Combined arms in White Mountain

The last few play tests seem to have confirmed that the basic direction for White Mountain hex and block 30YW wargame are sound. The general behviour of the units in movement and combat broadly confrom to our expectations (let’s be honest: our far-removed from experience fantasy of what the results may have been).

Now it is time to think about how to represent the combined arms formations that were far more common than one might think.  These formations had one or more companies of infantry interspersed between one or more squadrons of cavalry. The intention was to produce a system which could inflict disruption on an enemy force, and then have sufficient speed and weight on hand to exploit immediately. Caracoling cavalry did not have the firepower of infantry, and infantry alone were not fast and heavy enough – did not have the shock effect – of cavalry.

At its simplest we want to see mixed blocks within the one hex – say two cavalry blocks and one infantry. But what does this mean for the stats? There has to be benefits and there have to be risks. Infantry mixed with cavalry will not have the firepower of solid infantry, nor will they have the protective strength of the pike. Cavalry in mixed units will not have the cohesion of very large formations.

These are questions to be answered, and playtests to be conducted.

Teddies of the Caribbean: Hunt for the Golden Honeypot

Teddies of the Caribbean: Hunt for the Golden Honeypot was the game I ran at Little Wars Melbourne 2009 for Eureka Miniatures.  It was more of a small scale game compared to  games in past year, but I was kinda pleased with it.  It was originally going to be proper pirate ships, but during playtesting it ended up as teddies playing toy pirates on rafts made of paddle-pop sticks.  This was largely a time/cost saving thing!  but it fitted nicely into the toy theme of the game. It attracted lots of kids, not surprising, but ended up a nice alternative for families with kids who were visiting. The games day version was simplified down from earlier playtest versions – but I’ve included the more tactical and interesting version in the download . You can find the rules to download  in the Miniatures Rules page.  You can also see some photos of the game taken on the day here.   Enjoy!  -   Greg

Kurassiers, Arkebusiers, Trotters, and Gallopers

Line cavalry at the start of the Thirty Years War could be divided simply into the kurassiers – clothed in three quarter armour and armed with long wheel lock pistols, and arkebusiers – clothed in lighter armour and armed with a shortened matchlock, effectively a carbine. Both of these types used the caracole as their main tactical doctrine. The kurassiers were the heavies, and the arkebusiers were medium cavalry.

Depending on the views of the organising commander, kurassiers and arkebusiers  could be mixed together in the same regiment, or could be separated into distinct regiments. In mixed regiments the arkebusiers would have been brought to the fore because of their longer range, but would have migrated to the back of the formation when it came to contact, leaving this role to the heavy kurassiers.

In White Mountain, a mixed kurassier and arkebusier regiment uses stats as if it were a pure kurassier regiment. Pure arkebusier regiments have slightly different stats.

Mixed cavalry regiment 4 /1

Kurassier 4 /1

Arkebusier 3 /2

By the middle of the war, Gustavus Adolphus and others were experimenting with the direct cavalry charge, discarding the caracole. Gradually the caracole was phased out in favour of the shock tactics. Opinions differed as to whether the trot (either slow or fast) up to the target and then discharging pistols before contact, or a charge at the gallop and neglecting the pistol until contact was made was better.

The Imperials preferred the trot, the Swedes the gallop.

Both had advantages and disadvantages. The trot arguably compressed the caracole and the exploitation charge into one continuous committed movement. But the shock effect was lessened because of the controlled pace. The gallop had great morale shock effect and over time became the default tactic for cavalry in Europe for a good 200 years. However it also tended to shatter the attacking unit. Considerable time and effort was required to pull them back into any order for them to take any further part in the battle. But the aim was for the charge to be decisive.

Ironically this was rediscovering old tactics, not inventing new ones. The mounted charge was the main tactic of the medieval knights. The pike armed infantryman evolved to keep the long lance armed horsemen away. As firepower improved, increased emphasis was put into this arm and the number of pikemen in a regiment gradually decreased. The average length of the pike itself reduced as well. In this climate the cavalry began to reclaim the opportunity to charge home.

To represent trotters and gallopers in White Mountain use the following rules:

Trotters 5/0 (the 5 melee dice are for the first round of melee only. This represents the discharge of pistols at point blank range before contact).

Gallopers 4/0 (gallopers automatically inflict 1 disruption token on their target when they make contact, in addition to anything they inflict through roll for attack. However, gallopers automatically receive an additional disruption token when they attack due to the disorganising effects of their charge. Therefore gallopers receive 2 disruptions whenever they are the attacker).

White Mountain – Battle report – Beernsdorft 1622

This is a record of the play test of the current version of the White Mountain rules for block, hex and card games modeling the Thirty Years War. Simon played the Catholics and Imperials, and I played the Protestants.

