Peter Brekelmans' Thirty Years War Variant for Commands & Colors - Latest V 2.2

Back in June I made reference to a Thirty Years War variant of Commands & Colors which I had been discussing with the chap who was developing it. During the course of what, for me, for family reasons, has been a rather fragmented Summer, Peter Brekelmans and I exchanged a great deal of correspondence, which I have enjoyed greatly, and from which I learned a good deal. Peter, like me, felt that it should be possible to develop a decent 17^th Century variant from the existing GMT Commands & Colors games – his starting place was my own attempt at an ECW game, but he wished to extend the scope to cover the Thirty Years War more completely and – unlike me – he wished to commit a proper effort to developing some scenarios.

Peter uses the concepts of Command and "Chaunce" cards, as did I, but his card sets are rather different from mine. He also was keen to amend the game so that melee combat was simultaneous, rather than the C&C system of attack-and-then-battle-back. We spent some time working with this, and developed systems which would make simultaneous melee blows possible, but we had concerns that the fundamental balance of advantage in the game might be distorted (in favour of the defenders, I believe), so Peter has retained the 2-stage C&C-style melee combat, and offers simultaneous melee as a game option.

My own ECW variant has been in use for some years now, though I confess the current documentation is a little out of date; Peter’s game has been well thought through, but we have lacked the opportunity to do any proper playtesting. Since Peter is running out of enthusiasm to develop this further, in the absence of a potential audience, we’ve agreed that I should make the game available on this blog. I can claim the best of both worlds here – if there is any reflected glory going, then I was a contributor, but if you wish to take issue with any of it, don’t come to me – it wasn’t my game anyway!

I think the game, as presented, is a very nice package – certainly it is thought provoking and a useful education to people like me who know little of the TYW. I shall persist with my own ECW game, though I shall certainly incorporate a couple of new tweaks which came from our discussions, and I hope to get a chance to do some proper testing of Peter’s rules when opportunity presents itself.

*** Update - as from 9th April 2017, the rules and the scenarios have been revised to V 2.2. The presentation of the Command and Chaunce Cards has also been greatly simplified. ***

 You can download the sheets from Google Docs – you will find

Rules Booklet

Army Reference Sheets

Calculation Sheet

Terrain Effects

Chaunce Cards

Command Section Cards

Command Tactics Cards

Scenarios

I shall keep this post linked from some panel near the top of my blog display, so that you can find it easily, and we’ll also set up a specific email address so that you may contact Peter about his rules.

I hope you will join me in complimenting Peter on his efforts, his knowledge of the period and his splendid rule-writing style.

Peter wishes to emphasise that the scenarios, in particular, are really drafts - in some cases almost discussion frameworks - and, in particular, have not been properly game tested. They provide a valuable reference as suggestions for games, but they come with no guarantee that they are quite ready for use as a rewarding social event!

Peter may be contacted at ga1632<CURL>rogers.com (replace <CURL> with the usual email AT symbol) if you wish to give him some feedback on his game or your experiences with it, or any general discussion points on the Thirty Years War.

Testing Day - some gratuitous photos

After Goya and his Austrians had gone home on Saturday, it occurred to me that I should keep the boards out, and set up some soldiers for some rule testing.

The particular things I'm testing at the moment are the continuing prototype of my "brigade activation" tweak, which enables groups of units to be ordered at one go, and the use of bodies of converged light infantry/voltigeurs as Commands & Colors-style light infantry (i.e. a representation of skirmish-order troops in a grand tactical game format).

I set up a couple of armies - far too many soldiers for the table (I had intended to add the table extension, but the extra folding support table turned out to be unavailable) - but it looked so good that I took some pictures. There's no battle narrative, or anything - the playing I did subsequently was just a series of situations to see how the rules work.

