Ready, Player One?

A Zorn Uzul mighty patrol!

What you see in the photo is a fully playable Company of Heroes, meeting all the recruitment requirements I’ve designed for my game.

To get closer to the debut of this new (and dare I say crunchy) chapter of DPF, I decided to start right from the basics: who are the protagonists of this game, and how will you recruit your own Company, a handful of heroes thrown headfirst into the belly of legend?!

Let’s take it step by step.

PURE COMPANIES AND MIXED COMPANIES

The first choice you’ll face, far from a trivial one, is whether to recruit a Pure Company or a Mixed Company. As Draco Malfoy would put it, a Pure Company is composed entirely of members belonging to a single major alliance, while a Mixed Company draws its members from multiple alliances.

While I wanted to give players a good degree of freedom and I fully expect to see some very eclectic Companies on the table, a few limitations will still apply, in line with the game’s lore. For example, forget about seeing Iron Crows and Orcs fighting side by side in the same Company, but you might be surprised to learn that Goiko and certain Elves can be allied!

So why would you ever choose to field a Pure Company, giving up the incredible tactical (and modelling!) versatility offered by Mixed Companies? Because Pure Companies gain specific bonuses, such as Relic Seekers, which grants Dwarves of Kazhuk Izril Pure Companies a +1 MO bonus when within 10" of an Objective/Treasure token.

RECTUITMENT SLOTS

I wanted to simplify the recruitment phase as much as possible, aiming for a minimalist system based on a fixed number of 6 Recruitment Slots.

Most available characters occupy a single Recruitment Slot, while some require more than one slot (for example, the Iron Titan, which occupies 2 slots) or, conversely, allow you to recruit multiple characters for a single slot (for instance, each Recruitment Slot can be used to recruit 2 Moss Hill Archers).

There are no points, and no weird calculations to deal with.

FAMILIARS AND ARTEFACTS

Each player may also recruit a single Familiar and a single Artefact, further customising their Company.

I’ll go into more detail about these game elements in a future post, for now, this should be more than enough.

HEROES CATEGORIES

Naturally, not all characters are created equal. They are divided into four roles: LEADER, CORE, SPECIALIST, and TOTEM.

LEADER characters are, unsurprisingly, the captains of the Company and represent the players themselves on the battlefield. A Company must include one LEADER. Only one.

CORE characters, on the other hand, represent the most common type of adventurer. Bluecoat Soldiers, Iron Crow Sentinels, Elf Archers, or Orc Soldiers are all examples of CORE characters. A Company must include at least 2 CORE characters, and as long as it includes at least one LEADER, it may fill all remaining slots exclusively with CORE characters.

SPECIALIST characters represent rarer adventurers, either because they possess unique talents or specialised equipment, or because they excel in more specific and uncommon skills compared to standard characters. You may not field more than two SPECIALIST characters with the same Class Keyword.

Finally, there are TOTEM characters, who proudly bear the Company’s Icon. TOTEMS are not mandatory and, like LEADERS, are unique within a Company.

1 LEADER, at least 2 CORE, no more than 2 SPECIALISTS of the same Class, and no more than 1 TOTEM. These are the only constraints I’ve put in place to let you recruit a colourful band of heroes, and crush the competition!

Let’s take another look at the friendly little group from the beginning of the post.

Ladies can't resist a proper beard!

As I mentioned, this Company represents a standard Mixed Company and fulfils every recruitment requirement:

• 1 LEADER: Godric himself, the mighty Great Master of the Southern Chamber!

• At least 2 CORE characters: the Hound of Zorn Uzul and the Bluecoat Soldier are both CORE characters.

• No more than 2 SPECIALISTS with the same Class: the Spitfire and the Sniper both belong to the same Class (Redcoat), while the Iron Warrior is a SPECIALIST belonging to a different Class (Iron Crows).

• 1 Familiar: a Hunting Bulldog, one of the most useful (and laziest!) Familiars in the game.

That’s all for today, my aspiring adventurers!

I hope this first bite-sized rules preview sparked your curiosity. My goal was to create a system that is simple and easy to grasp, yet structured enough to encourage players to be creative. This recruitment mechanic is designed to support both a narrative-driven approach and a more gameplay-focused mindset, allowing you to tailor your Adventuring Company to your strategic preferences and fully embrace its philosophy.

I decided to keep the number of models on the table relatively low for two reasons. First, to make the game more accessible, not only from an economic standpoint, but above all to encourage players to experiment with new solutions and playstyles. With 6–10 models on the battlefield (the average range for the game), it’s easy to collect more than one Company, and thanks to the flexibility of the recruitment system, you can dramatically change your gameplay simply by swapping two or three members of your Company.

Or at least… that’s the theory.

The practice?

That’s for you to judge!