History in a nutshell. It's around 1100. King Henry I has a son, William, and a daughter, Matilda. William is thoughtless enough to get himself killed... leaving only Matilda. Henry I marries again, hoping for a second son... no use. Matilda remains his next of kin. Henry tries to get his nobility to support Matilda, to keep the blood lines flowing. Few of the nobles sign up. Exit Henry I. Leaving Matilda, her friends, and a group of other contenders. First contender. Robert, illegitimate son of Henry I. Doesn't do too much. Cross off Robert. Second contender. Stephen, Henry I's nephew. Stephen means business. Keep your eye on Stephen. Third contender. Theobold, Stephen's brother. But Theo seems to take a second seat to Stephen. Cross off Theo. Stephen raises an army, goes bashing Matilda's friends in the south of England. But suddenly, help arrives for Matilda. Far to the north, David, King of Scotland (David is Matilda's uncle), takes an army and marches south into England. Stephen sends an army led by the Archbishop Thurston to stop Unca Dave. They meet at Northhallerton, in 1138. They face each other, each occupying opposing hillocks. On the Archbishop's hill, he plants all of the standards of the nobles in his army... good PR. Why doesn't David do this? History is silent. Unca Dave's army had its huge contingent of Irish and Scots, who demanded the right to be in the front line... no reserve position for them. They ended up on the left of David's line, and as soon as the battle commenced, charged forward. Unca Dave's troops were commanded by Fred Haub, who immediately pushed his Scots and Irish units forward in true historical fashion. Opposing them were the Archbishop's mounted knights; the Archbishop's role was taken by Bob Hurst, who, at the same time he sent his knights forward, started massing men around his standards to ensure that Unca Dave's men didn't break through. In charging out, Archbishop Bob's knights took advantage of one of the rules' ploys: the "shock knights" effect. On each of their movement phases, a unit of mounted knights, if it moved its full distance straight ahead -- no cheating, no swerving, no turning corners -- picked up one additional stand of mounted knights. The "shock knight" stands then added lottsa dice to the unit's impact in combat. All units started out with three stands; their true strength was tracked on a data sheet, One of the Archbishop's knightly knight units, in racing across the field, ended up with five stands in it at the time of impact... one other had four, while one unit had "swerved", thus causing it lose all its shock value. Each stand in melee gets a certain number of Hit Dice (HD), and immediately after the dice are tossed, all "shock knight" stands are removed; the unit returns to normal. No surprise, therefore, that Archbishop Bob's mounted knights, with their "shock knight" augmentation, immediately beat back the Irish and Scots on the Archbishop's right flank. Fred "Unca Dave" Haub then sent forward his own mounted knight contingent, stationed on his right flank. Back in 1138, led by Prince Henry, David's son, these mounted knights smashed through the Archbishop's left flank troops quite easily... and then continued riding forward and off the field! In our battle, 'Prince Henry's mounted units ran into lots of trouble as they tried to mount an attack on the hill holding the Archbishop's standards. "Shock knights" or not, they got nowhere, and Price Henry just considered it a bad day. The 1138 battle went to the Archbishop; David retired to the north after trying to help Matilda out. Our battle was, in effect, much closer, but here, too, I'd still have to call it a win for the Archbishop. Same rules (almost), different scenario. The setup was as shown in the sketch... Castle Corth perched on the far side of the river, accessible only via four bridges, whilst a large force of attacking troops approached. This was the week before HISTORICON, and I was hosting both Tom Elsworth and Duncan MacFarlane. In addition, Jim Butters dropped by, and to tell the truth, I forget who was on who's side. This battle, too, was replete with noble nobles and knightly dismounted knights and even more knightly mounted knights, and men at arms and archers, etc. Lorde Walte was at the head of the attacking force; in one game, Tom Elsworth and Butters pushed Lorde Walte's troops forward. I was on the defense, commanding both the troops in Castle Corth, and, of courth, the Earl of Corth himself (the peasants around Castle Corth always giggle hilariously at this small pun). My defensive plan was to stay on my side of the river, hoping to bottle up Lorde Walt's men at the bridges. No use... I discovered I didn't have enough troops to spread Corth's men to control the bridges. The rules cover two types of archers, trained and untrained. I had two units of the former, and two units of the latter. Each unit had three stands in it, and each stand tossed one 10-sided Hit Die (HD) looking for a basic tally of 1, 2, 3, or 4. (digression... as an item of interest, in the battle between the Archbishop and King David, the rules were slightly different... each firing stand received two dice, and hits were scored on tosses of 1, 2 or 3). Here, according to the situation, the die toss was modified for range, for the fact that untrained archers were firing, for target cover, for the fact that the target was an armored unit of mounted knights, and so on. Unfortunately for me, not enough 1s, 2s, 3s, or 4s showed up. Not so for the other side. For those units that were hit, a reaction test took place to see if they held their ground. All units started with a basic Reaction Level (RL) of 85 percent, and from this was deducted a number of items, such as a.Deduct the distance (in inches) to the knightly knight commanding the force. The intent here is to prevent a side's troops from being spread out all over the field. If one isolates a unit from the main body, the unit suffers a- reaction penalty. b.Deduct 5% from the initial 85% RL for each current hit on the target. C.Deduct 5% from RL for each missing stand in the unit. Each unit started out with three stands, and was tracked on a data sheet. The unit was given around 10 boxes, divided into three groups; when an entire group of boxes was crossed out, one stand was removed. Due to poor reaction test results, my units fell back from the bridges, permitting the enemy free access. The defenders of Castle Corth couldn't withstand the pressure. The sequence in this game differed slightly from my usual I- go/You go procedure. Each side was given five cards, and the sides alternately drew one card from their deck. Thi~ was a random draw, not a selected pick. Each card said something like this: Select 2 Leaders; thsy may move, together with their units, plus one isolated unit. Each side had 3 Leaders (Nobles) , and the phrase "together with their units" referred to all units within 8 inches of the selected Leader. You will immediately note that I have fallen victim to the "magical, mystical aural' syndrome. Each Leader exudes an exotic pheromene which somehow causes all units within his 8-inch excitation range to leap into action. Don't ask me to explain it; better-men than I, have tried and failed. Note also that the card states "plus one isolated unit" ... which means that the side may control one other unit than those within the magical 8-inch range. In other words, since on each card there"s "one isolated unit", a side can send a flanker out, and be guaranteed that it can be controlled each card draw. As for the battle, I did have a brief moment of glory at one of the bridges; across the bridge thundered a contingent of enemy knights, and after a flurry of tossing 10-sided dice, back they went. Just about all Simon rules follow the same casualty procedure for both firing and melee. If you know one, you know the other. In this case, a number of 10-sided dice were tossed, and 1, 2, 3, and 4 scored a hit. Mounted knights receive more dice than other troops; they have lots of bonus dice, in contrast to the poor, underfed untrained infantry. One could load up a unit with bonuses, giving it a sure win against any opponent. My intent is to always allow the underclassed unit a small percentage chance of winning... nothing is absolutely certain. In testing all of the rules I generate, a lot of experimentation goes on from game to game to see just how many bonus dice or modifiers or "plusses" a unit deserves. I've been at this for over 20 years, and I haven't found happiness yet. Which is why you'll never see a formally published set of rules with my name on them; how-can I inflict an unperfected set on the wargaming world? Back to PW Review August 1995 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 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