Editor's Note: While Charles Vasey provided a fine set of Designer's Notes in The King's War, many readers clamoured for more information on the "whys" behind the game. After sufficient goading I'm pleased to announce Charles has risen to the occasion. Enjoy!
Years ago I played an excellent game called A House Divided, one of which I am sure you are all well aware. Since it seemed to fit your Civil War so well, I bethought me to try it on ours and inspired by Cicely Wedgewood's The King's War I set off. Up till then the most we had had on the struggle between the man Charles Stuart plus his malignants and the Parliament was (from memory) two games (I put aside the Simulations Canada product as not a game).
Vasey answers his critics! Photo courtesy of Marcus Mitchell.
Firstly, an English production called The English Civil War (Ariel Games?) which reminded me of SPI's old American Revolution (Areas, each rated for adhesion to one party or the other) which had its advantages but lacked some of the tactical feel I wanted from reading the book. The second game came from the publishers of Conflict and was called Cromwell. Despite stunning good looks (for the period and for clarity even now) and short rules I found to me it was a disaster. I suppose the title should have told a tale, Cromwell was an important field cavalry commander in the ECW but until the rise of the New Model army not much more, and even then he was a still a second tier leader. God's Englishman would rise so high at a later date, an inspiration to petty squireens the length of England (but not I suspect over in Drogheda). But what's history - it's a catchy title (like a game on the Mexican-American called Robert E. Lee).
What really gave me a problem with this game, and ultimately with applying A House Divided, was it demonstrated a lot of the ahistorical tendencies to which our Hobby is heir. Now I do not mind folks gaming stuff with a limited connection to its topic (Risk is an excellent game) but if I designed a game to give me a feel of The King's War I wanted it to stay closer to reality than Cromwell, I wanted to face some of the real problems. The King's War became an attempt to reverse these tendencies.
Just what are these inaccuracies I hear you call? Despite the historical patterns (in which many medium sized and one or two large armies fought a war of Brownian Motion which are easily discovered in widely available books) the traditional game will usually reward the gamer who does two things: build the biggest stack ever seen, and find the best commander and put him in charge of it. We then march on the enemy capital and fight a series of climactic battles until one of us wins. Nathan Bedford Forrest at his best - but sadly not what happened. Early on I found my A House Divided efforts were failing completely to come even close to the levels of activity or patterns of army deployment in the English Civil War. Assuming the real generals to know a bit more about the subject than myself I sat down and did a series of story-boards for each month of the war (plus army sizes). Accepting all the limitations of this methodology (not to mention my own ignorance of what was a complex war) it revealed a number of key patterns. Trying to deal with these patterns was the genesis of many of the rules that annoy you so (let's be honest chums they annoy me, that's what they are there for - statutory limits to our widest senses).
An easy matter was that (unlike most games) in the real thing armies moved if not simultaneously at least interactively, and when one army moved to attack another (even if led by the singularly incompetent Earl of Foppington) it might be there, or have moved and you had no way of knowiEg. In addition, armies would often sit around "controlling territory"; they did not attack, but they would move to block others entering their territory. Something Mark Herman covered so elegantly in We The People with his rule allowing PCs to be supported by an army (known as the "local warlord" over here). These facets of warfare were handled by the Break Contact and Interception rules. Armies had a 50% chance of missing their target, but even a badly led army could still catch its target.
The result is that one attempts to move enemy armies into areas where even if the enemy break contact you can at least capture territory. This will then put the pressure on your opponent who can avoid contact but will see an erosion in his political base. (The King's War measures victory by your control of the English body politic, represented by control markers placed on the map). Wherever you move you endeavour to arrive at a position that will interfere with enemy movement. If he avoids your combat at least make him take a long detour in his own turn. Interception opened up the importance of certain geographical points linking with rivers and hills. I believe from my reading of the campaigns I have these correct. The result of this network of interception is that the map not only had a physical geography and a political geography (the markers) but a geography of army zones. As each army moved it opened up gaps in one sector and tightened up another. There is no greater disaster than to take one of your main blocking armies (for example, the King at Oxford) spend the Sinews of War attacking the enemy on the first activation only to be beaten, blowing a hole in the defences leaving your opponent with a full turn to wreck your defensive system. At times it bears an uncanny resemblance to the football coaches' plays, and Prince Rupert makes a splendid linebacker.
