Just north of the town of Bury St. Elm is a slight ridge, running east to west, known as Elm Ridge, and Baron Luger had taken possession of it. On his right, on the high ground, was Sir Lyle de Morte, and on his left was Sir Arno du Bois. Advancing toward the ridge was Sir Brett of Sloan, and he, too, had two forces, and it was their goal to take the ridge and the town. For this battle, I placed my 25mm troops on the table. In my medieval presentations, I have always avoided the many troop classifications set forth in most rules, such as light-heavy-with-corselot, or medium-light-with-leather-jerkin, or full-armored-with-iron-shield, or half-armored-with-rolex-wristwatch, and so on. Instead, I employ five basic kinds of units: Mounted knights The Big Guys who provide most of the smashing power. The one restriction on the Big Guys is that they cannot fight in town, and must dismount to do so. Once dismounted, they turn into the next type of troop, the foot knights. Foot knights Almost as good as the Big Guys, but with slightly less oomph. Men @ arms These compose the bulk of the army, the main fighting force of foot troops Trained archers There are bowmen and crossbowmen. Bowmen outrange the crossbowmen, but when the crossbowmen hit, they inflict more damage. Untrained foot The village people, who can be either archers or simple foot troops. When I set up a medieval battle, I employ one of two modes. In the first type of battle, I’ll pit “retinues” against “retinues”. Here, several Knightly Knights will battle each other, each commanding his own retinue, with each retinue composed of one or two stands of each of the above listed troop types. Casualties are inflicted on the retinue as a whole, and not on the individual units. Scoring against the retinue is, essentially, scoring against the commanding Knightly Knight, and when enough casualty points, or efficiency losses, or disorder markers (or whatever it is I’m recording that day) are noted on the retinue’s data sheet, this essentially means that the Knightly Knight has had enough… he’s going to take his men off the field and head for home. The second type of medieval game pits divisions against divisions, or “battles” against “battles”. Here, a division is composed of an assortment of units, and each unit consists of 3 to 5 stands. In this instance, I track each separate unit for losses, and when a certain level is reached, the unit is removed from the field. The battle at Elm Ridge was of the second type… each side had two divisions, with each division composed of 6 to 8 units. I restricted the number of missile units to 2 per division. Too many missiles zipping out over the field, and the game degenerates into a firing contest. I’ve seen this happen may times when a Hundred Years War battle is set up, and the English side is overloaded with longbows, and the poor French just can’t hack it. And so I gave each division one bow unit, and one crossbow unit. All missile units had 3 stands, and each stand generated 20 Fire Points (FP), giving a total of 60 FP. This 60 equated to the Probability Of Hit, POH, so that a percentage dice toss of 60 or below indicated the target unit had taken casualties. The 60 percent POH was, on occasion, decreased. On a firing phase, a missile unit was permitted to pivot to face its target, and when it did so, this took 10 points off the POH. When bows (not crossbows) were aimed at mounted or foot knights, another 10 points were taken off, and if the target was under cover, yet another 10 disappeared. In the chart below, note that a hit by a crossbow unit inflicted more losses than that inflicted by a bow unit. Dice Throw Result Less than POH Bow: 1 marker Xbow: 2 markers Less than ½ POH Bow: 2 markers Xbow: 3 markers As the chart indicates, the target unit was given a casualty marker… it then took a morale test to see if it held its ground. Casualty markers also appeared as the result of melee, and once each half-bound, the casualty markers were evaluated… i.e., translated into Loss Points… and removed Each marker had to be rolled off separately, and the table for doing so is given below. . 01 to 33 Unit takes 3 points damage 34 to 66 Unit takes 7 points damage 67 to 100 Unit takes 10 points damage Note that series of lousy (high) evaluation dice throws, each taking 10 points of the unit’s total, could punch a huge hole in a unit’s efficiency. When a unit hit 50 Loss Points, it lost one stand, and when it totaled 70, another stand was removed. A total of 100 and the entire unit disappeared. Phases In the battle, on the first turn, Sir Brett of Sloan, moving north, and seeing the enemy perched on the ridge, lost no time in ordering his left flank division, commanded by the Viscount of Stilt, to advance up the slope. But before he could do so, his force had to take a “does everyone obey orders?” test. There were 6 basic