Mound Builders And Malplaquet

I've continued to play around with Dominion of Pike & Shot, although with nothing worth reporting here. I an pondering how to run a quick campaign with it though.

I did try a game using two of my Native American armies though. They're probably outside of teh period although they would both be enemies of the Conquistadors to some extent. Anyway, since they were handy from my holiday the other day I created lists for the Mound Builders and the Maya. For the purposes of the game the Maya list could represent some of the cultures of the south-west US.

Mound Builders - 1 x Armoured Swordsmen (The Great Sun and his bodyguard), 1 x Elite Archers (Nobles), 1 x Archers (Lesser Warriors), 2 x Spearmen (The lowest of the low)
(1 x Armoured Melee Foot, 1 x Elite Missile Foot, 1 x Missile Foot, 2 x Melee Foot)

Maya - 1 x Swordsmen, 5 x Skirmishers
(1 x Melee Foot, 5 x Missile Foot)

The Maya defended so I assumed that they would have some of their missile troops in ambush or in cover of some kind. I dropped one of them and made two of the others Armoured.

The 'armoured' missile troops are behind rocks.

Early fighting sees teh Great Sun and his bodyguard in action. I didn't make them elite because I don't see the element as strongly offensive. But the bodyguard would be steadfast fanatics, so it's a hard element to kill.

Elite bowmen take on the protected skirmishers.

The Mound Builders grind down the opposition

A flanking move by the Great Sun wins the battle for the Mound Builders.

The game was surprisingly fun (and short, obviously) and it will be interesting to see how these armies look when I dig out my Conquistadores. 

At wargaming this week I was just a spectator. The main game was a bath-tubbed version of Malplaquet, using Valour & Fortitude.

You can read about it here: Mini Malplaquet 1709

Random ECW Armies For Dominion Of Pike & Shot

Snappy post title, eh? 

Anyway, since Dominion Of Pike & Shot is well-suited for campaigns I wondered how to spice one up. Now adding a few events beforehand or even during the fight might be interesting, but the first step would be to mix the armies up a little from the lists in the book. So I created a quick random army generator.

Firstly, the assumptions. They just cover basic Royalist and Parliamentarian forces. I haven't factored in Scots (of either stripe), Irish or the New Model Army, although the latter might simply evolve out of the rolls. Secondly it takes into account the Mixed status I noted in my previous post. In practice you can ignore it if you want, since it only affects one step at the end.

On to the system. It's not as cumbersome as it looks and I'm turning out armies in about half the time it takes to play a game.

Generate an army by rolling a D6 six times in succession (it's important that you do it in succession).

The rolls are as follows:

1-2 - Unit of Mounted (always melee)
3-4 - Unit of Foot (see below)
5 - Special Unit (see below)
6 - Two Upgrades (see below)

Mounted - You get a unit of Melee Mounted. Nice and simple.

Foot - Roll a D6 for what type:
3 or less - Melee
4 or more - Missile
Parliamentarian, and later Royalist armies get +2. All Foot is Mixed (but see below)

Special - Roll a D6 for what type:
1-2 - Artillery
3-6 - Dragoons (Missile Mounted)

Only the FIRST and THIRD Special roll generates troops. Other rolls are processed as follows:
The unit is either Foot or Horse. Choose the type that is currently least represented.
If Foot and Horse are equal then roll a D6:
1-3 - Commanded Shot (Missile Foot, not Mixed)
4-6 - Pike (Melee Foot, not Mixed)

Upgrade
You gain two upgrades (Elite or Armoured or a mix of the two) to add to units after the army is generated.
Only the FIRST and THIRD Special rolls provide Upgrades. Other rolls are processed as follows:
The unit is either Foot or Horse. Choose the type that is currently least represented.
If Foot and Horse are equal then roll for a Special unit regardless of how many have already been assigned. 

