My place of work is being shifted 42 miles and four hours round trip travel away. This is going to leave even less time for hobby type projects. So, what to do.
I had done a bit of playtesting using counters for figures and a Noteboard (a folding whiteboard)with the battlefield drawn on it. Perhaps I could do some solo wargaming during lunchtime using that.
A couple of years ago there were moves to classify the area we live in as a historic site, because of the nearby Battle of Langside. This was the last throw of the dice by Mary Queen of Scots, trying to take her inexperienced army into the Highlands to raise more troops against rebellious nobles who were using her son against her, was at the Battle of Langside. The site is about 10-15 minute’s walk away, but it’s usually dismissed in history, barely a battle, a brawl really, of no importance. Map of the Battle of Langside
However, if Mary’s forces, and she had the larger army at the battle, had won, or the Regent’s forces had failed to intercept her, then the Queen could have reasserted her authority. Not only would John Knox been unlikely to have get his hooks into Jamie Saxt, but he could have been raised Catholic, though hopefully as tolerant of Protestants as his mother, making it unlikely he’d have been offered the throne of England upon the death of Elizabeth.
So. I fancy having a go at this. The forces will still be counters, the terrain will be drawn onto the noteboard, but it will be using figure rules. At the moment I am tempted to go with *Basic* Impetus. I’ll see what I think when I have a read.
Dunno if this will lead to a period/figure fix, I doubt it, too much of an obsession with Ancients/Fantasy, but it should be fun.
Whatever system I end up going with, I may also put on some random card things to mix up the fight, “Assault on your left Flank”, “Refuse engagement” type things, to put in a bit of unpredictability. The Queen’s for should suffer more, as the more inexperienced forces on the day.
The next thing to do is to transfer the restricted battlefield to the noteboard. From there I’ll be able to sort out the unit scale. I think each counter will represent a unit
Phew! After all that I’m surprised I’ve got the energy left to actually comment . . .
Nevertheless, ignoring the work issue (easy for me to say) the Basic Impetus set are front runners for my task of devising a set of ‘simple’ (but not simplistic) rules for C15th/C16th Italy. They’re decent rules and pretty easily adapted to include any period specific stuff. There’s also no problem using counters!
G.
P.S. I haven’t got a website, but I wanted to keep up with the Joneses ;O)
Ta for that Gaz. Knowing that you’ve been looking at it for reanissance Italy makes my plan more plausible. I am looking at mainly pike on both sides, with some cavalry, a few guns, hagbutters and archers, those last two mainly on the Regent’s side. She has the manpower, he has the firepower.
It also looks like the village will be important, a bit like La Haye -Sante for Waterloo, so I had better pay that attention
FIBUA can be a real pain in the backside from a rules point of view. There’s the very simple approach of almost restricting the combat to a roll of a die or the overkill of the ‘modern’ skirmish game. Finding the middle ground is almost like alchemy.
Other than sieges or varying types, it’s not a major feature of the Italian troubles and my (seemingly endless) Napoleonics rewrite has almost limitless solutions to fall back on. I can have a scout round the various sets of rules I’ve got if you wish, but you’d need to give me a flavour of what you’re looking for. It may be ‘La Haye Sainte (ish), but do you want it to take all day?
Hi Gaz
from reading the battle, the BUA acts in two ways
1) restricting movement (so nothing much there)
2) acting as a strongpoint for hackbutters to fire into the Queen’s troops
I’ve started transferring the map to the board, just the river so far. That forms one edge of the battlefield.
I want to see how the village translates in scale to the board. It will be long, but thin, basically across the central axis of the field of battle. I think it will act more like a wall than a standard BUA or fort.
This is a strongpoint, but not one that I want a whole long fight over. The battle was a short affair, 45 minutes to an hour, across a field where the starting positions were about a quarter of a mile across.
Any ideas gratefully received. I’ll get my cleaned up map posted as soon as so you can see where it’s going
BTW, any ideas for movement bonuses for infantry holding onto cavalry? Seems to have been done here.