windows of the tavern. There’s also rules for leading animals by their bridle, such as if your mounted fighter gets off his horse or if you need to pull a cart through a small clearing. Lastly, there are rules for ambushes which looked very interesting but I haven’t yet tried them.
Answer: yes it was too reckless. Robin Hood is dead (!) as is one of the guards. Meanwhile another Merry Man has jumped in the church to assist his deceased leader but things are getting ugly all around.
One thing that became immediately apparent as I was learning Sherwood was that it comes from a slightly different tradition of wargaming than the other hex and counter games I’ve played. In particular, Sherwood, and potentially Cry Havoc as a whole, feels much more connected to the roleplaying side of the hobby. This isn’t a total surprise - Dungeons and Dragons famously has its origins in the miniatures wargaming rules Chain Mail. However, the links between wargaming and roleplaying extend far beyond a set of miniatures rules. Roleplaying games drew heavily from boxed wargames as well as games like Diplomacy and professional wargames like the kriegspiel. This link between RPGs and wargames is not always apparent in the contemporary scenes that exist around the two hobbies, but in Sherwood you can really see the shared DNA between the two. As such, Sherwood really feels like it benefits from the players getting into the roles of their assigned factions. This is honestly a pretty key part of any wargaming experience in my opinion, but it is doubly true for a game where you might be fleeing attack by leaping out a window or you might jump from a tree onto your horse. For maximum enjoyment, you should probably get invested in inhabiting your role and prepare to attempt exciting and ridiculous things rather than necessarily aiming for clean optimal play.
The bodies are starting to pile up and many of those that aren’t dead are wounded. Things aren’t looking good for the Merry Men, though!
This roleplaying element made playing Sherwood solitaire an interesting experience which I’m not entirely sure how I feel about. On the one hand the system works fine as a solitaire experience - at least if you’re not playing a scenario that uses the Ambush rules - but on the other hand I struggle to fully inhabit both roles and feel like I’m not getting the full experience. Many scenarios also use an element of free deployment as well, which is another mechanic that I find a bit trickier for solitaire play. I much preferred my one game against a human opponent over my two solitaire games, but also for that game I was playing a more exciting scenario with a lot more moving parts so it is hard to evaluate exactly how much more I enjoyed the two player experience versus how much more I enjoyed the scenario. I will probably continue to dabble with Sherwood as a solitaire experience but for me I think I rank it closer to a game like Great Heathen Army, where solitaire is fine but the best experience is two player, rather than Men of Iron, which I slightly prefer as a solitaire game.
A win for the vile Sheriff’s men as Martin successfully weds his unwilling bride…in a chapel with two dead bodies. Look, I don’t care how you look at it, this wedding was a disaster for all involved. This is why you shouldn’t kidnap people!
I still feel like I’ve only scraped the surface of the Sherwood experience but I’m really enjoying what I’ve found so far. The Robin Hood stories are a great use of this system and at the same time this system is a great way to evoke the narrative of a Robin Hood adventure. The system even comes with some basic rules for making your own scenarios which means you can start adapting some of the wider legendarium yourself. Scenarios based on Disney’s classic movie, anyone? I think Sherwood has the potential for not just being a great introduction to Cry Havoc but to hex and counter gaming generally, especially with its child friendly starter rules.