Pike and Shot
Part 1

Rules

Renaissance and The Armchair General

by Nick Nascati

The name Pay Condray, is one that is well known to anyone who has been involved in the hobby since the early seventies. Pat was the prime mover behind the fondly remembered THE ARMCHAIR GENERAL, (referred to as TAG). The Renaissance' particularly the Thirty Years War, has always been a favorite period of his. Because of this, he is an ideal person to review rules for our period. The five articles, encompass reviews/analyses of four rule systems, two are fairly obscure, one reasonably well known, and one widely accepted.

1. Kaiserkrieg - This is a set of homemade "club" rules, used in and around the Washington, D.C. area, written by William Guthrie. At this time, thr rules are not available to the general public, but Pat gives the impression, that Bill might be persuaded to pring the rules with sufficient urging. This inavailability is admittedly a disadvantage, but the article has much to offer in the way of encouragement to the closet rule writer. Very often, home rules, written by a gamer who has a real interest in the period, can be decidedly superior to a set turned out by one of the myriad rule writing mills. Based on what data can be gleaned from the battle report, Kaiserkrieg is a set of rules worthy of closer examination. The rules seem to provide a very balanced and realistic game, covering all aspects of battlefield combat in the period. Hopefully, the publication of this article, will encourage Bill Guthrie to publish the rules so that we can all enjoy them.

2. Le Kriegspiel (The Wargame) - This set of rules was developed in France in 1963 by Pierre Fourre and others. It was offered to the American public through TAG, until the magazine stopped publishing. Copies are rare, but there are still some floating around to be discovered by an ardent searcher. Pat developed two expansions on the basic rule system for TAG, one for the Thirty Years War, and one for the 1680's and 90's (Turkendrieg). The rules are simple and playable, in the tradition of the early Featherstone rules, yet they accurately reflect combat in the period. The original game was played on a gridded board, (ala Der Kriegspielers), with 20mm f lat f igures. Pat has quite a large collection of these, which he generally displays at various wargame conventions. It is worth weeding through the countless displays of Trolls, Orcs and Dragons, to get a look at them, they are beautiful.

3. Wargamers Guide to The English Civil War - This interesting set of rules by Ed Protz, is available through Wargamers Digest. The rules are good, basic and straight forward, but dealing with the ECW, would need some modification to work properly for the 16th century. It seems to be a good set of rules to introduce a new gamer to the period. who might otherwise be frightened off by the complexity of rules like the WRG 1420 - 1700 set.

4. Wargamers Research Group Rules 1420 - 1700 - This latest edition of the most popular set of Renaissance rules, has been extended to cover a much wider period. The rules now cover warfare from the Hussite Wars to the Great Northern War. Pat Condray approached these rules with hesitation, and was fully prepared to dislike them. The resulting review is surprising, and refreshingly different from the ones we are used to seeing.

The battle reports themselves, make quite enjoyable reading. Pat writes with the "folksy", friendly style of the old school of gamers like Featherstone and Bath, and truely enjoys the hobby. There are many good ideas to be gleaned from the articles, and perhaps they will stimulate a revival of home written rules. Take another look at that dust covered set of rules you wrote in your early days, compare them to whatever you're using now, which did you have more fun with? The articles make one realize that the best and most accurate rules are not always found on the hobby shop shelf.

More Renaissancew

Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. III #2
To Courier List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1981 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