This was scenario set in the Palatinate or German war phase. The Imperials and Catholics are still using the traditional Spanish tercio, and the German Protestants are using shallow battalions based on the Dutch model. Historically the Protestants got the worst of it in these encounters. This has raised questions in my mind as to why alternatives were sought to the tercio, but this is a digression.

We used the Bohemian Revolt army generator to get the starting forces and terrain layout (battle-of-beerndorft) to get the forces. Simon was superior in cavalry, but I had a distinct advantage in artillery – much good as it did me in the end. This gave the following terrain layout on a standard 13×10 hex board (this one from the Epic set of BattleLore).And here is a representation of the forces overlaid.

We tried to use all the rules available to us so far, and I think we only missed one late in the game when a regiment failed to retreat after losing combat. But I believe this is all that was missed. Virtually all of the tactics that were available to the unit types were used, including caracole, and so I think this was a fair test of the system.

The battle opened with Simon pushing his right wing straight up the Beernsdorft stream. Despite harassment from my artillery both the Martinez and Salazar kurassiers closed on the hill held by a detached shot regiment and ejected them. A strong counter attack regained the hill, supported by the Schmid kurassiers, but it was not enough. The arrival of the Imperial Schmitt tercio and the Hahn regiment of kurassiers sealed the fate of the protestant left. Battered and forced back the shot regiment collapsed and fled the field, closely followed by the Weber infantry regiment. Schmid’s kurassiers put up a stout defense, but even with the exhaustion and collapse of the imperial Salazar kurassiers Simon’s troops looked ready to roll up the protestant flank.

This action was a brutal seesaw affair with commanders lost on both sides and the gradual build up of disruption on the participating regiments. At times Simon was weighing the risks of continuing the assault and continuing to build up disruption or retreat to reform and lose this initiative. This was exactly the decision we were trying to model. In the end several (protestant – grinding teeth) regiments collapsed because they had too many disruption tokens (that is: they routed).

After realigning what was left on my protestant left flank I decided to shift the focus to the centre where I had artillery superiority. This caused some discomfort to the Imperial Soto and Mendez tercios, but only seemed to spur Simon into action. The Imperial army launched a general advance in the centre and covered the 700 metres in an alarmingly short period of time. My 24 great guns belched at the advancing papists but did little to deter them.

Conceiving a master stroke, I swept my Protestant right wing forward to envelop the exposed advancing tercios. Kaiser, Hoffman and Schwarz kurassiers caracoled against Mendez tercio, achieved the hoped for disruption and closed for the slaughter – only to be bounced at great cost. The tercios continued their inexorable march while the badly cut up Protestant horse retired.

Guns face up have been abandoned by their crews and are now silent and ready for capture.

And at that moment as I saw that virtually all my horse had gone and almost every cannon had been silenced. I conceded victory even though I still had several fresh infantry regiments. In real life I would be detailing a couple of regiments to stall the advancing Imperials and Catholics while I tried to save the rest of the Protestant army for another day.

Key test findings:

Accumulating Disruption modeling morale and cohesion. The goal was to simulate that armies of this time disintegrated from the back – that is: a regiment was more likely to be destroyed through the men fleeing rather than being slaughtered. A further goal was to simulate this without complex ‘morale’ rules requiring extra calculations and dice rolls. Finally, this mechanism was designed to allow you to manage the problem, effectively giving you choices. This seems to have been fulfilled. In attack, Simon had a choice whether to risk continuing in the push and possibly fall apart, or halt and reform and lose initiative.

Total game time was somewhere around an hour and a half. Simulated time was in the vicinity of 3 hours, allowing for a move representing roughly 20 minutes.

Overall, the basic rules capture the appropriate flavour. Another test with this base set of rules is needed, then I want to add in the extra unique flavour events such as exploding powder, misunderstood retreats, secret movement and so on.

White Mountain army generator

I have created an excel spreadsheet that randomly generates armies for the Bohemian phase of the Thirty Years war consistent with the forces described in the White Mountain rules.

Unfortunately, WordPress does not allow me to publish .xls files here. If you want a copy, drop me an email at Bozzie99@gmail.com and I’ll send it to you.

The spreadsheet allows you to set the proportion of each type of regiment that could be present in a typical Catholic/Imperial or Protestant army. It then generates a 20 regiments a side, divided into left, centre and right zones plus a reserve. This is about the right number of units to populate a typical 13 x 10 hex board.  It also tells you how many blocks are each regiment and, using the underlying calculations, then tells you the real manpower so you can get a feel for the actual battle scale. The spreadsheet gives force sizes typically between 10,000 and 20,000 men.

