PotCXXpouri

 This is mostly going to be about wargaming, but I must pass on my congratulations to the boy Windass, who done good. My interest in football has diminished in line with the growth in murderous regimes using it as a front. However, young Josh was at school with the elder Miss Epictetus (and yes, his father did cut a somewhat incongruous figure at nativity plays etc), so I have kept half an eye on his career from afar. I have no real idea why young men seek out the highly-paid and glamorous career of a professional footballer, but moments like that at Wembley yesterday must go some way to making the rest of it tolerable.

Anyway, on with the wargaming. We have played Möckern twice more, or more accurately one and a half times. It has become apparent that Epic C&C will not fit the role assigned to it i.e. a game that can be guaranteed to finish in an evening, which is a shame because to me it's much better than the original version. On a happier note the new 'Activated' tokens worked very well, to the extent that I have dug out some other tokens (actually they're tiddlywinks) to mark things such as units taking a march move. I don't know why I didn't think of this years ago.

There has also been some progress on the kern. To recap, I bought these  - a mix of Tumbling Dice and Red Box figures - earlier in the year when Test of Resolve was all the rage, but then went down with Covid. Having recovered sufficiently to think about painting again I discovered I had no plastic primer. By the time I bought some more the moment had passed and, once again, nothing happened for a while. Eventually having sprayed the plastic figures it was necessary to fix javelins to the metal figures, but I found that my superglue wasn't very super. In fact it wasn't any sort of glue at all. This was a bit of a surprise because my normal problem is sticking the wrong things together - one of them usually being my fingers - rather than failing to stick at all. Either I'd had it too long or I'd bought cheap stuff in the first place; knowing me it will probably be both. So, after yet another delay more glue was procured and there has been some progress.

I wouldn't hold your breath for a photo of the finished article, nor for a report on our refight of Mortimer's Cross.

Ferrybridge

 Wargaming has been both infrequent and irregular recently, for a variety of reasons (*). However, Peter came round yesterday and we had a run through of the Ferrybridge scenario from the first Test of Resolve scenario book. It is structured in three parts - as was the original battle of course - and I had been a bit sceptical about it all hanging together. Peter had persuaded me that, au contraire, that whatever happened we would be able to construct a sensible narrative. In the event we didn't have to because, apart from Clifford surviving to see Skipton Castle again (always assuming he gets through Towton alive of course), it unfolded in a very historical manner.

I only took one photo of each phase, so no matter the level of technical quality, they're all going to be included. The first shows the Yorkist attack across the bridge after the Lancastrians have seen off the first two companies of attackers and Warwick himself has been wounded and carried to the rear.  

Notwithstanding these losses, sheer weight of number told and the second phase saw Clifford arrive to try to retake the bridge. The chap with the flag is whichever knightly commander we hurriedly pulled from the box to act as first reserve; I'm afraid I can't remember who had that honour. The defenders had regained some strength, but their diminished resources meant that they were swept away without inflicting any losses at all on Clifford's men.

The only thing in focus in this photo would appear to be the bridge, so you'll have to take my word for it that it shows Fauconberg's flanking attack, after his having crossed the Aire somewhere upstream. Given the Lancastrians being at full strength and having a sizeable complement of archers, I think we both assumed that they would easily see off the threat. But, the rules rose to the occasion and Clifford's archers ran out of arrows before doing anything of note. Fauconberg sent his own archers forwards and after suffering steady casualties that Lancastrians decided to withdraw. At that point they got the luck of the cards and were across the table and off before the Yorkists moved forwards at all. The scenario therefore ended in a draw, although Edward IV was now free to march onwards to  catch up with Queen Margaret at Towton. However, for the time being at least they won't be meeting in the annexe. We have tired of the Wars of the Roses and will move, eventually, on to something else. 

Having played them now about half a dozen times, my overall view of Test of Resolve is very positive, and I would certainly recommend trying them out to anyone looking for some new Wars of the Roses rules. 

* Both known knowns and unknown unknowns.

Flourish. Enter King Edward...

 ... in triumph; with Gloucester, Clarence and the rest.

"Thus far our fortune keeps an upward course

And we are graced with wreaths of victory"

And so it proved in our refight of Barnet. Sadly for Hastings 'the rest' didn't include him as he had perished upon the roll of a natural one in melee. But Gloucester, obviously stung by my previous observation that he never seemed to make it through any of our games, played a blinder. I didn't take many photos and no good ones at all, but include this shot to illustrate Dickon in action.

This was the largest of the games we've played using Test of Resolve - indeed I'm pretty sure it was the biggest WotR game I've ever put on - and thus wasn't over quite as quickly as the others. It played out rather well I thought. The 'stand off distance' mechanism in ToR lends itself nicely to the scenario specific rules required to mimic the fog which was a big influence at Barnet historically. The clinching factor in our game was that Oxford's battle wasn't able to manoeuvre as quickly when it realised there was nothing in front of it as Gloucester's did in the same position.

