Castles, Cogs,
and Chevauchees Rules:

Medieval Supplement

Reviewed by Terry L. Gore

by Phil Johnston

This nicely packaged 32 page rules set covers Medieval naval, siege and campaign situations, to be used in conjunction with Mr. Johnston's previous effort, Knights and Knaves. They are also intended to work with most other skirmish rules, including house rules.

The first section deals with both naval landings and ship to ship combat. Included are command control limitations (you must be within 5" of a commander to perform normally), wind direction andstrength, grappling; missile fire (shooting is halved on ships, reflecting their roll and pitch), fire arrows, falling overboard(!), weapons allowed and more. Each ship is rated, much like troops are, as per armor and stamina-the ability to withstand punishment.

The next section deals with skirmish campaigning, including rules for setting up a campaign for one to one ratio, resources, resource acquisition and special events (use 2d10 to arrive at a percentage of from 01-100), such as peasant revolts, pestilence, famine-you know, all the little things that made life such a challenge a millennia ago. Each player is limited to what he may do and his planned activities, along with map movement, are written down in a weekly phase. Players may conduct raids, send out patrols, attack a town or castle, or remain passive. If two sides should run into each other, there is a skirmish section which deals with determining terrain and whether either side is surprised (ambushed) or not.

Finally, the siege rules. These are straight forward and allow for building weapons, bombardment, assaults, mining, sorties, etc. The booklet also includes color maps upon which to play the campaign. All in all, a well done effort and well worth the price. Available from: Historic Enterprises Co., P.O. box 1534, Rochester, NY 14603. The price is $9.95.

More Reviews

Back to Table of Contents -- Courier #74
To Courier List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1998 by The Courier Publishing Company.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com