I have some new thoughts on this subject after playing a particularly intense game at the Toy Soldier 3 in Amesbury Mass. on 10 June, 1997. Involved in the game were my brother David Parker with a 25 point Southern Welsh army and Jeff Estabrook with a 25 point Northern Welsh army. They faced off against Tim Lisauskas and myself, Chris Parker. We had a single, 45 point Feudal English army.

Upon reflection the English army (even though eventually losing) overall had the upper hand. We were able to buy our minim Cos. and then flesh out our army much easier than our opponents who each had to meet the minimum for a small 25 point army.

The game as en event went well, running about two and a half hours after set and ending on turn 5 with the fatal Breaking and ensuing rout of the English armies "Mercenary Welsh Regiment". This Regiment was a mixed unit of 5Cos. of Longbowmen and 5Cos. of Welsh Spearmen. The loss of this Regiment alone was 10 Break points to the English.

Interesting Point

The most interesting thing about this particular battle was the intense use of the Harassing Morale system. I must admit that up until this battle I had not encountered players who used it so well. First David, then Tim and finally Jeff used it more and more as the weapon I had foreseen it to be.

When I designed the Harassing Morale system I had a fair idea of how it would work and what I wanted it to do. This game proved all of that and more.

As David so aptly said, the Harassing Morale tests could go on indefinitely until the area stabilizes. After all there are rarely any die rolls in the morale system, therefore there is usually no random effect. If a unit is going to fail it will fail.

Harassing Morale

For you readers not familiar with the Harassing Morale system in Day Of Battle let me explain it a bit. In the actual set of rules there are only three events that trigger an Automatic Morale check. Compare that if you will to just about any other rules set on the market. many of them have dozens.

Now I know you're thinking, surely a serious game has to have more than just three events to check morale from. Well yes you're right and Day Of Battle does. But instead of having a long list of these events to trigger them the game lets your worthy opponent watch over your army.

He or she is given a certain number of times during both the turn and the game that they may ask you to make a morale check that is not an Automatic one. This system is called harassing Morale. If after the check they guessed right and your unit failed that get to keep that check and make a free follow up call on a neighboring unit. If on the other hand they were wrong and the unit passes, they lose a check and cannot make any more calls that game turn.

Now back to the game. I think the only thing we all had a bit of a problem with was the excessive drawing out or "Advance Results" units to attack an enemy. More than we had ever seen before. This part of the Harassing Morale rules were meant to mimic the event of forces rushing out, such as the Saxon advance during the Battle of Hastings. Again this portion of the rules were never really used with such clarity during play test because my goodly opponents were not that aware on it.

Slightly Bent

We did have some instances that seemed, slightly bent, shall we say. The Welsh skirmishers charging out of cover to attack the English (albeit disordered) Militia Spearmen, only to be run down by the Spears supporting Knights. Or perhaps the English and Welsh Spear lines in the center of the battle that attacked and counter over and over.

My suggestions on how to smooth this out are as follows.

• Raise all of the "Advance" results numbers on the Morale Results Chart by 10 points. This will alleviate the "Supported" modifier of +10 from kicking a unit from a safe, supported position into Advance.
• If an Advance result would bring a unit into Combat with an enemy unit that is not disordered and that would be the Weapon of Choice in Combat the result is ignored. This would show that the unit will not Advance to certain death. Historians tell us that at Hastings the Norman's that fell back appeared to be in disorder.
• Leader Morale Bonus. As with the above comment if the unit scores Advance and there is a Leader (not a hero) attached to the unit the leaders MB could be used as a minus modifier.
• Chivalric motivated leaders are always a plus modifier, Raider motivated leaders are always a minus and Mercenary motivated leaders can go either way at the players choice. A hero is always a positive modifier.

Overall this game system works well. Jeff and Tim both agreed that some tinkering was needed and liked my ideas overall. We all agreed that the back and forth movement of a lot of the units, in particular the two opposing spear lines in the center of the battlefield looked a bit odd to us.

But as we looked back at it in seemed perfectly reasonable. As Tim put it, they surged back and forth at each trying to get the upper hand. Eventually each realized they couldn't do so and stopped their advances. This ties in with David's remarks about an area eventually "stabilizing". They both calmed down and as surrounding events calmed down so did they.