Tweakle Tweakle Little Star (2) – The Free-for-All

Having established that there are scenarios and battlefield configurations which are perhaps not ideally suited to the Command Cards activation system in Commands & Colors: Napoleonics, what else might fit the bill?

On the small number of occasions when necessity has obliged me to come up with something suitable (typically because the battle was the wrong size or shape for left/centre/right demarcation), I’ve successfully used a dice-based system, whereby the number of units which may be ordered is the total of nD6 (or, more usually, nD3), where n is given by an algorithm involving the current number of units and generals in each army, and might make some allowance for the historical abilities of the commanders involved. This system (and it has evolved a bit) is derived from assorted sources: Portable ™ wargames of various types and shapes, an OOP edition of Hearts of Tin, articles in Bicycle News and elsewhere, and even some stuff of my own. Personally, I prefer something simple, preferably linked to the structure of the army, which does not involve counting the distance between each leader and his units – not every turn, anyway. The ability to carry forward a small “float” for later use is nice, too. All good – the only potential weakness is that the algorithm has, thus far, been based on guesswork, the only check being that the resultant numbers of ordered units are not dissimilar to those in a straight game of CCN.

What I have actually done, though, is less important than the fact that the world is full of alternative ways of activating an army, and probably a fair number of them would have been suitable. It’s mostly a question of effecting a smooth join at the edges.

I had a lengthy exchange with Prof De Vries about what else I could have done. He is invariably amusing, but he also has a refreshing tendency to produce crazy extrapolations, which sometimes are more useful than he intended. How would it be, he said, if we dropped activation completely, and fell back on what we might consider a streamlined Old School game, where you can move or fight with anything you like, yet still keep the neat, quick, simple moving and combat systems from CCN? As far as I know, Peter Gilder and Charles Grant Sr didn’t bother about limiting the number of units under your command on any given turn (apart from the ones who were stopped or routed by the copious morale tests, of course), so you would expect a deep-throated murmur of approval from the traditionalists. In truth, such a game sounds like it might be a blast, and I am very keen to try one. Being of an analytical (not to say pessimistic) bent, however, the Prof and I also came up with a few potential problems.

1. One of the reasons why CCN works so well is that the games move quickly – your turn usually doesn’t give you a great amount of scope for moving stuff about, but it will be your turn again very soon. In direct contrast, if I could get back all the accumulated time that I’ve spent over 40 years wargaming, watching people scratching themselves while they decide what they should do with their other 33 units this turn, I would have more than enough left over to build an Austrian army. I might even have enough to read all the way through the Empire rules. If we’re going to allow a free-for-all, then it will be necessary to impose some time limit on a turn – if your time runs out before you’ve fired then perhaps you will learn something for next turn.

2. If all units can be ordered every turn then there is no opportunity cost, there is no need to prioritise, or to choose the best use of a limited resource. In normal CCN, if you wish to order a unit to come out of square then that will be one less order that you could have used to do something else. With no limits, you can have your cake and eat it as well, every single turn. This would not have occurred to me 10 years ago, but it seems quite uncomfortable now.

3. The Prof also made the point (and it may be a very good one – this is not the bit of game design where I have a very strong intuitive feel for things) that if everyone can move and fight then the balance of the game may alter. Attacking will become easier, because you can just throw everyone in, and deploy the artillery nicely in support, but on the other hand everyone in range will be able to fight back. He saw a number of potential distortions which could arise, the chief of these being that it would be much easier to move units to gang up on an isolated enemy unit – especially on the end of a defensive line. One suggestion was that the traditional SPI/Avalon Hill Zone of Control idea should be applied – it should become necessary to engage every adjacent enemy unit, you can’t simply ignore some of them to concentrate on getting a local superiority over others. Also, since the normal CCN game is expected to involve action from only a few units each turn, the kill rates might need to be reduced a little if the game were to become a free-for-all in this way.

