Weapons from fallen soldiers littered the ground, so it was easy enough for me to find a horse-bothering polearm to wield in place of my musket. I managed to pop off a few decent shots, one of which killed the horse from under another player in spectacular fashion, but mostly just proved to be a sitting duck for any cavalry keen to rack up some points.ДЄ handy thing about M&B is that you can re-equip yourself between respawns (taking a totally different role if you wish) or just nab handy things from the battlefield. This meant they were able to close the meagre distance on this map and cut down my somewhat immobile marksmen, along with my good self, with ease. A lot of people on the Polish side were commanding the fast-moving вЂWinged HussarsвЂ™ (or вЂthose fucking Winged HussarsвЂ™ as I came to know them). After improving my arsenal (who wants to go into battle with something called вЂworthless bulletsвЂ™ eh?) I didnвЂ™t have too much cash left for this, but after some financial juggling was able to bump up my marksmen from hopeless peons to semi-trained peons.Д¬hoosing un-mounted, musket-armed troops proved, almost immediately, to be a mistake. In Captain mode this extends to the quality of your troops too. In WFaSвЂ™s multiplayer, youвЂ™re supplied with a certain amount of gold (decided by the host) to spend on upgrades like better guns, sillier hats and horses that can actually move their legs a bit. Upon joining the server, it seemed the Russians were already some 100 points down on the Poles (with the first to 300 kills being the victor), so I opted to aid the ailing Tsar and lead some musket-wielding marksmen into the fray. With poor captaincy, ItвЂ™s not unusual for these matches to turn into a frightening, multi-legged amorphous blob of infantry, horse and musketeer all vying for a clean melee hit. The great strength of this mode is it makes matters even more frenetic than usual, because youвЂ™re trying to effectively command your troops while keeping an eye on your own back. In it, youвЂ™re given a small squad of bots to point at the other team and have to tot up a collective number of kills before the other side does the same. It may sound more like a superhero equipped with a deadly tinderbox, but Captain Deathmatch is actually the new Mount & Blade (M&B) multiplayer mode exclusive to WFaS.

Throw upwards of twenty people into a relatively small map space, give most of them horses and the rest guns, then ask them to do what comes naturally in a videogame. But the title did succeed in rekindling our interest for Mount & BladeвЂ™s superbly chaotic multiplayer. If youвЂ™ve read our review of Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword (WFaS) youвЂ™ll already know that we found the single player side of things a little underwhelming compared to the superior (and older) Mount & Blade: Warband.

Mount and blade with fire and sword map