Armoured can represent troops with better defences (Haselrig's Lobsters, for example), but could also represent the unit having a terrain advantage - Dragons in hedgerows or foot on a hill, for example).

Elite will generally be better quality troops, but could represent units that appear unexpectedly or who, again, have a defensive advantage; musketeers whose opponents have to advance across muddy ground, for example.

Finally, if the army has army has any Mixed foot, roll a D6. On a 1 a random unit loses its Mixed status becoming either straight Pike or Shot.

An example? Go on then.

We'll start with the Royalists. We'll assume it's early.

First Roll: 3 - Foot (we'll determine the type afterwards)
Second Roll: 2 - Horse
Third Roll: 5 - Special
Fourth Roll: 6 - Upgrade
Fifth Roll: 5 - Special. Since it's the second Special roll I check to see if Foot or Horse are in a minority, and then apply that type. But I have one of each so far, so instead I roll again: a 6 means I have Pike-armed foot.
Sixth Roll: 6 - Upgrade. This is the second roll of 6 so instead I get the least represented type. I now have two Foot but only one Horse, so I get another Horse.

I now roll for the Special. A 4 gives me a Dragoon (Mounted Missile)
I roll for my Foot unit. A 6 means it's Missile Foot.

I roll a D6 for the Mixed foot. A roll of 3 means that they all maintain their Mixed status.

Finally I apply the Upgrades. I put the Dragoons in a solid defensive position, making them Armoured. And make the Pike unit Elite.

So the army is:

2 x Horse (Melee Mounted), 1 x Pike & Shot (Mixed Missile Foot), 1 x Cornish Pike (Elite Melee Foot), 1 x Dragoons in Hedgerows (Armoured Missile Mounted).

What does Parliament get?

First Roll: 5 - Special
Second Roll: 3 - Foot
Third Roll: 4 - Foot
Fourth Roll: 1 - Horse
Fifth Roll: 2 - Horse
Sixth Roll: 3 - Foot

So a pretty vanilla army there. I roll for the Special and get a 2 - Artillery.

(So far it's actually the army list from the book!)

I roll for the Foot. There's three of them and I get 2, 4 and 5, so they are all Missile Foot. Since they're Mixed I roll another D6. A roll of 1 means that one now just becomes Shot.

So the army is:

2 x Horse (Melee Mounted), 2 x Pike & Shot (Mixed Missile Foot), 1 x Commanded Shot (Missile Foot), 1 x Artillery.

Now we roll for Attacker/Defender and it's on with the battle!

I've tried a few games using this system and got some great matchups. These include a Royalist attack on a strong Parliamentarian position with foraging cavalry turning up on the flanks in a surprise attack, and an action that was almost entirely horse (shades of Powick Bridge). I ran some of the all-pike units as poorly armed militia and used small hills, hedges or areas of rough ground to represent armoured or elite units.

For a campaign you could pre-generate ten or twelve armies for each side in advance and then pull a card or roll a dice to see which one you used. 

As ever, I'm happy to answer any questions. One reservation I do have with it is that it possibly over-represents Horse, but I'll see how I go with it for now rather than add in another complexity.

Dominion Of Pike & Shot - ECW

I finally dug out my ECW figures yesterday and tried out some ECW battles using Dominion of Pike & Shot. They proved to be quite fun.

Here's a quick one so you can get a feel for the rules. I used armies from 1643. 

First, here's Parliament's troops - 2 x Melee Horse, 3 x Missile Foot (with Pikes) and 1 x Artillery

The Royalists have fewer units. Their army consists of 2 x Elite Melee Horse, 2 x Melee Foot (with Shot) and 1 x Missile Foot (with Pikes)

Effectively all of the Parliamentarian foot are shot-heavy whilst most of the Royalist foot is pike-heavy.

