28mm HYW, 10mm ECW, and 6mm WW2...

Once again, a bit of this and a bit of that. Looks pretty ocd - but hey - I'm never bored with it! Starts with French HYW foot knights in 28mm by Old Glory, followed by some 10mm ECW artillery...:

Then a batch of Heroics and Ros WW2 Italians - which again, I was very impressed with.

The Chevauchee at EWG

Tonight I ran a game of Impetus at the club, these are the best-ever set of Ancients-Medieval-Renaissance rules ever written.

Best. Rules. Ever.

I ran the Chevauchee campaign from Supplement 1, this include a map game that sets up the battle.

The sourcebook for the Chevauchee

Tonight, the English (commanded by Jonathan and Terry) landed and started their raid, but early on rolled an epidemic special event, which has the effect of weakening their army every turn. Therefore they were compelled to force a battle early in the game before attrition wore their force down. They were able to contact one of the French armies, but fortunately for the French, they were able to force march their second army onto the same location, thereby forcing a battle between the full combined armies of both sides. The smaller French army arrived exhausted after their forced march.

I had the players set up a flanked battlefield, with the English deployed in the northeast anchored on a central hill position, and the French small force entering from the west and the larger, fresh French army entering from the south.

Dave the elder contemplating deployment

The French deployment to the south

The starting positions on the west flank

The French started their advance from the south side

French knights tucked in safely behind a screen of crossbow skirmishers

And from the east edge, a bit more cautiously

Jonathan contemplating his response, fire perhaps?

Terry decided to advance his longbow to a position near the brow of the cental hill, facing south, they advanced carrying their stakes over their shoulders. Unfortunately, he just underestimated the ability of the impetuous French knights to close quickly, Dave took advantage and the impetuous knights charged up the hill into contact with the English. The English paid for their mistake dearly...

The French charge and sweep the hill

Even though Dave managed some pretty appalling rolls

Doh!
Dave the elder, training his dice upon threat of decimation

The outcome was not much in doubt once the French charge reached the English lines, a couple of English knights managed to draw some blood in counterattacks, and the west flank held out when the French charge faltered in point blank range of longbow, but French nobles completely overmatch longbow without stakes in melee and soon the French were feasting on roast beef in the English camp and Edward was forced to flee the field.

Crunch!

I think everyone enjoyed the game overall. A few observations of interest:
- everyone liked the way the map metagame influenced the battle, in this case both positionally (by feeding back from the map movement to deployment) and by forcing the battle to happen when it did.
- Game play rewards historically sound tactics. The bows were vulnerable without stakes. The French knights were uncontrollable, but their impetuous nature also allowed them to complete charges that would not have been possible for non-impetuous knights.

A bad day for France...

Today Kevin and I playtested the Chevauchee for my second playtest, it was Kevin's first taste of Impetus. I have the map game mechanics worked out after a few queries to the Impetus forum. Kevin drew the English so I played the French.

Kevin's army was gleefully romping across the French countryside,

while Kevin gleefully pillaged the oatmeal cookies.

The French rolled an early epidemic while the English drew reinforcements, so time and attrition were working against the French steadily. Once the two French forces combined I decided to force march onto the English and engage, in hindsight this was a mistake. By force-marching I risked a 50% chance of fighting exhausted (all units at -1 VBU) versus his fresh force. As chance would have it we arrived exhausted, and this meant the battle was pretty one-sided. Note to self: only risk a battle at exhaustion if the opponent is also exhausted.

The Rost-boeufs

Kevin set up a force of mostly longbow behind stakes with a couple of mounted knights on 3 hills behind 3 ploughed fields.

The ill-fated French

I set up a force of foot troops behind crossbow skirmishers and pavise bearing Genoese, supported by artillery and two units of mounted nobles in reserve. I removed two of the ploughed fields (as is the attackers option of moving or removing two terrain pieces) to give my foot troops and clear route to the hills. Kevin then sent his mounted knights around the other flank where eventually we met king versus king.

Kevin's right flank advance, my considerably slower frontal assault in the background.

Kevin lining up his knights to charge my flank.

The clash of kings.

Basically, Kevin's longbow shot the lights out of my Genoese and the artillery at long range. They must have been using sniper scopes, that coupled with my explosive cohesion test-rolling. My foot troops eventually did reach his line but fought mostly to a draw, despite the advantage of higher VBU. I think we killed one bow unit.

French foot knights approach the English line

The view from the rear facing my left and the battle between the kings

Eventually my king fell and the English knights had nothing left to kill. The final tally 15:2, English victory.

I think the -1 VDU due to exhaustion was crushing, my force was too fragile and disintegrated under bowfire. So the blunder on the map was the French undoing. Furthermore, I could have perhaps made better use of the terrain- for example, perhaps I should have moved one of his hills to create some blind areas to shield my advance instead of removing the ploughed fields, or even moved the ploughed fields to protect my flank. The battle was lost before it started, perhaps the way it was at Crecy, Agincourt and Poitiers....

Chevauchee playtest

Bob came over and we playtested the Chevauchee game this morning (pics here: http://edmontonwargamer.blogspot.com/). We tried the map metagame twice using different movement and engagement mechanics, which didn't matter as it turned out. But the outcomes were quite different, the first time around I rolled lots of doubles and got clobbered by random attrition events, the second time around neither of us rolled any doubles at all and I (the French) eventually forced a battle between our full strength forces. To make a long story short, Bob rolled dreadfully and I was able to get my knights onto his knights instead of stakes and the rost boeufs were vanquished.

This was our first time playing full Impetus, and I thought it was very good. There are some interesting mechanics that are beyond the basic version (units can go on opportunity, command-control-discipline become very important, dynamic ZOCs, lots of other goodies) that are actually quite well integrated. It is both detailed and playable inside 2h, plus the nice little map campaign in this scenario is very good. Gotta say, Lorenzo has produced a top-notch product that is worth every penny. The dog's bollocks, as they say in Blighty. Anybody looking for a barely used copy of FoG?