Greywater
Battles in the Marches. A rank-and-file wargame for the MacLean's Model Works army range.
Greywater is a two-player battle game for the models in the Army and Highland Myths ranges. Units are blocks of models in ranks, and you win by breaking the other side's nerve, not by killing every last figure. Seven stats, one roll to hit, one to save, morale on two dice, and a short spell list for each army. You can learn it in an evening and play a 1,000-point game in a couple of hours. All you need is the rulebook, a handful of dice, a tape measure and the models.
Five armies, five ways to play
The State Army of the Marches shoots and holds: crossbows thin the enemy on the way in, halberdiers take the charge, the knights go in when the enemy's committed.
The Grave Host grinds: cheap bodies that never run, Terror from its two great characters, and a necromancer raising back what you killed.
The Caithe Clans charge: two attacks a man and Strength 5 on the charge, a Ghost Piper re-rolling their Nerve, and the Highland Myths for the flanks, from the Cu Sith to the Dragon.
The Drowned are a tide: half the army comes in off the table edges, every model in the mass fights, and from turn 5 the sea starts taking them back unless the Captain's bell holds them. Iron does nothing to them. Fire does.
The Stonewrought are the anvil: the slowest, hardest, fewest models on the table, shield walls that laugh at crossbows, Delvers that come up behind you, and a fire-tube on a sledge that nobody pulls.
Every army was tested against every other in several hundred thousand simulated battles until nothing beat anything much more than 60/40. The results are in the Army Lists book.
The companion app
Free, works on any phone, nothing to install. An army builder that checks the caps as you go and counts the models you'll need to print, the whole rulebook searchable, a dice calculator that settles the argument before it starts, a battle tracker with the reminders that get missed, all nineteen ready-made lists, and the Road campaign map.
Open the Greywater companion app
The books
The rulebook, the Army Lists and the World Bible are free. The 5e sourcebook and the campaign, Tide of the Greywater, are sold separately.
The world
The Marches are three hundred miles of walled towns along a road that used to go somewhere, holding a border with nothing on the other side of it but the dead. Behind them the Caithe, where the old world is still alive in the lochs. East, the Greywater and the Barrowfield and Ashgrave, where a Grand Marshal who refused to be dismissed three hundred years ago still commands. Past that, the sea, and what the sea gives back. Under the Fells, a people who have not come down the mountain in nine hundred years and are coming down now.
Read about the Marches · The armies, unit by unit · The stories behind the models
Playing at 54 mm
The models print best at 54 mm, and the game is written so that works without changing a number: three 40 mm bases are as wide as five 25 mm ones, so each 54 mm model counts as two, ranks are three wide, and every distance stays in inches on the same 6 by 4 table. The rulebook and the app both have the conversion. A 1,000-point army is about sixty figures.
Your first game
Two lists from the Army Lists book that came out dead even: the Marshal's Column against the Crag Clan, or the Marshal's Column against the Grain Fleet. The Greywater Road scenario, six turns, 1,000 points. Read the quick reference, roll off, and get on with it. If something comes up that isn't covered, roll a dice.
Greywater and the Marches are original work, © MacLean's Model Works, Dundee. The rules are free to use. The models are in the shop.