Sir John Sinclair approached the town of Jak with two contingents of soldiery. Each contingent contained 5 types of troops: mounted knights, foot knights, men @ arms, trained archers, and untrained foot.
Defending Jak and its approaches was Baron Luger. He too, had two contingents with the same type of troops as did Sir John, but he, the Baron, was somewhat outnumbered. This battle was generated as part of a ongoing campaign, and Sir John had managed to reinforce his army prior to the attack.
I played this encounter solo, and in wanting to remain fair to both parties, I wanted to have the decision of troop movement taken out of my hands as much as possible. Implementing this concern, I used a movement-deck sequence which told me which particular type of troops were permitted to advance or fire. Each side had its own 16-card deck, annotated as below. The cards are numbered and are arranged in order:
- Card #1 Mounted knights
Card #2 Archers, Untrained foot
Card #3 Men@arms
Card #4 Mounted knights
Card #5 Foot knights
Card #6 Archers, Untrained foot
Card #7 Men@arms
Card #8 Mounted knights
Card #9 Foot knights
Card #10 Archers, Untrained foot
Card #11 Mounted knights
Card #12 Archers, Untrained foot
Card #13 Men@arms
Card #14 Mounted knights
Card #15 Archers, Untrained foot
Card #16 Foot knights
Each side is given its own deck, and the cards drawn alternately. The order of the cards is important. You’ll note that the different types of troops move at different times. Which means, for example, you can’t draw 3 consecutive cards for mounted knights and have them dash up the field while the other units sit tight. I’ve described this before as sort of a ‘lurching forward’ sequence, as each type of unit, when its card is drawn, advances on its own. Note that mounted knights appear on 5 of the cards… moving at 10 inches per card draw, they are the fastest unit on the table, and at the end of the bound, when all cards have been drawn, the mounted knights could have moved a total of 50 inches.
Equally as rapid are the archers and untrained foot. They also appear on 5 cards. Dismounted knights, i.e., foot knights, and men @ arms are the slowest… they have only 3 cards in the deck.
The actual sequence per-card-draw consists of 3 phases
- 1. One side, the active side, draws a card and the designated troops move or fire
2. The opposing, non-active side, can use Reaction Points (RP) to respond to the active side’s actions
3. Any contacts which result in melee, are immediately resolved.
Note that the non-active side is not caught flat-footed as the active side moves up. The use of RP permit the non-active side to reply to whatever the advancing side does. Archers may fire, light units may evade heavier ones, and so on. RP must be allocated for each response, and each side has a very limited number of RP… there are never enough to go around.
In the battle, I drew from Sir John’s deck first. Card #1 indicated his mounted knights would appear, and they moved up 10 inches. After Sir John’s horsemen moved, the Baron could have used his RP to move… he had 6 RP in the kitty… but the Baron decided to save his RP for more critical times.
Then I drew one of the Baron’s cards. I started Baron Luger’s deck at Card #6 so that unit movement of the sides was not in synch. The Baron’s Card #6 is for his archers. He had one unit in town, and one out, and the outside unit moved up, but they had no targets. This time it was Sir John’s turn to use his RP… he, too, decided to wait.
And so I drew Sir Johns Card #2, which permitted his archers to move up. Again, no targets since both sides were out of crossbow and bow range (15 inches). And so the alternate card draws continued.
After a number of draws, another one of Sir John’s archer cards showed up, and by this time his units were within range and fired. The firing procedures used Hit Dice (HD), the numbers of which took into account a unit’s combat strength, its defensive posture, its size and whether or not it was in cover. Unit strength and defensive value was taken from the following chart. Each troop type has an Attack and a Defense factor for firing and hand-to-hand combat
| Unit | Firing Attack (F) | Melee Attack (A) | Defense (D) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commander | NA | 8 | 3 |
| Mounted Knights | NA | 7 | 3 |
| Foot Knights | NA | 6 | 3 |
| Men @ Arms | NA | 5 | 2 |
| Archers Bow | 6 | 4 | 1 |
| Archers Crossbow | 7 | 4 | 1 |
| Untrained | NA | 4 | 1 |
Sir John’s archers fired on the Baron’s archers in the town. For this, the following parameters were used.