I think we'll have one more WotR game before I set up a different period and no, it won't be Mortimer's Cross. No paint has yet touched kern, and I'm now off to Wales for a couple of days of birthday celebrations in the inevitable rain. One thing that does need sorting out is a better way of marking casualties and troop types. The existing system was designed for gridded games and just doesn't work properly in a non-gridded game. Also required is a method of distinguishing battles one from another given that most troops look the same. Neither of those will be done by next week.

Iechyd da.

Kern I Get A Witness

 What joy, there would appear to be a multitude of 'kern' puns out there. I think I vaguely promised to talk about the RedBox and Tumbling Dice kern figures that I had bought, but a picture is worth a thousand words:

Or it would be if it was lit better. I'll take another one when they've been undercoated. They are compatible in size and look fairly similar apart from the haircuts, as in the chap on the right has had one and the chap on the left hasn't. In fact the Tumbling Dice figure (that's the metal one) rather reminds me of a good friend of mine from university days back in the 1970s; one just needs to imagine that instead of throwing a javelin he is energetically playing pinball and is just about to bring that right hand down for some mean flipper action. So, where are the javelins, or darts as the Test of Resolve authors would have it? Those supplied are soft metal so I shall be replacing them with stiff wire. Prepare yourselves for details of how difficult it is to do that. I think my modelling skills are reasonable; they are certainly better than my painting skills, I'll say that before anyone else does. However, I have have a blind spot when it comes to superglue, so there could be problems ahead.

And yes that is the Financial Times protecting the table.

Three Battle Scenario - at last

 Firstly, a public service announcement: avoid this Covid thingy if at all possible. I was getting better, and then I wasn't. It is, to an extent anyway, my own fault. I had important reasons to take a day trip to London, but it rather set me back, not helped by all the inevitable train delays and cancellations. But, I had recovered sufficiently by Wednesday last for there to be a game in the annexe.

I'm not sure what's happened to the colour in that photo. It's the three battle scenario from the Test of Resolve rulebook, with a small change. The scenario has one battle with a mounted contingent, but given that the first thing that would happen is that they would dismount, I pre-empted that and made them fight on foot from the start. Instead I gave each side a small unit of mounted household reinforcements, so that we still got to see how the mounted rules work.

As you will note if you look carefully at the picture above, one of the things we were able to test is what happens if mounted men-at-arms charge into the rear of a unit which is running away. Funnily enough, it didn't end well for the foot unit. (I'm afraid that's Richard of Gloucester meeting an early death in one of our games, and not for the first time; he's jinxed) If Somerset and his boys had stopped there we would perhaps have come to the conclusion that cavalry could be dominant on the battlefield. However, rather than retiring and regrouping they charged on and quickly demonstrated why that wasn't what happened during the Wars of the Roses.

It was, once again, all over rather quickly. These rules really don't mess about. I, on the other hand, do mess about and there has been no progress at all on painting all the kern I bought at such great expense.

My WotR Collection

 That title makes it sound as if I am going to post photos of them all, but I'm not. I'm actually responding to a couple of questions that I've had: are the figures Perry plastics, and are the new Irish kern that I have ordered, er, Perry plastics. In both cases it's a no. My figures are 20mm, and most of them are actually Hundred Years War figures deployed anachronistically with no shame whatsoever.

This was the first period that I painted when, in my forties, I was looking for a hobby which I could pick up and put down in the periods between professional assignments. I chose 1/72 soft plastic because one key criterion was not spending much money. (As an aside, that worked out well didn't it.) I had always been interested in the Wars of the Roses, there weren't any figures available, so I bought those for the HYW instead. I had no thought of gaming and no one else would ever see them so it didn't matter. As time went by more specific 15th century figures became available labelled variously as WotR, Burgundians, Swiss, Hussites etc, but I didn't replace anything. Instead I simply mixed them in, as I did a few metal figures from Tumbling Dice's range. The latter were often for things that it wasn't at the time easy to find in plastic: hand-gunners, pikemen etc. 

For the kern I have ordered a mixture of the Redbox Irish Troops and Tumbling Dice figures, just for variety really. The Redbox set also contains some Galloglass, which clearly I don't need, but will no doubt find a use for in due course. When everything arrives I shall tell you what I think.

Next week's game isn't going to be a refight of a specific combat, rather we shall have a go at the sample scenario in the rulebook which the authors use to introduce various troop types that we haven't employed in our games so far. These include mounted household troops, the rules for whose use I still haven't quite got my head around. 

Tewkesbury again again

 Not for the first time I can report that we have replayed the battle of Tewkesbury. The 'Test of Resolve' rules continue to please, perhaps even more now that we are playing them properly. The Yorkists won, mainly by dint of throwing large numbers of elevens and twelves, against which the Lancastrians had no answer.