When I was in Bath recently I was asked how many Napoleonic soldiers I have and - of course - I have no idea at all. This is probably explained by my lack of focus rather than any suggestion that the number is very large. On Saturday, the conversation briefly turned to how big a battle I could stage, given the space and a big enough table - again, I had to admit that I didn't know, though I do know that I have 60-odd French battalions, if you include the Confederation chaps, the Italians, King Joseph's Spaniards and all that. It got me thinking - it might be worthwhile to set something up sometime - even if it just proves it can't be done, it might be fun finding out! It would require some joinery work and a lot of painting, and I'd have to borrow one of the farm's sheds - hmmm....

So - no story line here - no excuse for the self-indulgent pictures. Ian mentioned that he rarely saw my Brits these days, so there are some here. This set up (on the standard size, 13 x 9 hex C&C table) involves 2 divisions of French, attacking one-division-plus-an-extra-brigade of Brits. I think I have 6 French infantry divisions in total, so that gives some idea of the potential scale of a bigger, wider battle. I'll think about it. If you like this sort of thing, you can play spot-the-figure-manufacturer - nothing very exotic, I think.

The testing? - oh yes - still some more work needed - especially for the skirmishers...

French attacking from the right - 1st and 2nd Divisions of the Armée
de Portugal, circa May 1812

Here are some Brits - Wheatley's Brigade of 1st Division

...and some welcome European immigrants - Von Löwe's KGL brigade, with
Colin Halkett's German Light Brigade beyond...

...and two enormous battalions of Foot Guards on the left, with the heavy
cavalry - yes - that is the Scots Greys on the end, casually dropped in from Ireland for
the day

Some of the converged skirmish units - here are some companies of the 5/60th Rifles in a village

...and the opposition - combined voltigeurs of Barbot's brigade of the French 2nd Division

The stream in the foreground was last seen some 160 years earlier, near Sunderland!

Mostly Garrisons and Les Higgins, I think - note the coloured cubes to denote the brigade structure

These are just different views of the same situation - note the plastic kitchen
utensil - a spatula - an invaluable device for handling troops on sabots; by
the way, following Brexit the sabots will be officially termed "clogs" - one
advantage is that my pal Grammaticus can probably pronounce this

ECW – The Battle of Netherfield (1644)

Good grief - Col Trevor's boys, who won the battle almost on their own

This was a bit of a spur of the moment – Nick and I set up the battlefield to have a quick playtest of the amended C&C_ECW rules (faster movement for foot units, if remote from the enemy) and to try a more open field than usual, better for cavalry.

Nick was the Royalist commander, and made his customary gung-ho start, with units of his “galloper” horse charging off on both flanks, with no attempt at either support or co-ordination. I smiled to myself and prepared to fight off these foolhardy diversions, thinking ahead to my inevitable push to victory in the centre.

It never happened. Nick’s right flank cavalry pinned my left flank in the corner of the table, and his left flank attack, notably Col Marcus Trevor’s Horse, with some support from Tyldesley’s regiment, somehow routed two of my veteran foot units in rapid succession, and then set about my militia foot, whom I had kept carefully out of harm’s way, but who now simply melted away. And so it continued - the rules for rolling cavalry melees worked to stunning effect. Normally they result in the cavalry overreaching themselves, but this time they just annihilated my right and centre. Admittedly there was an element of luck in the dice rolls, but I have not been so thoroughly trounced in a wargame for many a year – I lost 8-0 on Victory Counters in about 80 minutes total playing time. I have no idea what my Parliamentarian losses were – must have been thousands, and I lost a general – but I do know that the Royalists lost a grand total of 2 cavalry bases – which is approx. 200 killed and wounded. It was, in short, a whitewash, but such a glorious one that it was a privilege to be on the receiving end.

As usual, Nick did the photography.

Oh yes - the changes to the infantry movement rules seemed to work nicely, though the course of the battle was such that I almost forgot to notice such details.

