If at first you don't Succeed, Pick Up a Card! Having tried most of the commercially available rules for the Mediaeval period (even tried writing my own (mmm perhaps not) and having never been satisfied with the results, Mark's contribution to LW 98 caught my eye so I thought let's give them a go. Just 14 pages of very easy to follow, adequate rules were returned (don't be put off, keep reading). The armies are organised into battles which can be broken down into contingents if required; commanded by kings, great lords, knights, bannerets etc. Single stands (a number of stands make up a battle/contingent) can be stiffened by adding knights to them (makes those peasants less likely to run away). After the initial contact of the battles the fighting breaks down into combats between individual stands creating a total pell mell melee effect with stands being pushed back, followed up etc. Stands have troop factors giving their quality/number of men etc, and disruption points which they lose as they become less effective in the melee -- you stand still and do nothing -- no trouble. You stand still and are shot at -- you start being disrupted. You charge that unit of spearmen over rough ground whilst being subjected to bowfire -- I don't fancy your chances. Control and command is by use of the card game trumps where a card is allocated by a commander to a unit and depending on the card which is displayed by the unit, the unit may or may not react to the order, thus you never know what your units/sub commanders are actually going to do. But the icing on the cake is single combat where the knights of high rank etc. seek each other out and fight to claim their place in legend. As commands this is by card play where you attack, parry, even make your opponent yield and thus gain even more of those precious chivalry points. As you may have guessed I think that these rules are great. Mark says that he still has a few gaps to fill but if you want to play a mediaeval game with correct sort of feel to the game and is great fun you can't go far wrong with these rules. "Schiltron" is available from Mark A Hannam, Top Right, 65 Walker Rd, Aberdeen, AB1 3DL. [Also available from Feudal Castings I believe] Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #105 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Solo Wargamers Association. 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