The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms

What is The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms

The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms is the tabletop miniatures game set in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls world, published by Modiphius under licence and designed by Mark Latham. It came out in 2020.

Modiphius announced it in May 2019. The press release says Latham took the system behind Fallout: Wasteland Warfare and reworked it for Tamriel, adding Stamina and Magicka for players to manage.

So far the game lives in Skyrim, “the time of the Dragonborn.” Imperials and Stormcloaks fight the civil war, while Draugr and skeletons guard old barrows against delving adventurers. The range has grown in chapters: Civil War, Steam and Shadow, Dawnguard, and Rise of the Dragon Priests, each with its own card pack. That has brought in the Dark Brotherhood, Dwemer automatons, vampires and the Dawnguard, bandits, the Thieves Guild, the College of Winterhold, the Companions, a Giant, and more. The miniatures are 32mm, in hard plastic and resin.

There are two ways to play:

Delve Mode. Player against environment. Your party explores a tomb or ruin, solo or co-op, against adversaries the game runs itself.
Battle Mode. Two players, each with a party, while AI adversaries get in both sides’ way.

How it plays

Five attributes. Every model has a card with Strength, Agility, Endurance, Intelligence, and Wisdom, plus Health, Stamina, and Magicka. Each also has a cost in gold Septims, which sets the size of the game.
Roll under to succeed. The white skill die is the core roll: get the attribute or less. Green accuracy dice make it harder, and yellow, red, and black effect dice add damage and other results.
Two actions each. Every model gets two actions a turn: moving, attacking, blocking, casting spells, even pickpocketing.
Adversaries that run themselves. Each faction’s reference card has a table of actions and tells you which target an adversary picks. Adversaries are either Cautious, hanging back near objectives, or Aggressive, coming straight at you.
Balanced for solo. In a delve the adversaries get 25% more Septims to spend than your party, but only half of them start on the table. The rest spawn later.
Quests and events. Objectives are drawn at random (strategic, puzzle, or Master chests), side quests turn up at the start and during play, and an event deck throws in the unexpected. Quest chains carry over from one game to the next, so a run of delves can feel like going deeper into the same dungeon.

How to start

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Core Rulebook (free PDF)

The full rules, free on the Modiphius store.

Read the free rules. The Core Rulebook is a free PDF on the Modiphius store. New to wargames? Grab the free Escape From Helgen booklet too, a set of step-by-step tutorials. The free errata and updated print-and-play cards and a print-and-play dice set are there as well.
Get the Core Rules Box. The rules, the 228 cards, 13 custom dice, and the counters come in the Core Rules Box, £40 on the Modiphius store. It now ships with the Revised Rulebook, which folds in the errata, plus a 44-page Quest Book with 12 missions. No miniatures are included.
Add miniatures. The Imperial Legion and Stormcloak hard plastic faction starters are £35 each, five models apiece. The Starter Set bundles the rules with both faction starters, the Bleak Falls Barrow delve set, and an Ethereal Dragonborn for £125.