But this chaotic element to combat and movement was not the key to the limitations necessary to get closer to the topic. One of the keys was the Leader rules which is where army size was covered. It seemed to me that Lostwithiel aside (where the Earl of Essex got caught on a peninsula) supply problems were seldom of decisive importance. One of the reasons for this was that armies seldom exceeded 25,000 (a number which even Medieval England had fielded - Edward I in the Falkirk campaign may have achieved this level). Had they reached the greater Thirty Years War level then things might have been different.
Why then were armies smaller?
I fell in the end for the theory that the size of army that a leader could command (the stacking limit) was not a function of skill or number of recruits available but of the personal power and reputation of the leader. A man who could lead 25,000 men was (a) a man of personal wealth, (b) a man of political rank whom others would gladly serve, and (c) very unlikely to be a career soldier (an activity for the hidalgo rather than the grandee). This means that you can choose to have large armies but you must have them lead by men of sufficient stature - and these were seldom good soldiers. Your response would be (as had been the case) is to field small armies under good leaders and large armies under average leaders.
The Parliamentarian popolo grosso like Manchester or Wark may not be great generals but they can field a much greater army than the brave but status-less Cromwell or Massey. It is hard to remember now how little a commander could demand in those days, much of his role was persuasive; the chairman of the board rather than supreme commander. No chance of the Good and the Great obeying some Lincolnshire farmer MP like Oliver Cromwell - that had to wait until a professional army fortified by religion was born. Remember that Newcastle left England after Marston Moor not because he was defeated but because he feared people at Court would laugh at him. This was an era in which reputation was all.
I also introduced a difference in the two armies on this point. Leaders are ranked A (national figure) to C (local commander). A higher rated commander will not obey (that is stack) with a lower or same rate leader. The Royalist leaders come in a much more effective pattern (enough C's, B's and A's) because the advantage of being King was that you could confer legitimacy on a comparatively junior commander. Whereas the Parliamentarians (who command the adherence of the greater part of the aristocracy) have plenty of chiefs and not enough indians. Once one has rebelled against authority imposing it on your own side can be difficult.
A good example of the key facets of command is the two Royalist Leaders from the Cavendish family. The Duke/Marquess of Newcastle may not be exactly Rommel on a horse but he commands enormous patronage in the North and no gentleman would feel embarrassed to serve under his standard (malignant though he be). He can put armies in the field and maintain them, but only under his command. Lord Charles Cavendish is a good general of horse who I use to take Northern Army troops into Lincolnshire and the other border lands. Despite his personal elan it would be unthinkable to serve under him for a number of very important tiers of northern society. In the ECW kind hearts did definitely count for more than coronets. Things were of course different later under the Lord Protector.
Key Point
This exposes a key point. When it came to choosing the number of leaders to be included in the game I suffered from the usual designer's problem (shared with Indian bus-drivers "Room more for one on top!") which involved building up the numbers, then cutting them back and starting to build them up again. What I endeavoured to arrive at was the correct practical military capacity of both sides in total. Some leaders, Ferdinando Fairfax for example, had impressive titles but little power, to have given them the same Leader ranking as lesser generals but more powerful politicians would have been foolish. So poor Ferdinando remains a minor leader in a minority area.
To cover the missing leaders many of whom appeared but briefly, I invented those two fine characters: Sir Rupert Vasey ("the Cavalier Poet") and his wealthy cousin Charles de Goncourt-Vasey, second earl of Foppington. These two excellent ninnies are the John Doe of the two sides, reminding us (on a more serious note) that families were "by the Sword divided". Some of the leaders they represent lost rank for good reason, others were simply too minor in major warfare. One noted Royalist just below the cut was John, Lord Belasyse a cousin of the Fairfaxes. Although at one stage Commander-in-Chief of Royalist forces in Yorkshire the reality of his power was as a commander of local activities based on good towns. Hence Sir Rupert Vasey's presence at Newark is a Royalist thorn in the Parliamentarian East. I cannot remember the Parliamentarian who failed to make it, I did toy with some of the New Model leaders.
