Ed Wimble, the much-respected, but oft apoplectic, CEO of CoA, once opined that the only valid criticism of a game design was a better game design. Ignoring, for the nonce, the inherent, if inane, self preservation of such a remark, we cast our critical gaze upon the eminent Charlie Vasey, possibly the only person left in England still playing wargames. For decades, Charlie has been the publisher and resident Oscar Wilde of Perfidious Albion, a most enjoyable bastion of caustic commentary. Some time ago, he must have decided to see whether Ed’s view held any water, and he cast his oar in with the rest of the hobby’s hard-working, but greatly underpaid, designers. He began to publish, privately, small games on a variety of subjects. Ironically, one of them The King’s War, was republished last year, and rather successfully, by none other than CoA! What we have here is one of Charlie’s more recent little home game kits, and, all things considered, you’re probably better off with all the cutting and snipping than you are plunking down all those drachmas for so little boxed drama. Flowers of the Forest, despite its rather fru-fru title, is not a game about deodorants. It is a tactical recreation of the Battle of Flodden, 1513, in which the Scots, under King James IV, get rather well hammered by their British friends, led by a group of Tudor-tamed Earls and Lords. The Renaissance may have been a wonderful time for painters, popes, and scheming Italian politicos, but it was back of the hand, bottom of the barrel for military minds. For all intents and purposes, it consisted of several large groups - battles - of ill-trained and dismally armed sots hulking together in large clumps resembling nothing more than badly rolled bread dough, lead by nobles with far more courage than capability, trying to out-muscle each other in what often looked like two fat men trying to get the last seat on the subway. And to Charlie’s credit, he not only portrays it as just that, but he does so in a rather clever, fun way. Much of the design is highly idiosyncratic, but CV backs his theories up with some interesting insights, along with two period historical accounts that are almost as hard to read as one of my rules books. (To visualize this, try to remember your first bout with Chaucer … in the original.) For a home-brewed product, FoF is not bad. The paper may be thin, but the map art is, well, nice-looking. The rules and charts are better than most pro-printed ones - especially the handsome rules book. Now the bad news: the counters. It’s cut and, if you want, paste time. They’re b&w on AH, 1950’s blue and pink sheets, but, at least, the fonts and icons are evocative. Even more interesting, most of what you cut out never appears on the map. That privilege belongs to the 6 British and 6 Scots “battle” counters, which range in size from large square to rather large (c. 3” x 2”) rectangles. These battles are represented, off-map (somewhat à la Zucker) by the Battle Arrays, into which you place the various weapon-types of manpower. For example, The Earl of Surrey’s battle consists of one band of “gentlemen” (with what looks like halberds) from Howard, and one from Yorkshire, plus 3 bands of billmen from Yorkshire, and 5 bands of bowmen, again, mostly from Yorkshire. Each weapon type has its pros and, of course, its cons, all relegated to a matrix that provides modifiers to melee dierolls. That’s 10 bands in the Earl’s array, which is represented by his single counter. These units are deployed by the player, at his whim, in two columns, 5 deep, on the off-map array. This means that there are always only 2 bands up front, doing the fighting (although the bowmen do have second rank capabilities). How, and where, you place the different weaponed bands is most important. The system, itself, is Orders driven, with movement very creaky, slow and difficult, and combat, once joined, remarkably devastating. You can play the game without the orders system, of course, but you lose all the flavor of how difficult it was to command on field when you could rarely be seen, and almost never be heard. Moreover, forswearing Orders gives the Scots a huge leg up because, as CV points out, the Brits were far better lead and will usually do what you want, while the Scots, less an army and more of a loose confederation of feuding in-laws, rarely does anything you want. Battles, once placed in motion, tend to just move forward until they either hit something or, by some miracle, change their orders. The entire movement and orders system imparts a remarkable feel for the difficulty of it all. Just getting one of those huge battles to change direction is a feat in and of itself. And it’s all done without any extensive Orders-writing, so don’t be put off by that perceived feature. When two of these big arrays actually meet, its woosh, slash and crash until one flees the field. The woosh is from the longbowmen, of which there are quite a few on the English side. You’d think they would be valuable, but they have to pretty much close to fire, they don’t do much damage against the Scots pikemen if they’re not close, and, when they do get close, they are more of a liability in the melee than other units. There are some “gunnes”, but by the time you get this tonnage of metal to move, everyone has gone home. For the most part, then, it’s the Scots pike against the English bill. It’s also Scots morale and training against that of their southern brethren, as all front-line combatants undergo morale checks prior to actually unleashing their weapons. While the English have better morale ratings, they are a bit fearsome of the reputation of the Scots pike, so there is a fair chance just showing up will be an advantage for these medieval phalangists. Which is good for the Scots, because, otherwise, their ill-trained pikemen - CV points out, at length, that pikes, like phalanxes, are useful only in the hands of capable, trained soldiers - are pretty bad stuff in the eyeball-to-eyeball sections. As a Scots player, you’re probably better off dropping pike (not, like Mel Gibson, “trou”) and using swords for the in-fighting. All of this is handled most adroitly by the game’s tactical matrix, although you really have to read Charlie’s notes to answer your questions as to why ‘x’ is that much better against ‘y’. Trust him. Oh yes, there is a small group of cavalry, complements of Lord Dacre and his moss-troopers. However, it mostly of the “light” variety, with almost no impact on frontal fighting. They’re mostly good for keeping the enemy from wandering away, sniping at flanks, and running for cover. It all plays in about two hours, and replay is heightened by some variant orders of battle and what-if rules. Most of all, though, is that this is a very intriguing system, one that imparts a very evocative feel for Renaissance battle. Grab your scissors, gamer-types, and start snipping (instead of sniping). Capsule Overall: Neat stuff, well done. Better than “Brigadoon” … and cheaper. from Charlie, Himself One 12x16” map; 2 Counter Sheets, just ripe for cutting; 2 Battle Array Displays; charts and log sheets; Rules Book. Enveloped. Charles Vasey, 75 Richmond Park Row, East Sheen London SW14 8JY ENGLAND, or chuck@mail.on-line.co.uk c.$16 Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. II # 23 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com