Simon and I recently tested this and other parts of the game. This write up will follow, along with cut images of the army generator output.

White Mountain – rules update – infantry vs cavalry

Q:   If an infantry regiment is within movement range of a cavalry regiment unit in its turn (say if the cavalry were caracoling on their turn), can the infantry unit charge the cavalry and engage?

A:   No, sort of. It is unrealistic for infantry to ‘charge’ cavalry as the cavalry can simply move faster than the infantry and avoid contact if they choose to.  So how do we reflect this in the rules?

If infantry use their movement to advance on the cavalry, the cavalry can automatically, out of turn, maintain their distance (the same hex separation) and move away. There are two other possible outcomes from this:

1) the cavalry can stay in place and engage in melee, but this is not the infantry charging the cavalry as we are assuming that the cavalry are countercharging in response

2) if the cavalry cannot move away because their path is blocked by other units then melee occurs. Again we are assuming that the cavalry are countercharging.

In all cases where melee occurs the infantry are considered the ‘attacker’ and roll dice first, but this is just a sequencing convenience.

The Thirty Years War project

The set of rules we are designing and refining for the Thirty Years War is inspired by the now virtually standard hex board popularised by games such as Batttlecry, Commands & Colors and Memoir 44. At first it was no more than an expansion or modification, but as time has gone on what we have can truly be said to be new, but using those same elements: hex board and card driven.

The rules and units have been designed to closely model what we hold as the ‘feel’ of the period. The scales chosen allow us to play at the same operational level as the commanders of the day. that is: a unit, or regiment, on the board models a specific regiment with each block (or group of miniatures if you like) representing a historically probable number of men. Command and staff structures were primitive at that time. The commander asked individual regiments to do individual tasks and it was up to their own genius about how they achieved coordination. This informs both the scale of the game board, the unit representation, and the cards employed to model those limitations.

This set of rules and supporting material is a labour of love. Our findings and tools are free. We make them because we want to play the very best game about the topic: fast playing and easy to understand that captures the feeling of early 17th century warfare.

Over time complete card, counter, rule and supporting material will be placed in the Miniature Rules page. In addition we will give information on various regiments and formations, have commentary on tactics and strategy, analyze historical battles and campaigns, provide specific orders of battle and set up instructions for refights of historical battles, and present randomisation tables that will create historically reasonable armies and battlefields for simple competition.

If this period interests you then please drop us a line with your comments. If it doesn’t then don’t despair: Simon will be back soon with updates on the new and exciting That Samurai Game, and Greg will be placing more information on skirmish games and rules as we lead up to Little Wars 2009.

Andrew

Russian Revolution game at Little Wars 2008

The game was played with the Toofatlardies’ rules ‘Triumph of the will’.  This allows units to enter the game on blinds and gives players a chance to scout out terrain and opponents before closing for combat.  Our two players took very different approaches to the use of these rules.  David of the White Russian army was keen to try and uncover the downed pilot (the objective for both players).  His small but elite force spread itself very thin in an effort to track down the missing airman. 

On the other side, Bolshevik David was content to adopt a ‘big push’ tactic and hold the ground in the middle of the table.  This tactic was compounded by a small group of partisans that he found loitering around the downed biplane.  These hapless militiamen were no match for the Red conscripts in a fire-fight but it was amusing to see their affect on the entire Bolshevik line.

As fate would have it, the straightforward approach of the Red army succeeded in securing the terrain where the pilot was holed up.  With the Whites spread across the entire table, Red sailors were able to secure their man and begin the foot race back to their deployment zone.  This looked futile as Cossack horsemen began to cut a swathe through the middle of the battlefield.  Red cavalry and infantry alike were mown down as the ex-Czarist cavalrymen closed in on their prey.  In the end however, the sheer numbers of Red conscripts counted against them and the unit was reduced to fewer and fewer men (a function of the game that reflects morale- as a unit loses models so it becomes more difficult for them to perform any useful actions.)

The last hope of the White leader was his elite ‘colour’ unit of ex-officers.  Following in the wake of the Cossack advance, these fanatical fighters got to within charge range of the retreating sailors.  In a game where units are activated randomly, it came down to the last turn of cards to determine who would get to act first.  With the colour unit preparing to wade into combat, it was the Red commissar whose card was first turned over.  He was able to activate the sailors and safely (and bravely) see them off the table.

The game flowed very well from start to end and the fast and simple rules proved easy to pick up for first time gamers.  It was great to be able to put on an exhibition game like this and many thanks must go to Ara, Nic and all the others involved in planning and running the day.  Thanks also to Paul Hewitt for all of his help with miniatures and helping to run the game.