Parliament was the defender. This was the initial setup, with the two sides' horse facing each other on the flanks and the shot-heavy foot in the centre. Both sides had foot in reserve (as well as artillery for Parliament)

The artillery bombardment phase saw some deployment changes, as the horse of each army's right flank was driven out of position. Parliament deployed shot-heavy foot to replace it, whilst the Royalists put in a pike-heavy foot unit (they had no choice, to be fair).

On with the battle. The Royalists, as attackers, go first. In the pictures the yellow dice indicates the turn number, whilst its position shows which army and sector is currently active. The red dice is the Parliamentarian rolls whilst the blue dice is for the Royalists. A red counter marks a destroyed unit.

Turn One - Royalist. They attacked with their pike-heavy foot on their right, but lost to Parliament's horse.

They moved horse up from their reserve.

Turn One - Parliament. An exchange of fire in the centre saw neither side destroyed.

Turn Two - Royalist. They attacked on their right with the elite cavaliers routing the opposing horse.

More horse replaced the losses.

Turn Two - Parliament. They attacked on the right flank, but their foot were ridden down by the cavaliers on that flank.

More shot-heavy foot moved from the reserve to replace them.

Turn Three - Royalist. The Royalists pressed their advantage on their left, riding down the newly deployed Parliamentarian foot.

Parliament only had their artillery left to deploy.

Turn Three - Parliament. Once again they exchanged fire with the Royalist foot in the centre, but again it was inconclusive.

At the end of Turn Three Parliament failed to rally a unit of horse.

Turn Four - Royalist. Once again they attacked on their left and destroyed the Parliamentarian artillery.

Turn Four - Parliament. Things were looking dire for Parliament. They went for an attack with the horse on their left, but the fighting was a stalemate.

Turn Five - Royalist. The horse on their left could now outflank the Parliamentarian centre, and did so with extreme prejudice.

This left Parliament with one unit, so the Royalists had won.

This was  a fairly one-sided action with the Royalist horse on the left sweeping all before it. Parliament won one combat.

I'd played a few games before this one using the same (or similar) armies, and the honours have been about even.

I made two changes to the rules. I mean, did you really think that I wouldn't have by now?

Firstly I gave an army a +1 on its pre-battle bombardment if it had a unit of artillery in the army. Artillery is not that hot in with ECW armies in play as it's best against armoured units. I thought this made it a little more worthwhile. It's an interesting change regardless I think.

Secondly I decided to better reflect mixed pike and shot units. In the rules as written, whichever weaponry is dominant decides the whole nature of the unit, so shot-heavy units are missile foot and pike-heavy units are melee foot. This kind of works, except when it comes to the rules about which unit types are vulnerable to others. The shot-heavy foot are easily ridden down by melee horse, whilst dragoons (missile horse) make a mess of the pike-heavy foot. This felt wrong; in the former case the pikes should count for something whilst in the latter the shot in the formation should provide some equality.

So my solution is to add a new trait - Mixed. Foot defined as Mixed has a balance of missile and melee weapons. It is defined as either missile or melee as normal. However unit types that have an advantage over that type lose it, whilst the mixed unit does not gain any combat advantage over the types it would normally do so either. So, for example, a melee foot unit is vulnerable to missile mounted troops, but enjoys an advantage over melee mounted. A mixed melee foot unit has enough shot to hold off the missile mounted troops, so they lose their bonus, but it doesn't have the edge over the melee foot any more and loses its bonus as well.

I appreciate that this takes away part of the decision space of the game as it removes favourable unit matchup tactics, but I felt that it eliminated what I felt were some tactics and situations that felt distinctly un-ECW. 

All (or mostly) pike units would still count as regular melee foot, whilst shot units would count as regular missile foot.

Mixed could be used for Tercios and 30 Years War units.

I have started scribbling down some ideas for random army generation as well as random events, both pre-battle and during the battle itself.