As ever, we have no convincing answers, but we have at least identified a number of questions. I am determined to try a no-activation-limits game of CCN (without cards), just to see what happens. Solo, I think…

In the next post I’ll talk a bit about another possible approach I discussed with the Prof, which probably will not work either, but is not without interest, I think. After that, if I’m still up and running, I’ll have a look at possible tweaks for Leaders in CCN, which might offer some more useful results.

Tweakle Tweakle Little Star (1) - here we go again

Not a lot of wargaming going on here at present, what with one thing and another. There are still a number of related activities I can involve myself in at odd moments – fettling figures, a bit of painting, redrafting (yet again) my plans for progressing the Artillery Project, background reading – all that – but only a few actual battles of late. One thing I still enjoy very much is sitting down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, a pencil and an A4 jotter, and scribbling down ideas. Recently I’ve been (yet again) doing a bit of going-back-to-basic-principles, partly because it’s fun, partly because it often helps reaffirm the faith, and partly because it sometimes generates new ideas, or at least turns a faint light on some old ones. Partly, I guess, it is also because it has become such a familiar activity that it is comforting to get back to the same old thought processes. Maybe it's a time-of-life thing - if I catch myself always wearing the same old sweater when I do it I'll get some more clues.

For a few years now I have been using Commands & Colors: Napoleonics as my main rules for miniatures, as people who read this blog will have noted ad nauseam, and this has produced a few changes for me – none of them bad, I hasten to add, but all worth understanding for what they are, and worth bearing in mind.

First and most important change for me has simply been the use of a published rule set, with the package of advantages this brings, and with the consequent behavioural discipline it imposes (unaccustomed as one is to discipline).

Big advantages have been, quite simply, that the system is widely used and extensively tested, it works, and it gives games that are fast and mobile and more enjoyable than most of my wargaming has been for years. It’s hard to argue against that, really.

The discipline, and this is more serious than it may sound, is that I have had to get used to keeping my hands off the rules. Leave them alone. They work. I’ve never had a set of rules, ever, which I have not eventually ruined by attempting to improve them; once the supposed improvements used to be in the direction of greater realism (the Great Blind Alley of Realism, especially given my own feeble grasp of what realism would look like); later they were in the direction of simplifying or speeding up the game (to overcome the tedium introduced by the earlier attempts at realism), but they almost all failed because I did not understand the fundamental fact that game design is a real skill (or science, if you will), and a simple tweak will usually have an unforeseen downside where you hadn’t expected one. So for C&CN, thus far, I have managed to avoid tweaking a working system, and my new belief set includes this as one of the doctrines. The game works, and – broadly speaking – leaving it untweaked also works.

Good. So what is the pencil and paper for, then?

Well, in the last 12 months or so I have hosted a number of games with visiting players who were completely new to wargaming (Lord help them, coming here) or else were experienced, sometimes very much so, but had not played C&CN before. Their reactions were interesting, and served to highlight, and sometimes confirm, some of my own.

The complete novices all found the game straightforward enough, after some initial coaching, to be able to follow the narrative of the battle, rather than struggle with the rules themselves. That is a terrific strength. No-one, as far as I know, was frightened away. The experienced guys all found it interesting – sometimes not quite to their preferred taste - and understood the game readily, including its differences from and similarities to other games. I think there have been four such visitors in the 12 months, and they all – to a man – produced some well thought out suggestions for tweaks to the rules afterwards.

Which is, of course, exactly what my own reaction would be. Some of these suggestions would make the game more like other games with which they were more comfortable – that’s absolutely fine; in some cases I had considered some of this stuff already – some of them were decent ideas but, in the interests of preserving the untweaked rules (which work, let us remember), I disregarded them. Some of them, though, hit the odd nerve…

If I am to be absolutely honest – and this does not compromise my faith – there are a couple of aspects of C&CN which still don’t feel quite right for me, and my requirements are evolving a bit. This is going to be an unfair, unbalanced presentation of some ideas, and I hasten to emphasise that my first choice and my intention is to continue to use the game as published, so please don’t anybody feel moved to leap to Mr Borg’s defence.