That Samurai Game–Play Test Summary

Aim: To evaluate some of the essential mechanics of the game.

Situation: A RED force comprised of three contingents, with limited cavalry and ashigaru. A BLUE force, with three contingents, with a stronger cavalry emphasis but also with teppo armed ashigaru. The field was an 8 x 8 square grid, with a river cutting across approximately centrally and ahill to one side.

Events: As a test game, the main purpose here was not to simulate an historical event, but to provide a forum for testing some of the main game mechanisms. including but not limited to:

• the movement rules: Were the movement point values roughly right? Did the mechanism for dealing with obstacles and terrain make sense? was it easy to implement?
• the combat rules: Are the attack values currently used on the blocks reasonable? Did the CRT produce reasonable results? Was the general mechanic easy and smooth to implement? Did the break and cohesion mechanics work well? 
• the use of the action cards: Was it fairly straightforward to select action cards from the draw deck each turn? Was a draw deck size of approximately 50 points suitable? Were there enough of each card type available when building the draw deck? 
• the process of countering: Was it straightforward? Did it encourage weighing the benefits of countering versus the cost of sacrificing an order card?

Summary of Results: The BLUE force took an early advantage when the cavalry contingent on the right flank moved swiftly to engage a smaller and less well-trained RED force ashigaru contingent. The only hiccup was an ‘Unexpected Terrain’ stratagem played by RED to disrupt the cavalry movement. BLUE also began to advance the cavalry contingent on its left flank, but this was very quickly stalled when RED played one of his two Gambits, ‘Treacherous General’. Given the significance of this gambit, both sides played high value cards in the ensuing Counter, with RED wining and taking control of the treacherous BLUE contingent. This forced BLUE to commit his centre contingent to engaging the traitors and gave RED time to counter BLUE’s initial cavalry charge and to begin an advance of his own. Interestingly, the battle swung back towards BLUE because of tighter card management. RED, suffering from a bit of hand planning disarray, ended up with very few useful orders and cards of low value, and BLUE was able to support some of his units more effectively in melee. So, all in all, it ended with BLUE once more in the ascendency.                                                                                    

   

Evaluation:

• Movement worked quite well. No real changes necessary at this stage. Obstacles have the effect of disrupting units, which reflects disturbing their formation and coherence. It feels about right–only a small amount of damage–and is very easy to implement. 
• Combat was, in the main, fine, with a few exceptions. The range of attack values is probably too large. The numbers reflect quality, but a range of 1 to 10 is probably a bit of a stretch and it had the effect of making shifts for unit type on the CRT less significant. Quality should produce about the same magnitude as the most significant difference in units types, which means a range of 1 to 5 at the most. The CRT itself worked reasonably well, but units were reduced and broke very quickly, which indicates that the cohesion rating on the units are a little small. They could probably be doubled. Breaking was simple without being too simplistic. The effect of a breaking unit on other adjacent units wasn’t really tested, but this will need to be tweaked to reflect any change in the cohesion rating. Otherwise, combat was very straightforward, requiring reference to only three tables in total.
• The action cards need some cleaning up. They don’t reflect the evolution of the rules since they were produced, and they are too wordy. In addition, several of the stratagems don’t really work, including “A Leader’s Prayer”, which is too powerful and should probably just cause a shift on the CRT. Several stratagems are now gambits. Choosing cards at the end of each turn wasn’t hard at all once the game got into swing. However, selecting cards for both their orders and stratagems wasn’t as easy as just selecting for orders, and I found myself purely selecting orders and maybe one targetted stratagem. Consolidation of orders should be done. For example, HALT is unnecessary: It simply costs an action to remove a MOVE from a unit, signified by discarding one card held in the hand; ENGAGE and FIRE could be combined; If a unit is moved into an enemy unit’s square, the player moving the unit should probably be allowed to immediately halt the unit; I also haven’t really considered what happens when a contingent under a standing order has another order given to a unit within that contingent. One issue with the cards is what to do when a player reaches the end of his deck. Do both player’s reshuffle, or only one? Maybe it depends on the particular goal of a player.
• I really like countering. It is simple, it introduces a degree of uncertainty and guesswork, and it forces a player to make choices about whether or not to preserve his hand. More trials are needed, but at the moment countering seems like a very elegant way to introduce dynamics into a game that has no randomness.

A Gambit and a Stratagem

A taste of a Gambit (Treacherous General) and a Stratagem (The Standard Has Fallen) from That Samurai Game (I really should think of a better name). And soon to come, a play test report…

Treacherous General

Phase: Opening

Reveal this stratagem to turn any one leader and his contingent to your side. This can only be played if the contingent has not yet been engaged and has not yet engaged any other unit in melee or ranged combat. You immediately take control of the leader and his contingent, but must immediately reduce the lowest value unit stack within this contingent. This may mean that a unit stack is removed. Any unit blocks removed as a result of this reduction are given back to their original owner. Any unit blocks subsequently removed from this treacherous contingent can’t be used for reinforcements for either side.

