I went slightly overboard in a 25mm medieval game. Decks of cards, three in all, to determine who does what to whom, and when. This came about as a result of going over the articles in the June 1990 REVIEW, where I saw a description of a 15mm ACW game which relied upon an Action Deck to indicate the movement phases, the firing phases, and the melee phases for the sides. Card draws were interspersed with ‘normal’ troop movement, as is shown in the sequence outlined below. There were four main phases to the bound:
- (a) Side A moves his troops
(b) A card from a common Action Deck is drawn. There are 12 cards here, and each tells which side has further movement, or firing, or rallies stands, or assesses damage due to previous hits, and so on.
(c) Side B moves his troops
(d) Another card from the Action Deck is drawn.
What caught my attention was that the Action Deck had cards in it to mandate when units would resolve melee. Thus if Unit A contacted Unit B during a movement phase, the resolution of the combat would not begin unless a specific card appeared, one that stated “Resolve Melee”. I had first mentioned this approach a year or so before, in the late 1980’s, in conjunction with a set of Napoleonic rules.
Shades of PIQUET! This very procedure appears in the PIQUET rules, as units, purportedly in contact, head-to-head, stand and stare at each other until the magic “Resolve Melee” card is drawn. No wonder PIQUET is so popular! Any set of rules that borrows procedures from the REVIEW is, indeed, worthy of merit!
But after chortling a wee bit, I am proud to say that logic, reason and sanity returned. The fact that I had developed a silly sub-sequence for resolution of combat, and PIQUET incorporates the same type of silly sequence, was no reason for prolonging the silliness. In a wargame, the time element is a dynamic parameter within a turn, and when Unit A smashes into Unit B, there’s not-too-much logic in having the troops - and the players - wait to see the outcome of the conflict.
And so, I expanded upon the simple 4-phase sequence outlined above. I eliminated the “Resolve Melee” cards from the Action Deck. Instead, after every movement phase, whether produced by one of the two “regular” movement phases [Phases (a) and (c)], or by a drawn card [Phases (b) and (d)], I permitted the non-moving side to fire defensively and then instantaneously resolved the combat outcome. No more of this business of simply standing and waiting around to see who clobbers whom.
But now to the medieval aspect of the rules. Each side had several contingents, or retinues, of troops, each led by a Knightly Knight. The contingents had four different types of troops… a couple of stands of men@arms, some foot knights, some trained archers, plus two stands of mounted knights. This gave each retinue a total of some 14 stands.
The entire retinue was regarded as a single entity. When it was fired upon or engaged in combat, and took losses, it did so as a whole… I didn’t record the losses of the individual stands, but tracked the losses of the group. And the losses, or casualties, could manifest themselves in several ways.
- First, of course, stands could be destroyed. Whisked off the field, never to be seen again.
Second, stands could be temporarily consigned to the off-board Rally Zone. These stands were deemed to have lost unit coherency and combat capability, and, somewhere in the sequence, the Leading Knightly Knights could attempt to rally them and have them rejoin their contingents.
Third, the retinues could be given casualty markers, the result of firing and melee. These markers had two effects.
- First, if a unit engaged in combat while it carried a marker, it was penalized, and its opponent was given a ‘plus” factor.
Second, the actual impact of the markers on the group was assessed on certain phases of the sequence. There were Action Cards which, when drawn, mandated that the markers be translated into actual casualties, at which time, stands were removed.
‘Twas a Friday night, and I hosted a PW game to introduce the rules. Jim Butters and I commanded the three retinues of Lord Walt. Walt’s center retinue had, as a commander, that most eminent knight, Sir Jonn Sinclair, and poor Sir Jonn was so badly handled by the Simon/Butters combination, that after the battle, he just took off for the Bahamas, saying he’d stay there until the rules were revised.
In the battle, our foes advanced, came within bow range, and fired. Each side had a number of Combat Cards (CC), numbered 1-through-9. The firing unit selected a CC and added the toss of a 10-sided die. The target unit selected a CC, and added a 10-sided die. If the firer’s total exceeded the targets’, a hit occurred and the target retinue was given a casualty marker. Note that with a limited number of CCs, the sides had to decide whether to use their high cards for striking the opposition, or for defending their own units.