1. The Command Cards which handle activation and provide occasional tactical opportunities are central to the game; they are a very large part of the “short, fast turns” philosophy which keeps the game moving, which makes it work so well, so it would be real heresy to take a dislike to them. However, there are occasions when the challenge, the main thrust of the game, becomes a struggle with the damned cards rather than a tabletop battle involving miniature soldiers. Also, if I’m going to be really picky, it’s very hard to justify some of the cards in terms of what they represent in a real battle. It’s nice when the artillery can suddenly advance quickly, or fire a lot more effectively for one turn, for example, as the result of the right card turning up, but why did it happen? What on earth does the Short Supply card represent? (This card is usually removed from my pack – regard it as a Scenario Variant if you prefer). I occasionally wonder what other activation approaches would work, in the absence of the  Chance Cards, which sometimes can seem to be faintly reminiscent of some kind of Waddington's game [shrieking noises offstage…]

2. To me, there is too much obsession with the published scenarios which come with the game. If I were spiteful I might suggest this shows a lack of imagination among the players, but my own view is coloured by the fact that I play solo much of the time (Maximilien No-Mates Foy). A two player game must give both sides a worthwhile chance of achieving something; the scenarios appear to concentrate on providing this balance as a priority, sometimes at the cost of a slight distortion of the historical context. Fair enough. Another advantage of the published scenarios is that they start with the armies present, set up (and looking good) and just out of artillery range, ready to go. They avoid types of action where C&CN, untweaked, does not work so well: bringing up reserves – including off-table reserves – or making large strategic moves on the table.

3. I have become more interested in using a wider board, with bigger armies. This appears to justify some changes in the Command and activation rules, if only to cope with the changes of scale.

4. I have recently developed a C&CN-based game to fight battles in the ECW. It still needs a little polishing, but works well enough to trot it out for visitors without fear of embarrassment (hopefully). One side effect, though, is that I have got into a habit of trying tweaks, refining or undoing them, then trying something else. I suppose the whole idea of an ECW variant is just an excuse for a mighty tweakfest, but this mindset is old and familiar and habit forming, just at a time when I thought I’d grown out of that stuff.

5. Leaders. Mustn’t be rude about Leaders in C&CN, because the game was fine-tuned by people who know what they are doing, but the Leaders are a bit limp, aren’t they? They feature in a couple of the activation and combat bonus Tactical Command Cards, but otherwise they are all the same as each other (no unseemly star or ranking system), they do not relate to any army structure (real or imagined), and they provide no combat or rallying advantages to troops they are attached to. Their main real functions are to help stop people running away and to avoid getting killed (since they count as Victory Banners in their own right). I know that there are some mooted changes for Leaders coming in a future C&CN expansion, but this is the one area where I might well have a go at some gentle tweaking before long.

6. Sieges. I am keen to get back to developing my incomplete (beta-test? dormant? stillborn?) Napoleonic siege game, and it makes sense now to use C&CN for the tactical-level actions within the sieges, and thus it makes sense to develop the one-day-per-turn part of the game in a manner which is consistent with (or is an extension of) C&CN. I feel tweaks a-plenty coming on.

OK – Leaders aside, I am not proposing to make any dramatic changes, but I have been amusing myself thinking what other approaches to activation might fit with the C&CN combat and movement systems. I have had to address this on a couple of occasions already – during my solo Peninsular campaign, for example, there was a battle which was fought end-to-end of the table, which doesn’t fit well with C&CN’s arrangement of Centre and Flanks on the Section cards; I improvised (borrowed) a dice-based system which worked well enough. The world carried on afterwards without lasting damage, and I didn’t feel particularly dirty, though I may not have rushed out to tell anyone at the time.

