Warlords II Scenario Review

BRITAIN: 7 players, 70 cities, 36 ruins (including 4 temples).  Available
only by buying the Warlords II Scenario Builder.  Arthurian Britain -- The
Battles of King Arthur.  Author: Steve Fawkner of SSG.

Rating summary, scale of 1 to 10:
Wt Area          Score Comments
10 Army set          4 (default army set, with all of its problems)
 7 Map design        9 (excellent depiction of British Isles)
 5 Army pics         6 (default)
 5 City pics         9 (default)
 3 Background info   2 (short blurb in the scenario info)
 2 Cities/ruins      9 (complete names/descriptions, funny formatting)
 2 Items/heroes      3 (half new items, default heroes)
   OVERALL RATING  208

King Arthur battles for control of the British Isles, against Mordred, the
fey folk, the Picts, and other enemies.  The map is excellent, detailed,
and set up for the expectation of a coming battle!  The rocky Scottish
coast (not yet Scotland at this time) has only one port city, making it
important not just for the temple access it provides.  The temples are
well placed, the roads are well placed and not excessive.  The map is the
real strength of this scenario, since nearly everything else is default.

This being the age of chivalry, most of the cities produce armored knights
on horseback -- heavy cavalry -- near Camelot.  Many of them produce heavy
infantry besides.  That's great as far as the scenario goes, unfortunately
in the default army set, heavy cavalry and heavy infantry are almost never
worth producing, and the best strategy for King Arthur is unchivalrously
sacking every city he captures and converting it to spiders and elephants,
which have absolutely no place in a King Arthur scenario.  Sigh.  This is
another scenario which just cries out for the scenario designer to have
the option of disabling the buying of new production types in cities.

The ruins and cities are complete and reasonably described.  It seems that
the author likes to use all three lines of the description even when it's
not necessary, so the resulting formatting is
a
bit strange.

Most items are default ones, but a few have been changed.  Excalibur is
here, and of course you can search for the Holy Grail.  The default hero
names fit this scenario fairly well, especially since the missing side
is yellow.  The default cities are, of course, excellent, and there's no
reason to substitute for them here.

Play it as if you couldn't buy any new production types, and if you play
as King Arthur, be chivalrous even if the game doesn't enforce it (or even
if the game punishes chivalry).  The role-playing will make it fun.  Try
to conquer the world using only knights on horseback, if you REALLY want
a challenge.

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This review is copyrighted by myself, but may be distributed in any
UNMODIFIED form as long as NO CHARGE is made for distribution (such
as a per-minute charge for online time) and it is not included in any
copyrighted "compilation" (such as claimed by certain online services
I will not name).  Dirk Pellett