PotCXVIIpouri

 The previously - and deservedly - obscure post which I mentioned earlier in the month is still getting a dozen or so visits a day. Does anyone know if Blogger allows one to put adverts on just one post? Only kidding; there will never be advertisements on this blog. 

No, adverts will join all the other things that are no longer featured here: interest, humour, secret messages to the big bouncy woman, etc. And, for some time now, that list has included videos in memory of the musical heroes of my youth who have left us. I had to give those up for actuarial reasons; barely a day goes past without sad news that yet another octogenarian has popped his or her last balloon. If I commemorated all of them then I wouldn't have room for the wargaming content for which this blog is so highly regarded. However, and you all saw this coming, I am going to make an exception for Tom Verlaine, for no better reason than that if 'Marquee Moon' isn't the best debut album of all time then I'd like someone to tell me what is. Let's lift a glass to happy days in Seaview:

If anyone is interested, the best debut single of all time is clearly 'Virginia Plain'.

And Somerset Another Goodly Mast

Prince Edward: I know my duty; you are all undutiful:
                          Lascivious Edward, and thou perjured George,
                          And thou mis-shapen Dick, I tell ye all
                          I am your better, traitors as ye are:
                          And thou usurp'st my father's right and mine.

King Edward IV: Take that, thou likeness of this railer here. [Stabs him]

Richard, Duke of Gloucester: Sprawl'st thou? take that, to end thy agony. [Stabs him]

George, Duke of Clarence). And there's for twitting me with perjury. [Stabs him]

Or at least that's how Shakespeare has it in Henry VI, Part III. It didn't end like that in our refight of Tewkesbury, although it came close.

Mark turned up this week and took the Yorkists, allowing me to umpire. That should have given me time to take more photos, but didn't, mainly because the more I read the rules the more convinced I became that we playing the melee rules incorrectly. The starting point was our seeming inability to work out which companies in one battle ought to be rolling off against which companies in the opposing battle. The 'Test of Resolve' rules are fairly clearly written, so that was a bit of a surprise to me. It turned out to be a knock-effect of something else which we weren't doing right. In our defence the way things work is pretty much the opposite of how things work in the rules we have most recently been playtesting in the Legendary Wargames Room, and intuitively we seem to have gone down that road again. 

Anyway, notwithstanding having played it wrongly all evening, a good time was had by all. The Lancastrians won quite comprehensively in the end. The Yorkist ambush failed to happen, and Gloucester perished early on, as he often seems to in refights of this engagement. Hastings' battle also dispersed leaving Edward IV all on his own. He could still win though, by defeating Wenlock's battle in melee and pushing through to kill Edward, Prince of Wales, which he came tantalisingly close to doing. He was only thwarted by rolling very low against Edward's bodyguards very high roll. That is always a possibility with D12s. Still, as I said before, it was most enjoyable, as I'm pretty sure it would have been had we played it properly.

Tewkesbury Again, Naturally

 To the surprise of absolutely no one, the next battle in our trial of 'Test of Resolve' will be Tewkesbury; indeed the only reason it wasn't the first one was that I didn't own the relevant scenario book at the time. I got into the habit of playing Tewkesbury with new rule sets because it is, in my opinion anyway, the battle from the Wars of the Roses which is most balanced and in which the inevitable treachery, subterfuge, delayed arrivals, ambushes etc are still present, but don't overwhelm things. Plus of course there is now the added attraction of being able to compare one author's scenario with another's. 

Once again I am playing it as written, and will report back. My first thoughts are that I might have had Wenlock and Devon on higher ground than the approaching Yorkists, but I don't suppose it will matter much. 

This time it is Edward, Prince of Wales whose demise would signal the end of the game. Can he survive for longer than his father did in our refight of 1st St Albans? We shall see. 

I'm trying a different method of recording casualties and morale this time round. I originally made my markers for Command & Colours and, as I have no intention of making any more, am struggling a bit to find the best way of fitting a square peg in a round hole.

First St Albans - ish

 We played the 'Test of Resolve' 1st St Albans scenario featuring all the wrong nobles (*) and the rules met with a fair degree of approval. We were able to get a completely unbiased opinion as there was neither winner nor loser. Henry VI unfortunately got caught in the crossfire and perished. In the words of the victory conditions: "If he dies the game ends immediately and inconclusively as a draw! The Wars of the Roses take a surprising turn".

My main concern prior to playing a full game was whether the special period specific rules together with the game's initiative system would result in things running on rails, leaving no interesting decisions to the players. I'm pleased to say that didn't happen, although 1st St Albans is not a particularly normal battle, so perhaps no firm conclusions can be drawn. A concern that did arise came through the use of D12s, which inevitably means that luck in combat and morale testing can swing quite a bit. Still, I think we shall have another go, with a battle in the open rather than in a town next time.