I’ll write a further post (maybe two) on some of the alternative ideas on activation I’ve been scratching at – for possible occasional use with the other, standard C&CN mechanisms. These are not working solutions, by the way, just more navel gazing. The value, as ever, if there is any, is intended to be in the scenery along the way rather than the destination.

Some of these ideas have already been distilled (or at least warmed up a little) in email exchanges, which I always find worthwhile – if you have contributed to these, and if you have offered some original idea which I claim as my own in what follows, then you have my undying gratitude and humble apologies. Prof De Vries - this means you.

San Marcial - C&CN in a Wider Fitting

View from behind the Spanish left flank - these are the voluntarios that Freire
was very concerned about - they held the position, despite a couple of scares

Last Saturday Iain visited here, and we played a C&CN game - the published scenario for San Marcial (Aug 1813) stretched for an expanded board, with rather larger forces. Because of the bigger table, we also used the Battlelore amendment to the command rules which I described in a previous post.

Iain has very kindly sent me copies of his excellent photos, so here they are, just to prove the event actually took place, with my thanks for his camera work.

The scenario consists of Clauzel's corps of Soult's French army, crossing the Bidassoa to attack a Spanish force under Freire on a line of three ridges at San Marcial. True to the original battle, the French fought vigorously and determinedly, but the Spaniards held out, the Victory Points margin eventually being 10-3, which includes 3 extra points for Freire for hanging on to the three hills and - in any case - rather flatters the defenders.

The action is primarily one for infantry - I included a cavalry presence in both armies simply because - well, you have to really, don't you? The French had a 3:2 superiority in artillery, but had little opportunity to bring it forward into action; the Spaniards, on the other hand, had their guns on the flanks, which caused a lot of damage to the attackers. The Spaniards fight well enough if they stand their ground, but the retreat rules for the Spanish army in C&CN are harsh - especially the voluntarios units, which are classed as militia - so getting them to stand their ground is the heart of the matter.

General view from the French left

Those voluntarios, on the Spanish left ridge

Some of Reille's Italians attempting to flush the Legion Extremena out of a wood

Lots of Higginses - Lamartiniere's French division, on the right

More Higginses - the Dragoni Napoleone

French advance under way, all along the line - keeping the momentum
without much artillery support was a problem  throughout the day

Villatte's Confederation Germans, on the French left, ford the Bidassoa, but
are already suffering from the Spanish cannon

Lamartiniere, at the San Marcial village, sets about those stubborn voluntarios

Spanish line infantry wait calmly for their moment

Spanish hussars (Extremadura) mostly stood watching - converted Hinton Hunts

The Italians now have the wood, but are starting to wonder if this is such a great idea

At this point Villatte's Germans on the French left are struggling to progress, the
Italians in the centre are running out of steam and Lamartiniere's Frenchmen at
the far end are fighting hard but getting bogged down

The voluntarios have yellow markers to denote their militia status, but the
beggars wouldn't run...

French cavalry supporting the Italians, but there were no broken troops to harry - it was
not a good day for cavalry

The Germans still struggling to get a hold on the other side of the river - a lot
of those bloody red markers in evidence

Final view - Freire's men still on their ridge, with plenty of fresh units if needed

Commands & Colors – the “Battlelore” Tweaks

Battlelore; the big guy on the left suggests this is not the Wars of the Roses

There should be some kind of regulation against old fools like me quoting things they do not understand – I had never heard of Battlelore until a couple of weeks ago, but I am assured that is huge and well-established. As everyone on the planet apart from me is probably well aware, it is a board-cum-miniatures game designed by Richard Borg and launched in 2006, which uses his Commands & Colors game system and is set in a world(?) of fantasy and mythical pseudo-history, and very good it looks, though it is not really my cup of tea.

Why is that, then? Why do I have this unreasonable prejudice against fantasy and sci-fi wargaming – is it simply that I am old and lacking imagination?

