Goonhammer Historicals: Pillage Animal Rules and Attack of the Chickens

We're back raiding villages and looting churches with Victrix and Noodle Wargames Pillage: Ransack the Middle Ages, with some additional rules for adding a little animal-based chaos to your games. These will be perfect to accompany the forthcoming Victrix animals for Pillage bag, so get ahead of the game with rules to get them on the table!

Whether deliberately through cattle raiding, sheep rustling, and horse theft or incidentally in the course of pillaging a village/church/monastery, animals were a key part of Viking booty. Stealing an animal might provide lunch, or better yet ongoing generational wealth, bride price, dowry, religious sacrifices and much much more. Pillage already lets you pick up animals as loot via tokens, but if you'd like to make for slightly more chaotic fighting as animals roam around, herd together and stampede through opponents, we have you covered, with rules for Moving Animals, Herding, Flocks and unleashing far, far too many chickens onto the battlefield.

Wargames Foundry Pack Animals - Credit Bair

Animal Movement

Animal Loot tokens (Cows, Chickens, Donkeys, Ducks etc) can move - and be moved - before being converted to loot by contacting player models.

Moving Animals:

Animals move 5 inches in a straight line from their facing (head direction) at the end of the Initiative phase, before any player models are moved.
The player without initiative can then turn the animal in any direction
They will move through difficult terrain without penalty but cannot enter buildings or cross obstacles. If an animal encounters a building or obstacle, they will turn (D6 1-3 Left, 4-6, Right).
Animals cannot jump or climb.
Ducks and other birds ignore impassable terrain and move up and down from terrain without penalty - they can fly!
Birds can cross obstacles and perch on building roofs but cannot enter buildings.
If an animal comes into contact with a player model, the player model immediately drops any held loot tokens, moves 1 inch away from the animal and suffers 1d6 bare hands attacks.
If a player model moves into contact with an animal, the player controlling the model may elect to convert the animal into a static loot token which then follows the standard Pillage rules

Animals and Fire

Animals will always move directly away from fire (all sources of fire - torches, buildings, camp fires etc etc) and will stop and turn (D6 1-3 Left, 4-6, Right) before coming within 5 inches of a fire.

If a fire starts within 5 inches (a torch is lit within 5, or a building is set on fire), the animal will immediately move directly away from the source of fire.

Herding

Sometimes, you want to get your ill-gotten sheep moving before you can get them off the board, letting you concentrate (at least a little!) on fighting without having to hold a lamb under each arm!

Animals can be driven around the board in a (mostly) controlled fashion rather than sitting as static loot counters, letting you set them off and running without having to be in base to base contact.

Herding Animals:

Player models in combat cannot herd animals.
If a player model ends their movement in contact with the animal it is treated as a standard loot token from then onwards, with no additional rules - you've finally caught the chicken, wrung its neck and stuffed it in a bag!
Torch-armed models may herd animals:
- A torch-armed model completes a move within 5 inches of an animal
- The animal turns and moves directly away from the torch, as per the rules for animals and fire
- If an animal is no longer within 5 inches of torch, it will revert to moving normally as per the rules for moving animals.
Models with Herding Implements may herd animals:
- Herding Implements allow more control over the direction of movement.
- If a model with a herding implement comes within 2 inches of an animal loot token, you may set the direction and distance (up to 5 inches) of movement of the animal token.
- It does not have to be directly away from the model that does the herding.
- You may equip an unmounted model with a herding implement - switch, crook, big stick, duck call, etc etc - for 5gp. A model with a herding implement cannot have a two handed weapon or shield.
- Warhounds are automatically considered to have herding implements in Irish, Scots and Pictish warbands.
- Welsh warbands may give a herding implement to a mounted model for 10gp

Flocking

Credit: Lenoon

Instead of wasting your time moving individual sheep off the board, why not coordinate yourselves and have one guy move the whole flock? Now that's raiding with your brain! Forming a Flock:

If three or more animal tokens finish their movement within 2 inches of each other, replace the loot tokens with a flock (of sheep, geese, goats, and so on).
Flocks use the flock of sheep rules provided by Victrix.
Flocks use the same rules for movement as individual animals.
Flocks can be herded as individual animals.
Flocks count as 5 loot tokens if they are guided to a board edge via the herding rules above. The player controlling the model that caused the flock to move off the board gets the tokens.

Attack of the Chickens

A Norman rifles through a chicken coop

There simply aren't enough opportunities for chicken shenanigans in Pillage, so have these rigorously playtested MAXIMUM CHAOS rules for when you really need to inundate your entire table with potentially infinite numbers of chickens.

Chicken Coop Pillaging:

A piece of terrain may be designated a chicken coop. Chicken coops count as buildings and use the building rules, with at least two entrances.
The Coop can be searched multiple times by an occupying model, until the chickens are unleashed. Roll a D6 for each searching model:

1-2 You catch a Chicken. (pick up one Loot token worth 1 GP) 3-4 You catch a chicken under each arm (pick up two loot tokens worth 1GP each) 5-6 OH GOD TOO MANY CHICKENS - do not pick up a loot token, see below

On a 5 or 6, place ten chicken loot counters in contact with the edge of the chicken coop terrain.
Ten Chicken Counters all in a ring
- Move each token 5 inches straight forward.
- The chickens will continue to move straight forward 5 inches at the start of each player turn.
- Chickens ignore difficult, impassable and water terrain and move over buildings and obstacles freely
- The coop that unleashed the chickens can no longer be searched for the duration of the game

Chickens Can move pretty fast when they want to

Each chicken can be caught by moving into base to base. Caught chickens become one loot and do not move independently.
Chickens can be herded, formed into flocks and can move into contact with player models, following all the rules for animal movement.
If a chicken unleashed by OH GOD TOO MANY CHICKENS contacts another Chicken Coop, immediately resolve a second (or subsequent) chicken explosion with the other Coop as if a 5 or 6 had been rolled on a search.
If an unleashed chicken contacts a player model, the model suffers 2d6 bare hands attacks. Chickens are proper bastards.

Two chicken coops is a good amount - three will inevitably cause cascading explosions of chickens, so unless you want your board to be absolutely flooded with chickens stick to a sensible two coops. It's genuinely good fun to have one set of chickens, and two allows for some unlikely comedy, but there's a deliberate potential here to straight up ruin every game of Pillage you play with multiple hours of chicken movement.

Get Pillaging

These additional rules for Pillage have been playtested - a little! - but more playtesting and refinement is always a good thing. Please do let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement. Adding these rules in volume to your games will add a lot of additional fiddliness, but also a lot of flavour and vaguely predictable nonsense* that can be a lot of fun to play around with. Just stick to two coops, for everyone's sanity.

*okay, the Chickens are absolutely predictable nonsense.

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Tags: Rules | historicals | house rules | pillage