Swords, steel, and wooden cubes – the weapons of many a medieval war gamer. Continuing our series on the Charles S Roberts awards for 2025 (as ever, with awards, they’re looking at games published in the prior year), we’re digging into the medieval category. Five games and a winner, all of which are substantially different, and entertaining. This selection brings out the wide variety we get in war games today, from head-to-head viking battles and broad political dances to, well, Robin Hood.
So read on and acquaint yourself with some excellent medieval war games (and remember your Want List):
Robin and the Sheriff, At It Again
Taking my personal title for ‘game I’ve played the most’ on this list (not a fair comparison, as A Gest of Robin Hood’s play time and accessibility is hard to beat), this one-on-one asymmetric duel oozes theme without giving up good gameplay. You’ll play either as Robin Hood (sadly, not in fox form) or the Sheriff of Nottingham, tasked with swaying the people to freedom! or crushing them under the weight of law and order. Part of GMT’s Irregular Conflicts series, the play is COIN-adjacent, where you’ll decide to play a card event or do operations, either limited or full, every turn. Spicing this up is an initiative system that’s simple and 
incisive: with limited operations (called single plots) as the fastest, events in the middle, and full plots at the end, your choice directly impacts whether you go first or second in the next round. In other words, if the Sheriff wants to wrest coin from the provinces and hire a bunch of henchman, he’ll have to give Robin the chance to go first next time. Ties keep initiative the same, so there’s always a conflict with how much to hamstring your current turn to dive into your next.
And every turn here is so crucial. With zero sum scoring (e.g. a point for Robin means one less for the Sheriff), both sides scrabble to rob, pillage, arrest, and sneak around the map. Robin Hood might bluff the Sheriff into emptying Nottingham for a raid only to traipse into the city and steal its goodies, getting valuable coin to hire Merry Men or free others from prison. Meanwhile, the Sheriff can send trap carriages, seemingly loaded with loot, trundling along in hopes of snaring Robin’s thieves. Trickery abounds, rules are generally easy to understand, and you can knock out a game in an hour, which makes some of the swingier events much easier to stomach. You’ll be playing this one in best-of-three sets in no time.
That, I think, is why A Gest of Robin Hood gets on this list – crunchy decisions not weighed down with rules, a weeknight friendly playtime, and, most of all, it’s just plain fun. Sometimes, amid swaths of strict simulations and mountains of counters, it’s easy to forget that a game can be a good time too.
Saxons, Pikes, and Shield Walls
Men of Iron, a GMT medieval battles series, brings its fifth volume to your tabletops with Norman Conquests. We’re talking grumbling Norsemen and angry Papists, soldiers on horseback and crossbows, creaky armor and clear tables first designed by Richard Berg. Getting into the action in this volume is as simple as picking the battle from seven (including Hastings) throwing the illustrated counters onto the clean paper maps. With the era, you’re looking at linear warfare with opportunities for timely cavalry flanks, key pushes to break through defensive lines, and devastating arrow barrages.
Or, you can toss strategy aside and march your force into bloody battle. Let the dice gods decide who lives and dies.
There are a couple key elements to Norman Conquests that make it a great intro to this series: one, the battles are a little smaller and more manageable than some of its sisters (Arquebus, volume 4, goes big, which can be a tad overwhelming) and, two, the battles are designed to match history, creating unbalanced setups that give players a challenge on one side and a relatively accessible victory on the other. This might be a negative, but for newcomers to war gaming, or grognards learning the system, having a gentler on-ramp that presents real history is excellent. Also, thanks to the simpler combat rules, Norman Conquests remains fun even when William is slaughtering the Saxons.
A last note – played without event cards and hidden information, Norman Conquests makes for an easy both-sides solitaire experience too. On the whole, it’s a solid entry to a fantastic medieval warfare series. I’d suggest starting here, and, if you enjoy it, get the original or the Tri-Pack (saving the aforementioned Arquebus for your grandest ambitions).
Save Byzantium Solo
When covering a vast swath of history, and in this case we’re talking over a millennium, refining a game’s scope is essential. Sword of Orthodoxy takes a hatchet and a scalpel in equal measure to carve out a compelling, unique solitaire experience covering Byzantium, or the Eastern Roman Empire, from about 400 A.D. to 1500 (if you last that long). Part of the aptly named States of Siege series, Sword runs you through emperors at about one per turn, and that changing of dynastic order drives much of what you’re able to do. Some are better at wriggling wealth of the populace through taxes, others at managing the barbarian hordes attempting to sack Constantinople, serving you up with a loss. Your action menu runs far into the double digits, giving you agency that many solo titles lack.
In other words, Sword demands meaningful decisions rather than just die rolls or card luck.