The scenario itself was fine. I previously observed that one of the roads along which the Yorkists attacked is actually quite steep, but in truth had they been penalised for that they would surely have never fought their way into the town. The one area I would probably change is the 'God Save the King Test' which had to be taken by the first Yorkist units into the square. This was a straight die roll, but I think I would give them the normal bonuses for quality, attached commander etc. If the first unit fails then perhaps I would give a down to the subsequent units to reflect this. In terms of the way I laid it out, I would next time specifically mark out the areas around the square notionally occupied by houses, as well as scattering a few buildings about for aesthetic effect. 

* There have been questions about how I come to have a WotR collection which doesn't include a Warwick figure; he was after all fairly prominent at the time. Well the good news is that I have found him. I definitely don't have either York or Salisbury though.

All the right nobles...

 ... but not necessarily at the right battles.

I decided that one sensible way to rouse myself from my wargaming inactivity was to take a look at some of the sets of rules which I have accumulated over the last couple of years. Even more logical is to start with a period for which I actually have the figures, so the Wars of the Roses it is. I have a couple of unplayed sets, but first up is 'Test of Resolve', a card based WotR specific set which I briefly described on in a previous post. They should be straightforward for me to pick up because they are derived from/an homage to/a blatant rip-off of Piquet Inc's FOB albeit in a very streamlined and simplified fashion. I like the look of the initiative allocation system, which doesn't seem that it will result in me calling on the higher mathematics in order to prove that it's no good, and I'm also rather taken with the way they have evolved the Heroic and Lull cards. However all that is just from reading and having a play about with the mechanisms. What is required is a proper game.

When I bought the rules I also bought the scenario book for the first part of the wars (the book for the second half is also now available and an order has been placed), and so from that I have chosen 1st St Albans. The scenario book is really very impressive and could, I think, be easily translated to other rules. In the same way that no one really knows how they fought at the time, there is often also uncertainty about where they fought and what happened. Whilst this ought to be less of an issue for 1st St Albans, the road layout of the centre of the city not having particularly changed since then, there are still alternative views of what occurred. In this case the authors have gone for the Yorkist left and right swinging round and charging along Holywell Hill and St Peter's Street. This leads to my one small quibble. As the name implies Holywell Hill has a slope, quite a big one actually. I was in St Albans a few months ago visiting my sister - I stayed at the White Hart which is approximately where the middle house is on this side of the road in the photo above - and I can confirm that climbing up it carrying a suitcase is bad enough; one assumes it would be worse while wearing armour. None of this gets a mention in the scenario. Anyway, be that as it may, I'm going to play it as written.

Or at least I'm going to play it as written except for one detail. Notwithstanding having said in the first paragraph that I have the figures, I don't have models of all the requisite commanders. Therefore the Yorkist attack will be led by the next generation, those who fought at Tewkesbury to be precise. The Lancastrians will mostly be present and correct - I even have a Henry VI kneeling in prayer - but Sir Andrew Trollope has kindly agreed to deputise for Buckingham.

Pointless

 Something - I very much assuming it's not someone - is looking at this non-descript post from six years ago (*) a dozen times a day, and has been doing so for weeks. If I had invented some sort of algorithmically driven blog reader I would be bitterly disappointed if that was all it bothered to come up with.

Anyway, in honour of what I am supposing to be a type of virtual machine let's have some 'Lothar and the Hand People', a band from the sixties who don't get anything like the recognition they deserve from most wargaming blogs.

* You know that I mean non-descript even by the low standards of this blog

Ramparts Unclimbed

 A couple of months ago I posted photos of the forces laid out for the final assault in the siege game that has been clogging up the table in the annexe since the middle of last year. I have actually played it out, I just haven't written it up. The reason for that was that it became obvious fairly quickly that it was impossible for the attackers to succeed using the combination of the rules as written, the forces as chosen and the tactics which I was employing. 

A small part of the problem was that the defenders had won every one of the preliminary siege rounds, forcing the besiegers to attack before they had built all the siege equipment they otherwise might have and without the level of superiority of forces they would have wished for. Possibly also I had jinxed them a bit by writing in that last post: "I don't see how the attackers can lose". However the main problem is that assault by escalade is exceedingly difficult. Now, obviously it should be, but then again one wants a balanced game. I came away with a number of thoughts as to how to tweak things, for example I think more, but smaller, defending units might work better. The attackers also need to concentrate their efforts to gain local superiority. I had held off posting about it pending trying those out, but have decided to move on and do something else completely.

So, overall I thought the rules, which you will recall were published about a year ago in Miniature Wargames, were an interesting way to represent a medieval siege. They could also provide a platform to build on to include some of the aspects which Vauban's Wars introduced effectively e.g. food, spies, disease. The part that didn't work for me was the assault, but funnily enough that's the bit that isn't handled well by VW either.