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.