You will, however, see both of those things. Random events can have major impacts, though losses won’t tend to come from those cards. Instead, if you’ve failed to keep the church from tearing itself apart such that it stands on spindly legs, an event’s sudden breeze might push it over. The breeze’s fault? I think not. Yet, to see that, players must come to Sword expecting complexity, substantial rules, and a difficult endeavor. As someone who prefers their solo tiles harder, I’ll take Sword’s approach any day of the week, but it’s very possible to sink a couple hours in here and find yourself watching your home city destroyed.
But a loss in Sword tells a story. Like in last year’s I, Napoleon, every run at preserving the empire builds a narrative. Cruel twists of fate or bad choices aren’t just the game being a game, but a story you’re writing with your play. Sword soaks in its theme too, and if you’re a gamer who delights in the details, you’ll get delightfully lost here, which is a darn good thing, as it’s a fascinating world to get lost in.
One note – the paper map is serviceable, the canvas one (from publisher White Dog Games) is divine.
A Three-Way Tussle in Old India
Like its neighbor, A Gest of Robin Hood, Vijayanagara: The Deccan Empires of Medieval India is part of GMT’s Irregular Conflicts series. Unlike A Gest of Robin Hood, its name is very long. That’s not the only difference, as Vijayanagara plays three instead of two, pitching one player as the large, teetering Delhi Sultanate and the other two as rebellious southern factions angling to fill the power vacuum. Add in some non-player Mongols to wreck things here and there, and you have an engaging setting.
What makes Vijayanagara work, though, is the play time. At under two hours, this game packs in meaningful decisions—in classic COIN event or ops style—
without dragging on as players keep blocking victory. Both the Bahmani and Vijayagara players start as bugs to be crushed, putting immediate urgency on them to survive in 2v1 fashion, only for the game’s run to see allies turn enemies once real power comes available. Meanwhile, the Delhi player has threats coming from all sides and has to make tough calls about where to put their forces. They can’t be everywhere, but playing well means keeping their empire’s core together even as its periphery is chipped away.
Then an opening presents itself, and everyone’s scrambling to take advantage, thanks to fresh Stay-Eligible events, which lets factions effectively leverage an event and be able to do so again on the next turn. Classic COIN rules meant using an event’s power essentially had you losing a turn, adding a compelling timing element but leading, especially in larger ones, to long downtime between your actions. Vijayagara double dips into this with a setting that pushes so much conflict that players are drawn into almost every action. Coupled with a simpler (for COIN) rule set, Vijayagara makes for an excellent introduction to the system.
In other words, a unique setting, conflict-heavy play, and reasonable rules combine to make this one worth picking up, especially if you’re looking to explore COIN games (or have a bunch sitting on your shelf).
Diplomacy, War, and Revolution in the Iberian Peninsula
The winner of this year’s Charles S. Roberts Medieval category gets points, right from the start, for ambition. Taking notes from Here I Stand and Virgin Queen while narrowing both scope and player count, Tanto Monta takes the game of intrigue, diplomacy, and warfare to Spain, Portugal, and northwest Africa. Reduced to its keywords, Tanto Monta is a four-player card-driven wargame that plays in five hours or so, with players picking events or a vast array of actions (any game that lets you marry for strategic purposes is always fun). Taken separately, many of those elements might intrigue or seem familiar. Put together, they’re a complex, compelling mixture.
Tanto Monta doesn’t use the smaller scope to simplify play. Indeed, at first, it may seem more difficult to learn than its brethren, and you’ll want to run this back for several plays with a single faction to truly get the feel for it. For some games, that might doom them to a collection curiosity, but with four players as opposed to
six or more, your odds of getting this one to the table go up greatly. More frequent plays knead the rules grit into dough ready to bake into… okay, not the best metaphor – my point is, it’s worth learning this one because you’ll actually get to play it without a massive scheduling effort.
Once you get into the meat, Tanto Monta delivers compelling narratives. Every player controls two factions at the start, neither being necessarily allied or even impacting the other directly (you won’t share units, for example). It’s somewhat like Maria’s two halves. This means there’s always something interesting going on – one of your factions might be burning clock mustering troops, but your other could be in the thick of a major war. Those events twist the knife in fascinating ways, bending and breaking the usual rules in the best CDG ways to surprise and, in future games, force players to plan around. In other words, repeat plays change how you see the game, like in Twilight Struggle, Chess, and, well, most every other CDG. You will have a story to tell after every game.
The Fate of All won the Ancients Era award and Tanto Monta shares that title’s scope, depth, and detail. It’s a bravura effort, with a stellar production (you could hang the mounted map on the wall as Iberian Peninsula artwork). Add this one to your collection when you and your group are seasoned – group here is key, as Tanto Monta is not best played as a solo affair (unless your head-hopping game is immaculate) – and plan a year around digging into its tricky, fascinating depths. Then tack on a second year of plays with your knives out, ready to stab backs, or, being bold, go right for the gut.
Be bold, folks. It’s more fun.
Read about the Ancients!