Well it might be, to be truthful, though in fact I am not really prejudiced against these categories of gaming. In principle, the idea of fighting games which do away with the limits imposed by recorded history and its technologies (and life forms) is exciting, and I can well understand why they have such an appeal. My doubts about them – the reasons they do not rock my boat – are entirely personal, and probably do not stand up to very much examination, but here they are, for appropriate mockery:

(1) A lot of this is based on cult movies or books – which is not in itself a criticism (after all, a lot of my wargaming is based on cult books written by Charles Oman and Donald Featherstone, amongst others), but many of the ideas and themes become repetitive and derivative. For example, someone who goes to the trouble of creating a fantasy world which is very obviously a crude and inferior rip-off of the works of Prof Tolkien or similar is actually displaying rather a lack of imagination, as I see it, though he may well be driven by a very shrewd commercial awareness. Not a real problem, and if the games are enjoyed by a great many fans then good for them.

(2) My suspicion that the imagination deployed is less than free-flowing is confirmed by the copious documentation for the games and their expansions; giant spiders, now there’s a really unusual idea (yawn), but there are very strict published tables of what these spiders are allowed to do, so play nicely, please. Whoever’s imagination this is, it had better not be yours, and don’t you forget it. Far from being a free-form, open-architecture playground for the creative soul, fantasy gaming is complex, fiddly and beset by heavy documentation which makes 1970s Ancients national championship games look very casual indeed.

(3) Much of it is heavily fashion-dependant, and bolstered by branding and commercial copyright. All those spotty people who hang around GW shops (how did you guess I would get to them eventually?) will mostly move on to other fads, which means that wargaming will become The Thing We All Did Last Year, which means that historical miniatures gaming, for example, might not be high on the list of potential Next Big Things for these guys. 

My cup of tea

Right, that should irritate a few people, for a start.

Iain has been on holiday in Scotland with his daughter, and yesterday he took the time to drive here from Aberfoyle, to say hello and have a quick wargame, which I appreciate very much. Sadly the day was wet and foggy, so the Front of Beyond was not at its most attractive, but the wargame took place. Iain took pictures, so I hope that some of those will appear here in due course.

Laying on a game for an experienced wargaming visitor requires a bit of unaccustomed thought, I discovered. Most of the games I play these days are solo, and the social games I play with friends are usually because I bully them into taking part, so there is not a lot of pressure to make the game balanced or anything. Normally, here, no-one gives a toss who wins, so my approach to scenarios is relaxed to the point of being horizontal. I’m not suggesting for a moment that Iain is likely to be at all precious about the occasion, but I would be very sorry to waste his time – especially considering the travel involved – and he has no previous experience of Commands & Colors, so it would be doubly embarrassing to turn him off completely.

For the first time I can remember, I spent a while looking through the published scenarios – an area on which have always thought that regular CCN players are excessively fixated – to find something suitable. I was also using my widened table, so I came up with a game which was a stretched (17 hexes x 9) adaptation of GMT’s San Marcial scenario from the Spanish Expansion set. To cope with the larger armies and the bigger field, I also adopted a Battlelore tweak for the use of Command Cards (which seemed a good idea, but added to the risk of screwing up the game through unfamiliarity). I’ll set out this tweak, which was the main reason for this post, below, along with some further ruminations on CCN.

The game went well enough. I gave Iain command of the attacking French army, on the grounds that the Spanish have only one strategy – stay put on the hills, hold your fire and roll good dice when the French arrive. In the real battle of San Marcial, Soult failed to dislodge the Spaniards and gave up. Iain’s experience was similar, but my initial reasoning was that at least he would have something to do if he was attacking. No doubt we’ll discuss it further when he gets home from his holiday; he found CCN interesting, not least because it has a character of its own, and he picked it up very quickly despite my stammering explanations, but it will certainly not replace Black Powder as his game of choice.