The Standard Has Fallen

The standard of one of the opponent’s leaders is captured.

If an opponent’s unit suffers a loss in melee, you may play this stratagem to capture the opponent’s standard. While holding the opponent’s standard, you gain a bonus to morale and attack value equal to the value of the standard.

This event may be countered. A countering card is treated as 1/2 value unless it is a The Standard Has Fallen stratagem, in which case it is treated as having the stratagem’s value. A successful counter makes the unit who lost the standard fanatical until they recover it. Mark with a fanatic counter.

Phasing in That Samurai Game

This is a tricky area of the rules that I’ve been struggling with for a week or so now. To introduce the problem, it is necessary to understand an element of the rules I haven’t much elaborated on: Gambits.

Gambits are strategic or operational actions that impact on the tactical battle, but that aren’t appropriate for ‘playing out’ on board. They are actions that, by their nature, span multiple turns and that are better off not represented tactically. A typical gambit is ‘Treacherous General’–we all know about Sekigahara, don’t we? Such an event is a product of strategic actions, secret communiques, bribes or even hostages. The tactical conditions on the battlefield merely enable such treachery, they don’t produce it. Gambits are played in the game by selecting a small number of gambits, placing them face down, and then revealing them at the appropriate time in the battle. Gambits are not guaranteed to be successful, and the likelihood of their success is a function of conditions in the game.

So, back to my problem. Gambits are big things with big impacts, so they are infrequent. In addition, they are tied to the life-cycle of the battle. Some gambits can only really happy early on, others later on, and still others at any time. I want to represent this life-cycle in the game and capture the relationship between life-cycle and gambits. I’m proposing to do this by having an opening, middle and closing phase in each game. The trick is how to do this mechanically.

In discussion with Andrew this morning, a few ideas/concepts were clarified, and I thought I’d put them up for comment:

1. There must be tangible benefits to a player of remaining in the current phase or moving onto the next phase. 
2. It must be possible to prevent transition into the next phase, but once there it can not be possible to go back (this will likely use the ‘countering’ mechanic already in the game).
3. Victory objectives must somehow relate to the concept of phases and behaviour should be shaped by victory considerations vis a vis point 2 above (for example, if one player has a secret objective of delay, then maintaining a long opening phase, in which skirmish and non-decisive engagements are more common and withdrawal from melee is easier, is an advantage and will increase his chance of victory).
4. There needs to be enough potential gambits in each phase to maintain unpredictability, regardless of what phase the game is in.
5. Not all gambits should be executable in all phases.
6. The three phases should vary in length from game to game and this length must not be prescribed.
7. Different actions will be easier/harder in different phases (for example, it is easier to withdraw from melee in the opening phase, when both sides are jockeying for position rather than trying to force resolution AND it is harder to resist a rout when in the end game phase).

Anyway, these are some thoughts. Any feedback would be most welcome.

 

A basic primer (part 2)

A few more of the historical units that will be represented in the game.

Ikko-ikki

The iiko-ikki was an order of fanatical Buddhist monks associated with the jodo shinshu sect of Buddhism. The ikko-ikki sect was based on Hongan-ji, and ceased to be a major political force by the late-1500s (following the massacre at Mount Hiei). While not formally trained, the ikko-ikki demonstrated considerable military nous, including developing the use of volley fire with the teppo, a tactic that Oda Nobunaga first observed when he assaulted Ishiyama Hongan-ji. Nobunaga employed a similar volley-fire method at Nagashino (1575)… and the rest is history.

Flag bearers and standards

Flag bearers were an important element of every Japanese army, and were attended by their own bodyguard. The flag or standard (uma jirushi, lit. ‘horse standard’) represented the psychological epicentre of a clan’s forces in the field. It was often as not a three-dimensional object and not just a flag. To lose this standard was to suffer humiliation, and it was typical that such an event would either undermine or galavanise the men whose clan it symbolized.

So-taisho

The supreme general, the so-taisho commanded the combined forces of a particular faction or side in the field. He was served and protected by a contingent of his own and issued orders from his honjin using both messengers (tsukai-ban) and signals, such as drums (played by drummers—the taiko yaku).

Busho

Contingents on the battlefield were led by the busho, the samurai lords. Busho were skilled in the theory and practice of war, and they came from the amongst the family, retainers and allies of the so-taisho. They brought their own forces, both foot and mounted, to fight for their lord, but retained command of these forces within the broader command structure of the armies they had joined with. In many cases, busho fought for the promise of reward and not simply from a sense of duty.

