Following the invitation in LW 141 for players in the 2003 SWA tournament, a total of 9 players (one of whom entered twice) volunteered to take part. These were made up of 6 SWA members, 1 lapsed member and 2 “others” – hopefully the current non-members will either make a positive report to others on their SWA experience, or even want to join up themselves! I’d originally said that I was looking to run the game for about 20 people, but as it turned out 10 players was quite enough!
The format of the game was two linked large skirmish scenarios. The players selected troops for a “generic medieval” army, which they could then personalise to their taste (nationality, names, flags / heraldry, etc). The latter didn’t actually hugely affect the game play – if the player clearly stated “the leader of this band of archers is cautious and avoids melees” then I tried to take this into the game, but if they wrote “these are fearless warriors who will fight to the death rather than run” then I didn’t! However, the details made the battle reports easier to write and (hopefully) a little more entertaining. For the first scenario the players created warbands of total value 60-100 points, for the second scenario forces of 40-60 points were listed.
What the players were not aware of (although of course some guessed!) was that the troops remaining at the end of the first game would also be available to them for the second game. This meant that some players had a bit of an uphill task ahead of them in the second game, but this was accounted for by the scenario objective for the second game. For example, the loser of the first scenario quite often had a fortification of some sort in the second game, but this was not true in all cases.
The games started with the players deploying their troops on more or less detailed scenario maps – usually a player was aware of about one-third to a half of the terrain features. The deployments were then updated with the initial sightings of the enemy, which was then followed by one or two map moves as the forces jostled for position. When contact was made the last standing orders were followed as best I could until a conclusion was reached. Sometimes groups of men became detached from the main body and it wasn’t possible to update their orders, so they “carried on regardless”. I think this part of the games worked quite well.
Rules Used
I’m sure that a number of the players will be interested to know which rules were used to control the games. Well, the games were run using a modified form of the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings skirmish rules. These use a turn structure that made it easy to handle up to 50 figures per side and retain the feel of a skirmish game in which individual actions are possible.
The basic move structure and combat system were lifted from the Lord of the Rings skirmish game with some modifications. For example if the sides tied on the initiative roll I just kept rolling – in the LOTR game initiative automatically goes to the player who didn’t have it last time. In one game, at a crucial point, the sides had the same initiative roll 3 times in succession! Another example of a minor change was that ill trained spearmen couldn’t fight from behind another engaged figure in a melee – they were deemed to lack the combat training to do this.
The main change was to the morale rules. Each group of men within the larger warband had a group morale, based on their points cost. As casualties were taken the group had to check the group’s ability to continue fighting as a unified force – this was done by turning the ratio of surviving group members against the original group cost, and then turning this into a percentage chance of holding morale.
So, if an originally 20-point group lost a melee and was reduced to (say) 10 points, then there was a 50% chance of breaking morale. This meant that expensive leaders carried a heavy morale cost if they were slain. It also meant that a large band of ill-trained men would break morale quite quickly (since they were less likely to win a melee and would therefore have to check more often). These assumptions are based on “average” performance, however when an ill trained band insists on not breaking it did mean that they had an advantage of numbers which sometimes allowed them to swamp better warriors. Once a group had broken they had chances each turn to rally (using their courage factor as normal in the LOTR game), which had the effect of making bands flee en-masse, then rally as individuals and then possibly come back into the fight in a haphazard way.
The fighting values, courage etc of the troops was assigned depending on the troop quality – from ill trained to leader. The overall leaders of a warband were also allowed 1 fate point, which allowed them to (half the time) avoid a fatal wound and suffer a lesser effect (such as a broken shield) instead. These alternative possibilities being diced for on either a foot or mounted figure table of possibilities as appropriate. Archers were more expensive, naturally, but I kept their fight value (used to determine chance for a kill when a hit is made) low to prevent them becoming over powerful. This led to extremes, with lots of hits and no casualties, and also lots of hits and almost the whole of units being destroyed, but on average a group of 8 archers could hope to pick off an unarmoured man or two in most rounds of archery.
Army Choice and Current League Positions
The selection of armies was quite interesting – of the 10 armies entered there were 2 basically cavalry forces, 2 generic medieval – foot with a mounted knight and his companions, 2 Viking and 1 Scots Isles armies which were basically foot troops, and 3 mixed armies (Byzantine & Venetian mercenaries and Late medieval border troops – bills, bows and reivers!). Most players chose to take as close to the maximum points as they could, a few brave souls sent in smaller armies for their 1st army.
They did quite well - o.k.: they lost the battles but usually had a good showing for Victory Points from casualties (their opponents doing better for Victory Points from objectives achieved). Victory points were calculated as a combination of the casualties inflicted (factored by the ratio in points of the two armies) and objectives achieved – for a lot (but not all) of the games this tended to produce one side with all the objective points and the other with none. The casualty victory point calculation also favoured a small army if it defeated a much larger one, or a crushing defeat of one side by a similar sized army. A lot of players forgot their objectives once the fighting started, and although retreat lines were indicated few players chose to issue orders to their troops to allow them to use them before their morale broke.
Cavalry armies proved to be a bit brittle if they got into bad going, or their orders were over optimistic (charging foot in cover is not necessarily a good idea – especially when it turns out that they are archers). The foot armies suffered on mobility in the attack, especially when heavily armoured – when they encountered a more mobile army they tended to get pinned down and demolished. Which is probably as it should be.
The current victory points are as follows
| NAME | ARMY | Game 1 | Game 2 | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marvin Scott | Romano-Britons | 59 | 182 | 241 |
| Marvin Scott | Vikings | 85 | - | - |
| Henry Mclaughlin | Venetian mercenaries | 124 | - | - |
| Geoff Barker | Byzantines | 34 | - | - |
| Peter Colebeck | Border Reivers | 91 | - | - |
| Chris Grice | Scots Islanders | 82 | 89 | 171 |
| Mark Stokes | Vikings | 65 | 7 | 72 |
| Mike Buttle | Medieval | 47 | - | - |
| Kevin White | Medieval | 28 | 43 | 71 |
| Chris Banks | Alans | 50 | - | - |
Hopefully, by the time this reaches the pages of LW the tournament will be complete and I can then retire report the final results. So far it’s been very enjoyable, with the only down side being when I’m a bit slow turning the games around – thankfully the players have been understanding when real life has had to take precedence.
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