- First, the firing archers’ attack factor, F, of 6, (see table above) was compared to the defending archers’ defense factor, D of 1. The difference of 6-1, or 5, meant that the firing unit was given 5 HD.
Second, one HD was given the firing unit for each of its stands. It had 4 stands, and so this added another 4 HD to the total.
Third, since the target was in cover, 2 HD were deducted from the firing unit’s HD allocation.
This gave a total of 7 HD to the firing unit. It tossed its dice, looking for a 1 or 2 to score a hit. Out of the 7 dice, 2 scored hits, and so 2 casualty figures placed with the unit.
The target unit took a morale check (a Morale Level of 85 percent less 5 points for every hit), and passed. But it still maintained the 2 hits scored upon it.
The Baron’s town archers stood up well. They were fired on, hits were scored on them, they were charged and meleed, more hits were scored, they took numerous morale checks, but for the most part, they held their position.
The card-drawing sequence had one extremely important phase. This occurred when one of the sides drew a card for its mounted knights. After the active side’s mounted knights moved, and the opposing side reacted, and any resulting melees sorted out, an “administrative phase” was carried out for the non-active side. The non-active side performed 3 administrative functions before it drew its next card.
First, existing RP were used to remove hits, i.e., casualty figures, from affected units. In addition to providing a side with a reaction capability, the RP also allowed the side to alleviate its hits. Every RP could remove one hit marker.
Second, After the non-active side removed as many hits as it could, all units that had 3 casualty figures still remaining were penalized by removing one stand. 6 hits destroyed 2 stands, and so on. In this manner, attrition took place on the field. If a unit still had 1 or 2 casualty figures on it, it maintained the hits, and these would be added to new hits scored during subsequent combat.
Third, the non-active side received 3 replenishment RP.
Both sides, therefore, awaited the deadly draw of the opponent’s mounted knights cards (5 cards per cycle), at which time, casualties would be assessed. Note that for each of the opponent’s 5 mounted knights cards, a side could add 3 RP to its total, making 15 RP during the complete cycle. Definitely not enough… not enough to provide both a reaction capability plus a hit-removal capability.
Sir John’s mounted knights kept slamming into Baron Luger’s units. Adding insult to injury, Sir John’s own mounted knights, a single stand from his own retinue, joined the rampaging horsemen. Take the defending mounted knights, for example. Comparing the mounted knights’ Attack factor of 7 to the mounted knights’ defense of 3, the mounted knights had an initial 4 HD. They then added 3 HD (one for each of the 3 stands in combat), took another 3 HD for the fact that Sir John’s own horse had joined them, and took more HD for the casualty figures carried by the opposing unit. This gave them a total number of HD of at least 10.
The Baron’s mounted knights lost melee after melee, and eventually all of its stands were removed. In melee, the first thing each of the units on both sides did was to take 1 casualty, i.e., one hit. Then it took some more hits as tossed by the opponent’s HD. And if the unit lost, it added yet another 2 hits to its total.
What was happening to the Baron’s troops was that its casualty figures seemed to be mounting in exponential fashion… he couldn’t keep up with number of casualty figures accumulated by his units.
These were bad times for the Baron. A unit of enemy foot knights charged his archer unit, the one defending the town. Sir John’s archers had fired on the Baron’s archers, scoring hits and ‘softening them up’ for the grand melee. Each casualty figure on the defending archer unit gave the attacking foot knights another HD.
No surprise… the Baron’s foot knights won… the town was his. In addition to the victory points (VP) provided by the town, each side was initially given 10 VP at the outset of the battle. Morale failures and melee defeats resulted in one VP lost. And the Baron’s initial 10 VP had long since gone. A significant victory for Sir John.
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© Copyright 2000 Wally Simon
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