Heroes

Not really an historical unit, but nevertheless…Heroes represent key individuals on the battlefield who rise to the occasion, distinguishing themselves through deeds of honour and courage. In Japanese mythology, the heroic failure is as noble as the heroic success (some might say more worthy), and so many heroes exemplify the notion of personal self-sacrifice in the pursuit of duty and obligation. Heroes emerge at key points in battles, and so are not represented by specific counters, but instead by events born out through the action cards.

A basic primer for medieval Japan

By the sengoku jidai, Japanese armies exemplified the well-trained, well drilled medieval fighting force—remember, this was a country in which the martial discipline had prevailed and been exercised for four hundred years. Forces were constructed of missile and melee units, often used in combination as combined arms, with well-organised and drilled formations and extensive use and exploitation of volley fire with teppo (muskets introduced by Portuguese traders in 1543 and further developed and refined by the Japanese). As such, the units in the game represent complex collections of very capable cavalry and infantry.

Japanese cavalry were a true combined arms force: foot infantry directly supported mounted warriors in melee engagements, running alongside them as they charged into combat. Combined arms was also seen between various foot soldiers, so that teppo were often supported by ranks of pike wielding infantry, as made famous at the barricades of Nagashino.  Of course, not all forces on the battlefield were formally trained as professional or even semi-professional soldiers. The warrior monks were an amateur, but highly potent, military force, and their eradication became an obsession of the Oda Nobunaga, culminating in the devastation of Mount Hiei and its great fortress-monastery.

With all this in mind, each unit in the That Samurai Game brings distinct qualities and functions to a conflict. These units are described in some detail in the rules, both in their historical and game contexts, but keep in mind that the taxonomy offered reflects a representation of medieval Japan and its forces, not the final or only interpretation. 

I have included some more detail on two key units in That Samurai Game here:

Samurai Cavalry (light and heavy)

These units consist of heavily armed samurai cavalry supported by foot soldiers [Note: because of the combined arms nature of these units, their charge distance is limited]. Up until the mid-1500s, these cavalry units relied primarily on the yumi to engage enemy units, and as such they tended to skirmish with opposing forces rather than engage them in melee. Later, their main weapon of choice shifted to the long-spear, which was used much like a lance for thrusting and slashing, although their attendants could furnish them with bows as needed. Samurai cavalry are therefore divided into light and heavy cavalry, with the division reflecting a general transition in their use from bow wielding warriors to warriors armed with spears and intended to engage in melee with foot soldiers.

Ashigaru

‘Light feet’ were initially effectively disorganised conscripted infantry with little skill or organisation, but by the mid-1500s they had developed into a disciplined and well-trained fighting force. Ashigaru were typically armed with spears (the pike-like, 15 foot long nagaeyari), but were also equipped with teppo and yumi. Yumi ashigaru (common from the 14^th century onwards) required considerable effort to train, but could lay down accurate fire with their bows. They were frequently used as skirmishers. Teppo ashigaru (present after the introduction of the arquebus in 1543) were considerably easier to train, and the teppo had a longer effective range than the bow, although its fire rate remained relatively low until the introduction of the cartridge in the late 1500s. Teppo ashigaru came to replace yumi ashigaru over the course of the 16^th century, but they were seen operating together in formations of missile troops through to 1550s.

It is important to note that ashigaru formations were not the tight, ordered ranks exemplified by the Swiss ‘press of pike’. Instead, they were looser structures that would adopt a Defensive hedge against cavalry but break up to conduct vigorous pursuit.  This was ideally suited to the rugged, broken terrain typical in Japan.

Suitors

A Euro-style game played on a Chess-board-like field, in which 2-4 players (princes) vie for the affections of a princess by playing tiles that direct her movement towards their pieces. Each tile on the 9×9 board consists of a suit (hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades) and a number (0-9) OR a face piece (jester, jack, queen or king). The face pieces have very specific effects on the movement of the four princes. No dice or cards are used, but tiles are drawn randomly and used to replace tiles that already exist on the board. For more information, scan the Suitors draft rules.

This is meant to be a simple game that recalls the ballroom of a renaissance court, but is fundamentally a landscape evolution game (that is, a game where players manipulate the terrain or landscape to win). Is this a new type of game?

That Samurai Wargame

I’m currently in the throws of putting together the final draft for ‘That Samurai Wargame’, a working title (obviously). This is the (draft) introduction to the rules, outlining the concepts and motivations behind the design. The draft rules can be accessed as an attachment.

“This game is driven by a single vision and two underlying concepts of war.