There will be more about the actual game when the photos become available. Here is the Battlelore tweak for the big game, as promised. One of the characteristics of Commands & Colors style games is that the Command Cards restrict each turn to a small number of units, and for a big army on a big field that can be too piecemeal an approach.

The Battlelore tweak allows you to use more than one card per turn and, unlike the full Memoir 44 Overlord or Epic-sized CCA games, it allows you to work with a standard pack of Command Cards, with a very small amount of amendment (which is especially attractive if, like mine, your brain is full and easily confused).

Battlelore Epic rules applied to C&C Napoleonics

This works with an enlarged C&CN map (e.g. Battlelore Epic standard is 17 x 13) and with a single standard Command Card deck.

Rules:

The Command Cards are of two types: Section cards (which refer to the left, centre and right of the battlefield, and carry an icon showing arrows) and Tactic cards (which do not).

An extra “Epic” card draw deck is created with three Command Cards drawn from the Command deck, visible (and available, in their turn) to both players. If, at any time, when it is first created or when it is replenished to bring it up to 3 cards, the Epic deck does not show at least one Section card, discard all 3 cards and take 3 new ones until it does.

During the Command phase of his turn, a player may either:

Play a single Section card, which may be from his own hand or may be from the Epic deck, or

Play two Section cards, one of which must be from his own hand and one must be from the Epic deck, or

Play a single Tactic card, which may be from his own hand or the Epic deck

At the end of his turn, when the cards used are replaced, the player’s own hand must be brought back to strength, and the Epic deck must (if necessary) be made back up 3 cards, at least one of which must be a Section card.

When playing two Section cards, the orders on both cards are carried out.

When a Section or Tactic card played activates a number of units equal to “Command”, this is the number of cards in the player’s hand, not counting the Epic deck.

Some cards have a slightly modified interpretation:

“Scouting” Section cards offer a chance to draw two cards and discard one of them; this does not apply if the card came from the Epic deck.

“Elan” Tactic card: ordered units battle at +2 dice for the entire turn, and the Command deck and discards are combined and shuffled – the Epic deck should be discarded and replaced at this point.

“First Strike” Tactic card: if this card is drawn to the Epic deck, discard it and draw another card.

Partly as a result of the brief discussion of CCN with Iain which was possible after the game, and various ideas I have been nursing for a while, I may have some further tweaks in mind.

First off, I am now in favour of simply discarding the “Short Supply” Tactic card whenever it appears, and drawing again. I find this card does not sit well with the overall game.

Next, I am not really very comfortable that the role of a Leader in the game is simply to prevent his troops from running away and avoid being a casualty himself. One of the things that I found hardest to come to terms with in CCN is the lack of army structure – any general can attach himself to any unit. That’s OK – it’s the game rules, but it is counter-intuitive based on all my past gaming. To give a Leader a rather more proactive job in CCN, I like the idea of allowing his troops to gain an extra die in combat if he is attached to them, in return for which the Leader casualty test will require only a crossed-sabres result on a single die for a hit. The trade-off is that the Leader adds to the fighting ability of his men if he puts his own neck on the line, but he has a higher chance of being hurt.

I’m not going to do anything drastic about this until I have seen what is coming in the mooted Marshals & Generals expansion for CCN – it looks as though the role of the Leader may be about to be jazzed up a bit, so I look forward to that. It is, in any case, possible to put a Leadership rule tweak in any particular scenario, so I could try out a few ideas in solo games.

The Big Table Takes a Bow

I'm expecting a visitor tomorrow, so I've set up the newly-extended version of my wargames table for a battle. This will be an expanded (17 x 9 hexes) Commands & Colors: Napoleonics session, which is basically a stretched version of the official scenario for San Marcial (August 1813) from Expansion 1 of the GMT game, and I'll use the Battlelore tweak for the Command Cards to facilitate the bigger battle. [If you are at all interested in this rules tweak, let me know and I'll explain it in a further post.]

