The Battlefield

Forests to hide in, cliffs and rivers to funnel the enemy, and objectives worth fighting over. Learn the ground before you deploy on it.

Battlefields

Every battle is fought on a map with its own terrain. Maps come in two sizes. All distances in SOVL are in inches.

Size	Battlefield	Deployment zone depth
Small	60” × 40”	7.5”
Standard	72” × 48”	11.5”

Two Goatmen regiments advance across a farmstead battlefield past a road and a farmhouse. — Roads and fields are open ground. Forests, buildings, rivers and cliffs are what shape a battle.

Terrain

Terrain	Movement	Line of sight
Open ground fields, roads, snow, sand	No effect.	Clear.
Forest woods, trees, dead trees	Difficult terrain: movement costs double.	Blocks sight through it. You can see into a forest, and a unit inside can see out. A unit in a forest is in cover.
Water, lava and chasms	Impassable.	Clear. You can see and shoot across them.
Buildings	Impassable.	Blocks.
Cliffs and rocks	Impassable.	Blocks.

Difficult terrain

While the middle of a unit is over forest, every inch it moves forward costs 2” of its Move. Pivoting is never slowed. A unit doesn’t need Move left over to enter a forest; it simply moves as far as its remaining Move takes it.

Scout, Fey and Forest Spirit units ignore difficult terrain. Flying units ignore all terrain while moving. They can’t end a move on impassable terrain or on another unit, though.

Cover

A unit is in cover when its centre is inside a forest. Ranged attacks against it suffer −1 to hit. Some properties, such as Crewed Weapon, always count as being in cover. Flying units are never in cover.

Units as obstacles

Units block movement and line of sight, friend and foe alike. A unit can’t end its move within about half an inch of another unit, though it may pass that close on the way. Pivoting is only blocked by enemy units.

Deployment

Each army deploys in its own deployment zone, a strip along its long table edge. The two zones are about 24” apart, leaving the middle of the battlefield empty. The game decides at random which side each army deploys on.

Both players deploy at the same time, in secret. You can’t see where your opponent is placing their units until both of you press Ready. Each unit must be placed entirely inside your zone, clear of impassable terrain and of other units.

Ambushers

Units with Ambusher deploy in the much larger ambush zone. It covers your whole half of the battlefield, except a strip about 2” deep either side of the centre line. That lets an Ambusher start a turn’s march or less from the enemy, in a flank or a forest of your choosing. The zone is 17.5” deep on a small map and 21.5” deep on a standard map. A commander with Ambusher brings its whole unit along.

Who goes first

After deployment each player rolls a die, re-rolling ties. The higher roll acts first in the Strategic phase of turn 1. After that, the first player in the Strategic phase alternates every turn. See The Turn.

Scenarios and victory

Every battle uses one of two scenarios. The game picks one, or picks at random.

Pitched Battle

Line up and fight. The battle lasts seven turns.

Scoring Objectives

As Pitched Battle, but objective markers are placed on the battlefield. Each map has several prepared layouts, and one is picked at random.

A unit captures a marker when any part of it touches the marker’s circle (radius 3.76”).
If units from both sides touch a marker, it is contested and doesn’t change hands.
A captured marker stays yours after your unit leaves, until the enemy captures it.
Fleeing units and Flying units can’t capture or contest objectives.
At the end of every turn from turn 2 onwards, the player who holds more markers scores 50 points. That’s up to 300 points over a battle.

Battle lines face each other across a jungle battlefield. — Objectives pull armies apart: holding ground turn after turn can be worth more than winning a single fight.

Scoring

At the end of the battle, each player scores points for what they did to the enemy:

Enemy unit at the end of the battle	You score
Destroyed, fleeing, or reduced to its commander alone	Its full points cost
Below half of its starting models	Half its points cost
Its commander is dead, or its unit is destroyed or fleeing	The commander’s full points cost

Add any objective points. The player with the higher score wins, but only by a margin of 50 points or more. A closer result is a draw.

Ending early

The battle ends at once when one army has no units left that are neither destroyed nor fleeing. That army is wiped out and loses, whatever the score. A player who concedes or leaves an online battle loses too.