The vision that drives this game is that there is no chance. All processes in the game are deterministic. No random dice rolls or random card draws occur. The closest the game gets to any stochastic mechanism is in the construction of units, which (as you will see) is done by selecting from a set of face down (and therefore hidden) blocks. Only a general indication of the value of a block is known during this process. In this sense, this game has almost no element of luck.

The two underlying concepts that have driven design are uncertainty and command decision. Uncertainty generates the sense of events happening outside one’s control. Uncertainty in the game replaces random die rolls and card draws. You don’t feel in complete control because you don’t know everything there is to know, even though everything there is to know (such as the composition of your units) is predetermined before the game begins. Command decision drives the actions that occur during the game. These actions determine the trajectory of events and outcomes, and therefore the game result. Again, the fact that your opponent will do things that you can’t predict or didn’t expect gives the game the sense of some sort of unpredictability, but this unpredictability isn’t stochastic in nature. This deterministic quality may seem a little strange: combat is resolved solely by the forces committed to it and not by any die roll or card draw; morale failure is likewise purely a function of the amount of damage and shock a unit experiences; even the cards in your hand are chosen by you, the player, to support your specific strategy. There are no surprises about what you hold for each turn, but you are forced to make judicious use of your hand and to select hands that allow you to enact your strategy while mitigating your opponent’s.

The setting of this game—medieval Japan, the sengoku jidai—is a favourite of mine, but it is merely the context for the broader concepts of uncertainty and command decision and the principle of ‘no chance’ articulated earlier. Nevertheless, the game is designed to reflect the qualities of warfare in medieval Japan, and you’ll find plenty of flavour to go along with the underlying mechanics. So, play and enjoy. And know that, if you win, you win not by the hands of fickle fate, but by out-thinking your opponent.” 

Terrible Passage progress

Recently, Greg and I threw around design ideas for the rules for the French Revolutionary period being contemplated by Eureka.

We settled the scale, or at least the scale principals, and agreed on the specific actions that the rules were to model.

In brief:

Scale: figure scale to model company tactics, but sliding to allow lower level light infantry tactics as well. The manoeuvre element is the 8 to 12 model Company. Figures are single based, moving in clumps. Formations such as line, column and square are not relevant as these occur at higher levels of organisation where several companies cooperate. Crudely we may say that the man to model scale is 1:20, but this might best be seen as the top point of a bell curve depending on the specific instance.

The specific actions we wish to model would be house to house fighting, bridge assaults (Napoleon at Lodi, for example), light company encounters before the main battle line, task force incursions, and so on. We really have to make it clear that these rules are not for modelling Valmy. There are other rules already available for that.

Movement is measured and conventional (curses! No grids!). A single model house represents a single real house.

The core mechanic is based on the Cast of Thousands (CoT) system, already employed for many of Anubis/Eureka offerings. This might appear to be a lazy cop-out, but Greg and I did discuss many mechanisms with the aim of finding the one that correctly modelled what we wanted to do.

Finally, the new working title for these rules is ‘Terrible Passage’, echoing Napoleon’s observations of his bridge encounter.

Next steps: 1) Greg and I need to get a closer understanding of the regional/cultural differences in the protagonists of the period in order to build the factors that will differentiate the sides in the game. 2) We need to do some more reading on the minor tactics of the day and double check that our core mechanism can be extended to cover them without making the rules a joke. 3) As figures become available we must have a sufficient and growing quantity painted up to rigorously test the system. In the meantime Greg and I have figures we can push around. But we want to get the real thing, with camera in hand, so that we can simulataneously capture scenarios for illustrative purposes in the rules.

It’s looking good.

A potted history of the French Revolutionary Wars

1792 France declares war on Austria. Austria allies with Prussia, Hess, Piedmont and French émigrés. Combined allied army invades France. Battle of Valmy results in French victory. France conquers Savoy and Nice. French raid into Germany captures Maintz and reaches Frankfort.

1793  Formation of the ‘First Coalition’ against France. France declares war of Great Britain and the Netherlands. France invades Netherlands. Austrians win in Belgium in battles at Aix-la-Chapelle and Liege. Rebellion in Lyon and Marseilles. The Vendée uprising. Spanish armies invade France, as do Sardinian and Austrian. Counter revolutionary forces hand over the port of Toulon to the British. British defeated at Hondschoote.

1794 Action against the Spanish. Action against the Austrians in Belgium. French armies drive Austrians, British and Dutch beyond the Rhine. Prussian counter attack is largely ineffective.

1795 France occupies the Netherlands, which joins the revolution and becomes the Batavian Republic. Prussia leaves the First Coalition. French continue into Spain, who make peace. British landing at Quiberon to support counter revolutionaries fails.