There were several presentational changes starting with the movement trays which I had pre-ordered and picked-up at Vapnartak. I'd also painted up some more household troops, allowing for the nobles to lead their battles from the front rather than being embedded in units in order to bulk them out. I have to report that the plastic mountain is so depleted that if I wanted to refight Towton I would actually have to buy some more; who'd have thought that day would ever come.

Speaking of buying figures, there has been a request to do Mortimer's Cross, but unfortunately I have no kern. There's no point in buying any unless I get enough to also refight Stoke Field, which it turns out requires quite a lot of them. Still, what is money for if not to buy more toys? And it will still just about cost less than an evening at the opera, particularly after factoring in the programme, the ice cream and the private jet to San Francisco with Julia Roberts.

So, next week won't feature any Irish, but there will be some in due course.

Vapnartak 2023

 I was at Vapnartak at the weekend, for the first time since 2020. I arrived at about 10:45 and to my surprise had to queue for fifteen minutes to get in. There was some debate while we waited as to just how crowded it would be inside; in the end it was about the same as usual, so I'm not sure what the problem was. There are a few photos of the show elsewhere on the internet (try these for example), but none here I'm afraid. There were a number of games worth looking at and plenty of traders, and it was good to get back to visiting shows. The only other one that I have been to since lockdown was that attached to the Lard Workshop (*) and that was both smaller and unbearably hot.

Purchases were limited: some sabot bases to make movement easier in Test of Resolve plus the above book; oh, and a coffee, but sadly no cake because they didn't have any. I bumped into Peter and when comparing purchases I explained that I bought the book, as I always do with publications about the US invasion of Grenada, so that I could point out what they had got wrong. However, on this occasion a chat with the nice man on the Helion stand about the author and the commissioning process makes me think it will be less bad than usual. I bet they still don't mention Plessey though.

Peter also drew my attention to the fact that we had got far more rules wrong in Test of Resolve than I had admitted to here. So, that fact coupled with the new sabot bases, means that we shall definitely return to them in due course. Real life has intervened to make it hard to predict when that might be, but my fingers are firmly crossed that things aren't as bad as they may seem.

* Or possibly it was the other way around.

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.

Test of Resolve - the unboxing

 Even in a world where one can't actually play any games, one can't own too many rule sets. In my case that goes double for Wars of the Roses rules. I have therefore acquired the newly published 'Test of Resolve' and given them the once over. Should I ever get to try them out I shall publish a more considered review, but they are currently fourth in the queue, and I'm an old man, so who knows.

They are perfect bound with 92 annoyingly sized pages plus covers, of which the rules proper take up some fifty or so, including three pages defined as optional. Half a dozen of the pages are the cards which drive the game and which need to be cut out or copied. Alternatively they offer a playing card style deck and I bought those. They are print-on-demand, which is fine, and done by Amazon, which I'm less keen on. They look well laid out; in particular they are replete with foot notes which provide cross-references for where terms are used in a different place to where they are defined. There are a couple of colour photos of figures, but nothing excessive. The diagrams illustrating how units are move, melee etc are clear enough. They look a bit like the units are represented by different coloured and sized Lego blocks, which is an interesting thought. I don't know the authors, but recognise Tim Couper's name from various Piquet forums and the influence of that set is apparent, primarily of course in being card-driven. The cards here form a single deck, but half red and half white; broadly speaking the Lancastrians act on the former and the Yorkists on the latter. It's a bit more sophisticated than that, but you get the gist. They claim to only require one D12 per side, so bucket-of-dice they ain't. I'd need to play them through to tell you how that works in practice.

I suggest that we can split the problems with gaming the Wars of the Roses into two parts: the macro and the micro. By macro, I mean all the politics, family feuds, revenge, treachery, misunderstanding etc. For those who like that sort of thing, there are rules for unreliable commanders and potential unexpected events, including the splendidly named 'Mind the Gap' event. By micro, I mean that no one (N.B. I mean no one at all) actually knows how the forces were structured on the day or what tactics they used. One of the things I always look for in a new set of WotR rules is how they have addressed the concept of mixed bill and bow units. The authors make a bold claim: "Archer behaviour in this period is quite well understood". Their interpretation of this 'understanding' appears to tally with that of Dr Lewis, whose book I reviewed recently, although they don't seem to share any of his other theories. (For those who haven't read enough poor reviews of the book in question, there is another in the current issue of Miniature Wargames.) They do however appear to share one view held by another dubious 'expert' i.e. me. I'm not speaking of the idea that the soldiers were all drunk, because why else would they put themselves through it - although I stand by that one - but rather the one about the big men seeking each other out on the battlefield. I've always thought - be warned that I offer no evidence whatsoever in support of this theory - that, given that the wars were kill or be killed for those at the top, then what I would have done if I were Edward IV for example is to gather all my heavily armed and armoured, professionally trained men-at-arms around me and go looking for the Earl of Warwick, and visa versa. As far as I can see, the rules encourage, indeed in certain circumstances force, you to to do that. Kudos.

To be continued, peradventure...