Into this patronage system I threw the regional rules. These cause a lot of headscratching, but usually the answer is there in black and white which means that an explanation may be all we need. Let's go back to Cromwell where if one could join the Northern army to that of the King you should be able to bash your way into London before the Parliament can reform its armies for the long haul. Nothing wrong with that but could it happen? My reading was as follows:
- Regiments disliked serving far from home and if taken too far away would suffer from "home, home" as well as being more likely to desert (it affected even the excellent Royalist army of Sir Ralph Hopton - the Robert E Lee of the Royalist cause),
having raised your own tenants you would not voluntarily hand them over to another army to serve far from home while the enemy might threaten your own estate,
certain areas had their own concerns as to provincial security which overrode the commands of an anxious monarch.
The classic example of the last of these is the Duke of Newcastle's refusal to move south until the keys of the north were in Royalist hands. Since this will involve a siege of Hull (supported by the thoroughly Parliamentarian Royal Navy under the earl of Warwick) the efforts of the Fairfaxes in West Yorkshire and Hull are often enough to hold back the Whitecoats in the North. Of course you can pack that wing and send the King north which means Essex must follow or seek to overwhelm the centre of the country before Hull beats the chamade.
The net result of all this is that good field officers have to be detached to collect recruited units where you might prefer to use useless regional officers as "recruiters" and then relief them of their men as soon as collected. Even this "field" recruitment cannot result in the great leaders of a region having a minority of their men under direct control. Additionally as armies advance they melt. Desertion strikes them harder and in enemy territory there is less opportunity to recruit because the historical loyalties have been used to skew the counter-mix. (Try invading the Eastern Association with Rupert if you enjoy attrition). So after a brief offensive period you need (like the real armies) to pull back to friendly territory to reform and train.
Final Piece of the Puzzle
The final piece of the jigsaw of major simulation was the Sinews of War. These limit your activity in a turn with a particular bias against large aggressive operations). The limits were necessary to achieve the correct levels of activity. Real generals had better things to do all day than indulge in combat, they had men to train, estates to run, rents to collect and wives and lovers to entertain. The inactivity of the King's army at Oxford and Essex watching it from Reading is pronounced, but of course both armies were fulfilling a vital task of marking the opposition main army and keying the line.
The Sinews of War also allowed the bang-for-buck to be switched to the army of 4,000 men under a good leader who were the major forces in the active prosecution of the war. Moving a big army is a major expenditure of time and resources.
Even with gamers faced with a range of strategies involving size of army and skill of commander I still had concerns about the reverse problem - total inactivity. Many gamers engage in sieges because it looks safer (and more fool their opponents for not punishing them by a swift attack). If a designer imposes considerable difficulties on the easy application of offensive force he risks a serious outbreak of equilibrium. Although my system had the main drivers in place I could not but feel that it lacked some of the stranger events that led to great affairs - the beating of the butterfly's wings was missing in the sterile Realm of Law.
The solution (which I hope works for you as it did for me) was that old commodity - inside knowledge. The clue was an event in, I think Reading, one of those marcher fortresses between London and Oxford (and now at the head of the UK's Silicon Valley). Sir Arthur Aston, the Royalist Governor was injured on the head by a falling tile and literally struck dumb leaving his less effective subordinate in charge. After a serious of other highly unlikely events the fortress surrendered with great promptness to Essex. Now how to work in tiles failing on Governor's heads, or Royalist risings in Kent or King's Lynn, perhaps the traitorous Governors of some other key fortress?
I used the Ambuscade counters to stir up the water. Getting one of these gives you an opportunity to pick up VPs cheap (or deny that opportunity to your enemy by hogging the chit). Now there was a reason to move if by a bit of misdirection you could seize a key fortress. Suddenly both sides had to react with concern to that column of troops moving randomly (ever so randomly) towards your capital or key outpost. There is a good deal of "hip-faking" goes on as a minor army sets off into the blue causing fortresses along his projead route to receive reinforcements and defending forces to redeploy. All good healthy innocent fun, and not far from what went on. Once an army moves to threaten an ambuscade its own defensive pattern is shifted and the other side have opportunities.
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