The set-up - Spaniards on the left of the picture, Gen Freire with the yellow border

View from behind the French right flank - the Spanish hill at this end is held
by a brigade of voluntarios,  who are classed as militia and thus are subject to triple
retreats. There may be trouble ahead

The pictures show the set-up, ready for tomorrow. The French (mostly Germans and Italians, really) under General Bertrand Clauzel will cross the Bidassoa, which is fordable along its length, and try to knock General Freire's Spanish army off a line of 3 hills. 10 Victory Points for the win, and there is a special rule that the side occupying the greater number of hexes of each of the hills at the end of their turn will gain a temporary VP for each hill held. I'm not using the Guerrilla rule for this game, mostly because I think it's rather a silly rule…

The historical Battle of San Marcial ended with the French abandoning the attack, and thus losing on points. We'll see how it goes.

C&CN - Barrosa Scenario

Barrosa starting position (almost untweaked), from behind the French right

Yesterday I fought a Commands & Colors: Napoleonics battle with my friend Jack, who has no prior experience of wargames. Since this was primarily a social occasion, I gave some thought to what would provide a suitable game.

C&C is a pretty obvious game for a beginner, since it is straightforward, capable of being learned quickly (and as you go along), moves along briskly and is of short duration.

I made a mental note that I must take care not to frighten off my friend by being too enthusiastic, and I seriously considered an ECW game using my own variant of the rules – the ECW, after all, has a pleasingly ancient, other-worldly charm, and the funny costumes and quaint “Chaunce” cards all add to its potential appeal.

Eventually, I decided that the Napoleonic game has less fiddly bits (squares and combined-arms attacks notwithstanding) and involves less risk of someone being injured by a unit of pikes. Further, it seemed a good idea to use a published scenario, since these are pre-tested and should give a balanced game and – importantly – start from a position where the armies are lined up and ready to go. If it seems odd to justify using someone else’s scenario, I must explain that I normally do not use them.

I chose the Barrosa scenario from the 1^st (Spanish) expansion set, and made a few other decisions for the day:

(1) Use the C&CN rules as published, without my usual house tweaks (the Barrosa scenario does not involve guerrilleros, nor use of the guerrilla rules)

(2) Take care to use the unit sizes and strengths as published, rather than my own variations on these, so as not to distort the game balance

(3) The only tweak was to add a couple of units of cavalry to each army, to give a better spread of troop types for an instruction game

We adopted the approach of jointly examining the cards of both sides and agreeing the best moves on each turn, taking the opportunity to reinforce the way the rules work and consider the available options. The game went well – we were, I suppose, running it as a joint facilitation rather than as a match – Jack didn’t get too confused, and seemed to quite enjoy himself, and we finished in round about the standard two hours.

The narrative of the battle is quickly presented. The French set about the big hill on their left front, drove the Spanish infantry from it, and were then stopped dead by the British Foot Guards (who are a very serious proposition indeed), and by the (largely unauthorised) British cavalry, who made very short work of their French opposite numbers. The Allies won 7-5 (including the extra victory point for having most of the hill), the French situation not being helped by the spectacular failure of their light cavalry and the demise of General Ruffin. The wooded plain opposite the French right did not feature very much in the action, though it served to limit the effectiveness of their artillery.

The Spanish General Lardizabal, in passing, was the true hero of the day, leading units into action in a manner which would have astounded everyone back in 1811.

Anyway, an interesting afternoon. My liking for the un-tweaked rules is renewed, and I have another candidate opponent for future games. I have decided that the Short Supply command card is such a silly one that I may drop it from the pack in future - it is difficult to come up with a justification of what it involves (one unit selected to drop back to the baseline). I also have a new respect for the published scenarios, though I have to say that the Barrosa scenario is not awfully similar to the actual battle…

ECW – The Battle of Auchinrivoch (1645)

View from behind the Covenanters' centre as they wheel right from the road
into line of battle

In truth, the forces are not quite ready yet, but I went ahead anyway and staged a wargame employing my new “Campaigns of Montrose” units. The Battle of Auchinrivoch is, of course, fictitious, but represents what the troops involved at the real Battle of Kilsyth might have done on the same ground, on the same date, if they had not been otherwise engaged.