Dominion Of Pike & Shot

If you've been following various blogs over the past couple of months you may have seen a few of them referencing the Dominion series of games. Starting with Dominion Of The Spear (for ancients and medieval) then Pike & Shot (for ... well, guess) and then Spear & Bayonet (for 19th century colonial) these are ruthlessly simple rules for extremely quick games. Perfect for running battles in a small space or with limited figures (the rules point out that you can play just using pencil and paper) they also allow you to do such things as run a campaign in a few hours.

I bought Dominion of Pike & Shot simply because it seemed to be the one that had the least mentions on blogs. 

The basic game is played on a grid (which can be implied; it's not that important). The grid has three sectors for each player - flank/centre/flank - plus a reserve area. Armies are built using points and will have between 3 and 6 units (with the author reckoning that 5 units is the 'sweet spot'). You deploy one unit in each sector with any remainder going in the reserve area. Then you're ready to go.

Troops are either mounted or foot and then either missile or melee. There's a separate class for artillery too. They can be further modified by the addition of armoured and/or elite traits. Each of the main four types has another type it's good against and another that gets a bonus against it. So, for example, missile foot is good against missile mounted but vulnerable to melee mounted.

The game starts with an artillery bombardment phase that can adjust the deployment, then develops into a series of combat rounds. A sector is selected and teh combat fought there. Missile troops get to fight first but melee troops have more chance of a hit. If the troops are of the same type then they fight simultaneously and can wipe each other out. Yes, there's not hits or retreats, A unit either escapes harm or is destroyed. It's brutal and quick. Units from the reserve replace losses. Once they run out a side may control a sector and can then use it to launch outflanking attacks.

It's a simple game and not that detailed, but it offers a few decisions as you play so isn't entirely a dice-rolling exercise.

For my first games I used my Great Northern War armies. They're out of period (the rules end in the 1660s), but I didn't think they were excessively so, and my ECW armies were down in the garage. I played a few games to get a feel, then decided to set up an historical battle.

So here's the 1709 Battle of Poltava pared down to the basics.

In the foreground are the Swedes - two units of elite melee cavalry and two units of elite melee foot. They have both of the foot in their battleline (right flank and centre) and one horse (left). The remaining horse are in reserve.

Beyond them are the Russians. All of their three foot are missile armed. One is armoured (the redoubts in the centre of the line). Another, in reserve, is elite, representing the Guards. Facing the Swedish left are dragoons (missile cavalry) and facing the Swedish right are other cavalry (melee cavalry).

The Swedes opened the battle by attacking the dragoons and routing them

Russian infantry moved up from the reserve.

The Russians attacked the Swedish right with their own cavalry, but the fighting was inconclusive.

The focus of the fighting shifted to the redoubts. 

The Swedes couldn't crack the Russian defence, however.

However on the Swedish left their cavalry kept advancing, smashing through the Russian infantry in front of them.

They now faced the Russian Guards.
(I added a small scenario specific rule that the Russian Guards had to be the last reserve unit committed)
The Swedish cavalry cut through them as well.

Russian losses; three of their five units.

The Russians tried to rally a unit and failed.

The Swedes now turned on teh redoubts and swept the defenders away.

This left the Russian with one unit, so they had lost.

The victory was won entirely by one unit of Swedish cavalry that simply rode everything in front of it. The Russians couldn't catch a break; three of the four units the cavalry destroyed got to shoot before they were attacked, and missed every single time.

This is a fun set of rules. Not one that you'll drag out for regular gaming purposes, but worth holding in reserve for when you need a quick wargames fix, or if you need a quick method of running battles for campaigns. For the latter I feel some small random events (in keeping with the limited granularity of the game) would make things interesting. 

Playing it for GNW didn't feel too awkward, but I understand that gunpowder-era sets are on their way so it will be interesting to see how it pans out in future.

I've only found one things that's not clear. It's possible for a unit to be attacking such that it needs a 1+ on a D6 to hit. I wasn't sure if an automatic hit was in the spirit of the game, so have assumed that a 1 is always a miss. But the rules as written don't mention that.