phases to the half-bound, and the test was the first. Phase 1. There was a 70 percent chance that all units obeyed orders. If not, a separate table told which unit disobeyed, and of how it acted. The response could be to advance, fall back, or, for a missile unit, to dash forward and get in an additional volley. Phase 2. The active side moved all its units forward 10 inches. Contact was permitted. In response, the non-active side could resort to Reaction Points, enabling its units to immediately attempt to respond to the opposition’s movement, perhaps by firing or perhaps by changing formation, etc. In an alternate sequence game, Reaction Points provide a means of avoiding the "I gotcha!” results resulting from one side moving and the other standing immobile. After the non-active side used its Reaction Points (and, perhaps, the active side responding in kind), any melees resulting from the active side’s movement were fought and resolved. Phase 3. The non-active side can now fire all of its units. Phase 4. All non-active side cavalry can now move forward 10 inches. Contact is permitted. Here, too, as in Phase 2, the opposing side can respond with its Reaction Points, only this time, it’s the active side using its points. Here, too, the non-active side can respond to the active side’s responses, and the use of Reaction Points flows back and forth. Melees resulting from cavalry movement are resolve. Phase 5. The active side fires all its missile units. Phase 6. This is an “administration phase”. This is when casualty markers are evaluated and removed, and unit losses noted. And the very last function on the phase is for each side to receive new Reaction Points. Note that Reaction Points were used by both sides in Phases 2 and 4. In effect, each of these phases consisted of a “reaction cycle” as each side tried, in turn, to respond to the other’s actions. But the responses were limited, since a side had only a limited number of Reaction Points, and had to apportion them out between Phases 2 and 4. Each side commenced with 4 Reaction Points and could receive a maximum of 3 new points each half-bound. Most of the time, during the Phase 1 tests, units obeyed. During the battle, only two units disobeyed. And instead of dashing forward and fighting for the homeland, the response of each was to fall back, out of the line of fire. Sir Lyle, although having the high ground advantage, was gradually whittled down. At first, his two mounted knight units held their own, but they were constantly targeted by the Viscount of Stilt’s archers and crossbowmen, and these losses, in addition to those suffered in melee, soon took Sir Lyle’s cavalry out of the picture. It took about 6 half-bounds and Sir Lyle was bereft of his cavalry. Unfortunately for Sir Lyle, his own missile units were busy with other matters, and couldn’t focus on the opposing cavalry. And one of Sir Lyle’s archer units was one of those that, during the battle, decided to disobey orders and fall back, thus depriving him of a missile capability for some time. On the other flank, where Sir Arno du Bois tried to hold position against the oncoming force, he, too, lost his cavalry. Sir Arno started with two units of mounted knights, but they were outfought, kept piling up casualty markers, and at the end of the half-bounds, their Loss Point totals finally mandated that they be swept from the field. In melee, each unit summed a number of combat points, added a percentage dice throw, and the winner was the high total. There were combat points for the type of unit (mounted knights were 12 per stand, down to the lowly untrained foot which were 4 per stand), points for a support unit being present, points for the unit having the least Loss Points on its record sheet, points for having a high ground advantage, points for existing casualty markers on the opposing unit, and so on. As soon as a unit entered combat, it received a casualty marker. If it lost, it received an additional 3 markers. Which meant that a losing unit emerged from a melee with 4 markers in contrast to the winner’s one. And note on the sequence listing that there were two phases (Phases 2 and 4) during which melee could occur. An unlucky unit could quickly accumulate an unholy number of markers to be rolled off at the end of the half-bound. Although the rules were not designed for solo play, this encounter was fought solo. So as not to bring my own biases into the battle, I diced for just about everything I did. I must note, however, that despite my complete lack of partisanship, the award winning unit-of-the-day was Sir Walter’s Heavy Company, a fierce unit of mounted knights. Sir Brett of Sloan won the day, won the ridge and took the town. Back to PW Review September 2001 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 Wally Simon 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