Pillage
Early medieval skirmish from Victrix, written by Guillaume Rousselot. Vikings, Saxons, Normans, and more raiding villages from Lindisfarne to Hastings. Protect the village, or burn it to the ground.
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"The best starter set, not only for Pillage but for the tabletop wargame hobby itself."
What is Pillage
Pillage is an early medieval skirmish game written by Guillaume Rousselot of Noodle Wargames, and published in English by Victrix. It covers the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages, from the raid on Lindisfarne in 793 to Hastings in 1066, and the tagline says it all: protect the village, or burn it to the ground.
Each side is a warband of somewhere between 10 and 30 individual models, on a 3 × 3 or 4 × 4 ft table, and games run one to two hours. It’s narrative-driven: the scenarios are raids, feasts gone wrong, landings, and pilgrimages, not just two lines of guys meeting in the middle.
It started life as a French game. Victrix put out the English edition in the summer of 2025, and it’s miniature agnostic in practice. Victrix’s own plastics are made for it, but any 28mm early medieval figures work.
How it plays
It’s all d6s. A turn runs through Initiative, Movement, Shooting, Melee, and Fire, and the players take each phase in turn: whoever wins initiative does all their moving, then the other player moves, then shooting, and so on. It’s neither I-go-you-go nor alternating activations.
It’s strictly what you see is what you get. You buy every model’s gear with gold pieces, and armour comes in three levels (none, some, and full) that set both how far a model moves and how well it survives. There’s no pre-measuring, and line of sight is 360°. Charges add a D3 to your move, and the target can react with a closing shot or run for it.
Then there’s the stuff that makes it Pillage. Buildings can be set on fire and the fire spreads. You can loot livestock and treasure and take hostages. Models climb, jump, and swim (and heavy armour can drown you). There are shield walls, berserkers, huscarls, healers, and ship-to-ship fights, plus weather and time of day.
The core book has seven factions: Vikings, Franks, Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Bretons, Welsh, and Irish (with Picts and Scots). The free supplements add more, including the Rus, Magyars, and Byzantines, and a Fall of Rome supplement for late antiquity.
How to start
- Get the Introductory Set. It’s the one to start with. Two warbands, a village to fight over, a starter rulebook, and a playmat, all for $53.
- Grab the free downloads. Victrix gives away a lot: scenarios, supplements with new factions, quick reference sheets, and the FAQ. See the list below.
- When you want the full game, get the rulebook. The hardcover comes with a free PDF, or you can get the PDF on its own.
- Build more warbands. Victrix has full warband boxes for Vikings, Saxons, Normans, and Rus, plus Franks, Irish, and Scots and Picts, and terrain like huts, fences, animals, and loot. Other 28mm early medieval ranges work too.
Free downloads
All of these are free on Victrix’s Pillage free downloads page:
- Pillage Compendium: 19 Scenarios
- Winding Ways: 5 Additional Scenarios, including Stamford Bridge
- Hecatomb: Mayhem at the Market, a scenario
- The East: Rus, Magyar, and Byzantine factions
- The Fall of Rome: seven late antiquity factions, including Late Romans, Goths, and Huns
- Sheep & Beehives
- Quick Reference Sheets
- Tokens & Rulers
- Pillage FAQs 2026
- Shieldwall, the Victrix and Pillage mini-mag
Community
Discord & groups
Reviews & battle reports
Goonhammer review
Full review of the rules
Blood and Spectacles review
Written review
Gurupig review
Written review
The War Crow: first game
Battle report of a 2v1 raid
Bucellarii: first game
Battle report
7th Son: Learning Game
Video battle report
Irregular Magazine: A quick look at Pillage
Video overview
The Hobbinomicon take
I love this game. I’m working on multiple warbands for it right now. And the Introductory Set is the best starter set I know of, not only for Pillage but for the tabletop wargame hobby itself. I would go as far as to say that Victrix is now one of the stewards of tabletop wargaming with how great this starter set is.
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