Sergeant Potato

Today I finished off the fifth unit for my Gentleman's Gentlemen regiment for Turnip 28 - the lump, Sergeant Potato. He featured in the previous post as a piece of terrain, but here he is all complete, with the base done and his medals and sergeant's stripes.

In Turnip 28 a lump is a murderous monster akin to a behemoth in 'Hordes of the Things'. Quite hard to kill early on, their ability to resist damage degrades as the game progresses. They are purely close-combat fighters, as you might expect. And they are a single-figure unit.

Sergeant Potato started out as a random monster of some kind I 3D-printed a few years ago, for use in giant monster gaming. I never really liked how it turned out, so never gave it a proper paint. Last week I dragged it out of my Pile of Shame, and went to work on it. I added lots of tendrils, naturally. I also used milliput to make him extra lumpy, and to completely remodel the head. The smaller spots are the tops of the Martian heads I cut off in order to add the top hats to the other figures in the regiment; if you look closely you can see the brain texture. The top hat and medals are scratchbuilt.

Here's a closeup.

I undercoated him brown with the intent of painting him with a turnip colour-scheme (off-white and purple), but when I showed the undercoated model to my wife she said that it looked like a potato, and I could immediately see what she meant. So I went with that instead.

My regiment is designed to be four units strong, so one of them would be swapped for Sergeant Potato. His hat can be removed as well, so the Sergeant could find himself in other regiments (maybe with different hats if I can be bothered making them).

The Long March

I started assembling and painting a force for Turnip 28 back in September. Last night my completed regiment took to the field in its entirety for the first time. So it has been a long march getting here. And that was also the name of the scenario June and I played. Two forces meet head to head on a board with lots of dangerous terrain. There are objectives scattered about. We try to grab them. It's pretty basic.

My Gentleman's Gentlemen are on the left, whilst June's pirates are on the right. In the enclosure bottom-right you can see the latest addition to my collection, a Lump called Sergeant Potato. He gives me a fifth unit I can swap into my force for variety, but for the purposes of this game he, and his enclosure, were dangerous terrain.

The Gentleman's Gentlemen arrayed for battle. Or, at least, an aggressive foraging action.

My brutes take an objective.

Whelps move up in support. June had moved her brutes up to assault the ruins.

My chaff started badly, with one of the figures killing and eating the other three. But he then advanced and starting sniping at the enemy.

June's brutes were hurled out of the ruins, so I charged them with my whelps. It went badly for the cavalry. But I know it's been a while since you saw me launch a futile cavalry charge, so I really did this for you. Sergeant Potato watched with interest.

My surviving whelp ducked into the Sergeant's enclosure and grabbed the objective there. Something horrible happened to him not long after, but I forget what it was.

June's brutes had been reduced to a single figure. My brutes went after it, but fell short on their charge.

June's cannon blew up. These things happen in Turnip 28.

With little to do The Milliner attacked one of June's snobs. He's not really a fighter, though, and quickly died.

June went after The Captain, and killed him, leaving me with a single snob - The Gentleman himself. Who managed to not feature in any photos I took.

In a continuing farce my brutes tried shooting June's lone survivor, and missed.

My lone chaff, stuffed with the tasty bits of his companions, took an objective. June attacked him with her snob who was promptly eaten by the terrain.

It was left to an underling to kill my skirmisher and retake the objective for the pirates.

June watches as my brutes finally manage to bring down June's single brute. It still took them two rounds of melee.

Somehow the game came to an end. I held three objectives and June held two. Most of the units and commanders were dead. It was another fabulous evening in the world of Turnip 28.

Once again my terrible tactics were offset by June's appalling run of luck. Her brutes and fodder failed morale tests that they shouldn't have, retreated long distances into bad terrain and the edge of the table and generally had a terrible time of it. A couple of key moves were thwarted by blunders or simply by the terrain killing things. But it was wild and silly and we had a good time.

Next stop - Shirecon, and my first Turnip 28 tournament.