Getting Started
Your first hour as Tactician, from the muster table to your first Verdict. Nothing here is permanent — by default, downed soldiers are carried home, not buried. Losing a battle costs you pride and a little coin, and teaches you which rule to rewrite. That trade is the whole game.
1. Read the Reach
You begin at Lanternhold's command view. The Overview shows the Reach, current pressure, destinations, and companies already on the road. The Recruitment yard and Barracks are where you prepare the people who will answer it. Each is described in Lanternhold Command; for now, identify the highlighted threat and the company available to meet it.
2. Meet the company
The opening campaign gives you a first company rather than asking you to solve a hiring economy before you understand battle. In the Recruitment yard, review who is ready to march. A balanced company wants a front line that can take a hit, pressure from the back rank, and someone who can mend. Classes and what they bring are covered in the class reference.
3. Form the line
In the Barracks, drag your soldiers into formation: two ranks of three. The front rank shields the back — melee attacks cannot reach your back rank while a front-rank soldier still stands. Put armor in front, bows and staves behind. The details live in Formation.
4. Read their orders
Every soldier already carries a simple writ of Standing Orders. Select a soldier and choose Edit Standing Orders to read it. You don't need to change anything yet — but read one, so the shape is familiar: numbered rules, top to bottom, each saying if something, then do something. The first rule with a valid target fires. That single sentence is most of the game, and the Standing Orders chapter is its full story.
5. March
Send the squad out. The column moves before first light, the battle resolves itself, and you watch it unfold — lunges, arrows, mends, and mistakes. You cannot intervene, and that is not a limitation; it is the premise. If you find yourself shouting at the screen, you have found the rule you need to rewrite.
6. Read the Verdict
When the field is decided, the Verdict plate rises: The Well Is Held if your banner stands, The Well Is Lost if it doesn't, and how much Glim was drawn either way. Review the Battle Log if you want the blow-by-blow, then return to Lanternhold and see what changed: the company, the site, the Reach, and the pressures that now demand an answer.
A lost battle is a diagnostic, not a punishment. Open the Battle Log, find the turn where things went wrong, and ask: which rule fired, and why? The answer is always in the writ — and the fix usually takes one reordered line.
Practice without a campaign
The title screen's Library is a workshop of tools for looking at what the game is made of — and two of them are battles with nothing at stake. Battle Fields fights the stock field or a showcase built around one mechanic, on fixed seeds, with nothing written down. The Orders Simulator goes further: raise any company against any other, edit each soldier's sheet, write both sides' standing orders in the real writ editor, pick the seed, and fight the result. You can mirror one side onto the other to test a single change, save a setup to disk, and clear the field and start again. Nothing you do there touches a campaign — it is the cheapest place to learn what a rule really does.