In lieu of an actual man­ual or any­thing, this guide should hope­fully answer most ques­tions peo­ple might have when play(-testing) War of the Roses.

Bor­ing spread­sheety data is avail­able here.

Units and Characters

Your army con­sists of a num­ber of Units. These rep­re­sent large bod­ies of troops, such as Swords­men or Archers. Each kind of unit has its own strengths and weak­nesses. Up to two char­ac­ters can be attached to each unit. Char­ac­ters lead a unit, giv­ing them spe­cial bonuses. Whether you spread your char­ac­ters out, or cre­ate a few pow­er­ful units with two lead­ers each, is up to you.

If this is remind­ing you of Suiko­den at this point, have a gold bunny.

Sta­tis­tics

Each unit has four basic stats: Attack, Defence, Range and Move. I’m guess­ing I don’t really need to explain these. (Inci­den­tally although most non-ranged units have Range 1, some — Pike­men for exam­ple — do have a longer range. This allows them to attack with­out fear of reprisal!)

Char­ac­ters attached to a unit will gen­er­ally boost one or more of these statistics.

Morale is health — units start with 100, and are inca­pac­i­tated if it reaches zero. Some Char­ac­ters boost max­i­mum morale above 100. Some char­ac­ters can restore morale, and some can even bring back units that have reached zero morale!

Unit Types

There are three types of unit — Infantry, Cav­alry and Ranged.

Infantry are cheap and ver­sa­tile. They can both move and attack (in that order) each round.

Cav­alry are fast and pow­er­ful, but expen­sive. They can move, attack and move again in a round. Both moves use the same pool (so a Light Cav­alry with Move 7 could not move 4, attack, then move another 4).

Ranged units can attack from afar, keep­ing them out of the way of the enemy. Because they need time to aim, they can only either move or attack in a round — not both.

Char­ac­ters are of one of these types too, show­ing which Unit types they can be attached to. There are also Com­mand type char­ac­ters, which do not fight on the bat­tle­field but boost the army’s abil­i­ties in other ways.

Army and Char­ac­ter Spe­cial Bonuses

Cer­tain char­ac­ters impart a spe­cial bonus to their unit. This can take many forms — some­times they are pas­sive, some­times they take effect on an attack, etc. Some com­bi­na­tions of two char­ac­ters make very pow­er­ful units when their spe­cials work together!

In addi­tion, each House has a bonus that affects its entire army.

Lastly, each army has a “Com­mand” slot, which can be filled by one char­ac­ter. That character’s spe­cial abil­ity also affects their entire army, just like the House bonus.

Attack­ing and Defending

A unit can attack any enemy within its range. The amount of dam­age dealt is largely based on the attacker’s Attack and the defender’s Defense, but there are a num­ber of other fac­tors, such as height advantage.

A unit’s reported Defence sta­tis­tic is affected by what it is doing. A unit that only moves and does not attack receives a +25% defence bonus. A unit that nei­ther moves nor attacks receives a +50% bonus. A unit that has already been attacked once has its Defence halved, so be sure to team up and sur­round ene­mies to cause the most damage!

Ter­rain

Cer­tain ter­rain — walls and water, for exam­ple — is impassable.

Move­ment through trees car­ries a penalty — one square of move­ment takes 2 move points.

Sur­viv­ing (or not)

You win a bat­tle when a cer­tain con­di­tion is met, usu­ally inca­pac­i­tat­ing all enemy units.

Units that sur­vive a bat­tle are pro­moted (Nor­mal -> Expe­ri­enced -> Vet­eran -> Elite). Each level adds 1 to their Attack and Defence. (A unit’s rank is denoted by stars under­neath them.)

Units that do not sur­vive can be regrouped — this costs money, but not as much as buy­ing an equiv­a­lent unit out­right. Their Rank is preserved.

Char­ac­ters can­not die. If a dead unit is not regrouped, any char­ac­ters that were attached to the unit can be freely moved to other units.