The Marquis of Montrose has available 2 units of regular Scottish foot, being the regiments of Strathbogie and Gordon of Monymore, plus his Irish brigade of 3 regiments, under the command of Major-General MacColla, plus approximately 2500 highland clansmen, 2 regiments of horse and a very small unit of firelocks.

He is opposed by General William Baillie, with a Covenant Army consisting of 7 regiments of foot (mostly from Fife and the Lowlands) and 2 regiments of horse, the cavalry commander being Lord Balcarres.

The rules are the current version of my adaptation of Commands & Colors for the ECW. All regular units count as average, trained troops, all cavalry are Trotters, the highland levies have no firepower and count as “raw” (double retreats). There is no artillery present – Montrose doesn’t have any worthy of mention, and Baillie has left his behind on the march. To reflect his greater flair, Montrose has 6 Command Cards in his hand, Baillie has 5.

7 Victory Points for the win.

Set Up

Montrose took personal command of the (unpredictable) highlanders, on high ground on his right wing. MacColla’s Irish troops were in reserve in the centre, and the regular Scottish Royalist foot were on the left, commanded by Lord Gordon. The firelocks were installed in Auchinrivoch Farm, in the middle of the table.

Baillie’s initial dispositions were generated by dice rolls, since his force (historically) was in column of march, and faced right to form line of battle when he realized that the Royalists had an ambush waiting for him.

Both forces had cavalry on the flanks, but they had no involvement until the very end of the action.

Action

Baillie’s original plan was to attack the highlanders with his main thrust, but the brigade under Colonel Haldane was distracted by the firelocks in the farm, who were causing some loss and annoyance. Haldane swiftly took the farm, but was promptly driven out again by MacColla’s Irish, at which point the highlanders swept down from the hill and routed most of Haldane’s men.

Baillie and Balcarres showed considerable personal courage in taking advantage of a Leadership card to gain some temporary success against the Monymore regiment, but this, too, was swept aside and Montrose won the day in a little over 90 minutes – 7-3 on Victory Points. The Covenanters also lost Colonel Haldane, severely wounded and taken prisoner.

The Pictures

Overview of Baillie's forces, from his right flank

Balcarres' Horse, on the Covenanters' left flank - they did nothing all day

Montrose's initial deployment

MacColla's Irish brigade in the Royalist centre

 

Montrose on the high ground, taking special care of his brave but brittle highlanders

More underemployed horse - this lot are Ogilvy's regiment, on the Royalist right flank

Baillie gets cracking with a "March to Victorye" card - throwing his infantry forward

This is how they would have looked from a helicopter above the Royalist lines

MacColla takes a more belligerent stance

Haldane would have done well to ignore the farm, but couldn't resist driving
the firelocks out of the position

 

Of course, having taken the farm, Haldane's men could not hold it against the Irish...

…and were driven out again with heavy loss...

…which they managed to reduce with some lucky "Rallye" dice...

…after which they got a further seeing-to from the highlanders.

Suddenly there were some very big gaps in the Covenanter line

General Baillie felt decidedly isolated as his men left him to get on with it

When the cards are against you, they are against you all the way. In desperation,
Baillie played a "Hazzard a Chaunce" card, forcing Montrose to take a Chance Card.
Typically, this should not have been in Montrose's best interests, but today it resulted in the
Royalist Gordon Horse suddenly realising that this was, in fact, their day to be
unbeatable, and they became Rash Gallopers on the spot...

…and they duly celebrated by cutting down Loudon's Foot, to give Montrose
his decisive 7th Victory Point. Game over.