And note that the hit was to the entire retinue, and not to the particular unit that was fired upon.
When the retinue was hit, it received a marker, and the markers accumulated. In the sequence, as we continued to draw from the Action Deck cards, we eventually came upon a card (there were 2 of them in the deck of 10 cards) which stated that both sides were now to assess the actual damage produced by all those casualty markers hanging around. And this card, in turn, brought us to the second deck of cards, the Casualty Assessment Deck (CAD) of 10 cards.
For every marker on a retinue, we drew one card from the CAD. One of the results was that a stand in the retinue was destroyed (owner’s choice), or one stand placed in an off-board rally zone (the stand selected by the opposing player), and so on. The CAD’s 10 cards held nought but evil things for a retinue.
A couple of the cards indicated that the entire retinue would not only lose a stand, but it would also fall back 10 inches. Late in the encounter, After Sir Jonn’s men had been in the forefront of battle, an Action Deck card appeared that mandated damage assessment, and Sir Jonn started to draw from the CAD. His retinue had accumulated about 12 casualty markers, and for each of them, he drew a card from the CAD.
All sorts of horrible things happened to the unfortunate Sir Jonn and his men! Indeed, so horrible, that not even I, the creative author of the rules, had envisioned the awesome and devastating results that were possible. Remember that the CAD had 10 cards in it, and with 12 casualty markers, Sir Jonn drew ‘em all, and more!
Sir Jonn’s stands disappeared, his armor rusted, his Status Level diminished, his leather saddle moulted, his horse came down with hoof-and-mouth disease, his retinue retreated… in fact, so far back did it retreat, that it ran off the field. At the time, since his retinue had been reduced to Sir Jonn, himself, plus a single stand of men@arms (out of its original 14 stands), no one really much cared. Except for me and Jim Butters… but we rapidly dried our eyes and carried on.
I should note that of Lord Walt’s three commanders, Sir Jonn was (note the past tense) the best. At the beginning of the battle, each side had diced for the Status Level (SL) of each of its retinue-commanding knights, and of its leading knight. On our side, Lord Walt turned out to be a wimp… he had an SL of 25, the lowest possible. But Sir Jonn’s SL was a 45, the highest possible.
One of the Action Deck cards permitted each side to point to an enemy retinue and demand that it take a Status Level test. For Sir Jonn, for example, the test required that he add his own SL, 45, to that of his peerless leader, Lord Walt, which was 25, coming out to 70. To this number, a percentage dice throw was added, the total referenced to a table, and the results ranged from having a stand destroyed, to recovering 2 stands from the off-board rally zone.
During the first turns of the battle, Lord Walt had wandered out in front of his own lines, and been targeted by opposing bowmen, taking several casualties. When the damage assessment phase came, Lord Walt’s draws of cards from the CAD determined that that his own Status Level went down to 20, so that in subsequent Status Level tests, he effectively lowered the Status Level test results of all of his knights.
The Combat Cards (CC) were used, not only in firing, but for the melee procedures. Each side was given a number of cards, proportional to its relative strength (mounted knights got more cards than archers), and for the casualty markers carried by the opposing unit, and then the sides took turns playing a card to strike the opponent, or to defend against the opponent’s strike. Here, too, as in the firing procedures, a side had to decide whether to use his high cards for offence or for defense.
One of the reasons for Sir Jonn’s unusual and rapid accumulation of casualty markers was that the opposing retinue’s foot knights closed with his archers. In the melee, the foot knights, with their greater assortment of CC cards, were able to strike harder and defend better than the archers, the result being that the archers lost. The opposing retinue’s foot knights did this twice, and since, when a unit lost a melee, its retinue received 3 casualty markers, the number of Sir Jonn’s markers rose quickly.
I have since revised the rules, and written to Sir Jonn’s address in the Bahamas, asking him to come back, telling him that the next time out, he’s bound to do better. I haven’t received a response yet.
I liked the combination of dice and cards in the combat procedures. Instead of relying on a series of simple dice tosses to strike the opposition, it gave both sides a chance to tactically decide how to best use the points available to them.
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© Copyright 2001 Wally Simon
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