1796 Only Great Britain and Austria remain as part of the First Coalition. Napoleon takes over command of the army of Italy, where he achieves a number of stunning victories. French cross the Rhine for a number of encounters with Austrian forces.

1797 Napoleon continues his success in Italy. Austria attempts to assist in Italy but are defeated. French pushes across the Rhine cause Austria to sue for peace. Only Britain remains opposed to the French Republic. First Coalition ends.

1798 French invade Egypt as a way to disrupt British Mediterranean trade, led by Napoleon. French invade Switzerland and establish the Helvetic Republic. France tries to invade Ireland but fail. France occupies Rome and establishing Roman Republic. Revolt in Belgium against French rule. At the end of the year the Second Coalition is formed of Austria, Great Britain, Russia, French Royalists, Portugal, Naples and Sicily, and the Ottoman Empire.

1799 Napoleon abandons army in Egypt to prop up rule at home. British and Russians invade Batavian Republic, resulting in failure. Much fighting in Italy. By the end of the year French troops had almost been totally driven out. More fighting around the Rhine against Austria, who were successful in expelling the French back across the Rhine. Battles in Switzerland against Austria. Russia leaves Second Coalition.

1800 Austrian attacks in Italy. Napoleon takes command and leads a strategic outflanking action. Austrians leave Italy. Another Rhine crossing into Germany. Austrians again defeated, leading them to sue for peace. Battles in Egypt.

1801 Exhausted French in Egypt surrender. Second Coalition collapses without Austria. Most action is at sea against the British.

Treaty of Amiens in 1802 ends war between Great Britain and France. Some semblance of peace at the macro scale exists until 1804, when Prime Minister Pitt of Great Britain forges the Third Coalition and, with napoleon now Emperor, the Revolutionary Wars are over and the Napoleonic Wars begin.

Science fantasy weapons of the 20’s and 30’s

The following is a list of imaginative weapons described in science fiction writing during or before the period of our Jurassic Reich game. These weapons must be accounted for in our rules, and modelled to follow the available descriptions.

For example, the word Laser was not coined until the 60’s. What we had in the 30’s was a ‘raygun’, and the rays had lots of different effects. Similarly, the word ‘gauss’ is a very modern one to describe projecting a bullet through electromagnetic force instead of explosive combustion. At the time it would have been called an Electric Gun – though not to be confused with the Electric Rifle, an entirely different beast designed by the heroic character of the age, Tom Swift.

This list is the starting point of our investigations into this period of technological fantasy.

Name	Author (Publication Date)
Annihilator Beam	L.F. Stone (1931 )
Atomic Bomb – very early reference	Robert Cromie (1895 )
Biological Warfare – first use of the concept in fiction	H.G. Wells (1898 )
Blast Rifle	Frank Belknap Long, Jr. (1937 )
Blaster – a deadly energy weapon.	Nictzin Dyalhis (1925 )
Concentrated Light – predicts the laser	Nat Schachner (1937 )
De-atomizing Ray – a disintegration beam	Edmund Hamilton (1928 )
Demagnitizing Ray	George Griffith (1911 )
Disintegrator	Garrett P. Serviss (1898 )
Disruptor Tube – pale beam of destruction	Nat Schachner (w. AL Zagat) (1931 )
Electric Machine Gun (Railgun) – electromagnetic acceleration	John W. Campbell (1933 )
Electric Rifle – Tom Swift’s weapon of choice	Victor Appleton (1911 )
Electrify the Rail – repel boarders!	Jules Verne (1875 )
Heat Ray – concept of the laser	H.G. Wells (1898 )
Invisibility – now you see it -	H.G. Wells (1897 )
Joystick Controls w/Remote Display	H.G. Wells (1903 )
Leyden Ball – grandfather of the taser	Jules Verne (1875 )
Needle Pipe – needle gun	Ray Cummings (1928 )
Pain-Producer	Edmund Hamilton (1928 )
Paralyzing Ray – early use	Ray Cummings (1931 )
Pencil Heat Ray – narrow beam	Ray Cummings (1931 )
Pentavalent Nitrogen – most powerful chemical explosive.	E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith (1931 )
Proton Pistol (Proton Beam) – beams of fury	Raymond Z. Gallun (1937 )
Ray Gun	John W. Campbell (1930 )
Rocket Gun	Philip Frances Nowlan (1928 )
Standish – a mean beam of energy	E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith (1934 )
War-Balloon (Navigable Aerostat)	George Griffith (1893 )
Zero-Ray	Clark Ashton Smith (1931 )

JR – to get the ball rolling

I propose that the core themes of this setting are to be found in the art and stories of or directly inspired by the 1920’s and 1930’s.