Royalist light artillery - all the artillery was worse than useless

Artistic view of Lord Molyneux's horses' backsides

Downtown Netherfield, before the trouble started

General view - Royalists advancing from the right - in the centre of the picture
 you see Trevor's horse, on a very serious mission

…and, a bit later on, looking back the other way

The Parliamentarian left flank horse, pinned in a corner

Lord Byron's Foot recapture the village of Netherfield

Trevor's Horse, after a brief repulse, continue the rampage

This typifies the whole day - I presented my worthy opponent with a Hazzard a
Chaunce card, which should normally result in his troops all being struck
down with colic or worse, but on this occasion it merely resulted in Tyldesley's
Horse (as it turned out) becoming even more dangerous than before. On
the grounds that I can never be so unlucky again, I take all this in good spirit
(mumble, mumble…)

Just to make sure that the size of the victory did not go unnoticed, our
photographer wishes to emphasise that this is how many Victory Counters he got...

…and this is how many I got

Late Edit: Overnight I received a friendly email from Daniel, a regular correspondent, who points out in a jocular way that such a catastrophic defeat – especially at the hands of an 11-year-old opponent – suggests gross ineptitude in at least one of two areas: my generalship and my rule-writing. How, he asks, can I regard such a disaster as any kind of privilege? Where is my fighting spirit, my self-esteem?

I've been thinking about this.

I am happy to accept that he is probably correct, and go along with the humour of the situation, but I have played wargames for many years now – I’ve seen most things there are to see, within the scope of the periods and the types of games in which I have been involved. Though I have known underdeveloped rules to produce some silly results, only once before, in all those years, have I seen the chance element in a properly tested game take complete control of a cavalry attack and produce such an event. People can live their entire lives and never see a straight flush, an avalanche, a perfect storm, an alignment of the little planets of probability in such a way that normal logic and rational expectation are suspended.

We can – we probably will – play the same game again today, and it won’t play out the same way. It couldn’t possibly. Yesterday’s result was certainly a freak, but then all results of a game involving chance are freaks in their own way – this was notable only for its extreme degree. If the cavalry sweep the table in the replay then the rules are definitely crazy, but they won’t. The perfect storm of dice and cards comes along rarely enough to be memorable, and to be strangely thrilling, when it does, for the sad little, faintly autistic people like me who devote some of their precious time to watching for such things.

History is full of unexplained, almost miraculous events which decided battles. Maybe this story is a gentle argument in favour of keeping the chance element in rules fairly high. I can make excuses as much as I like, but historians will never know for sure what brought about the disintegration of my army at Netherfield(!), in the same way that they still argue about what exactly turned the real battles of Montgomery and Adwalton Moor, among numerous others, in the same war.

ECW Playtest - Action at Meols Harcourt 1643

With my feeling a lot more energetic, a little sunshine outside and a spare Saturday to fill, Nick and I took the opportunity to give the new ECW armies a bit of a run out, and do some further testing of the ECW variant on Commands & Colors which I produced over the Winter.

This was real toe-in-the-water stuff. We deliberately kept the armies small – Parliament had 5 regts of Foot, 2 of Horse, a medium gun and 2 Leaders; the Royalists had 4 of Foot, 3 of Horse and 2 Leaders.

The action took place in April 1643 around the mythical village of Meols Harcourt, which controls some key crossings – a ford and an ancient stone bridge – over the River Hassop, which might well flow into the Lune further west. We also kept the game simple – since it was an early try-out we did not categorise any of the units as Veteran or Raw or Militia (though we could have done) – the only complication we deliberately included was that we made all the Royalist Horse Gallopers and their Parliamentary opposite numbers Trotters.

It went fine. We were a bit slow, perhaps, because of all the checking of rules and general unfamiliarity, but we hit no problems. It’s a nice, crisp game.

The action suffered a little from having no real objectives – obviously the forces had blundered into each other, and the idea was just to cause maximum damage. The Royalists had cavalry on both flanks – Lord Byron’s regiment crossed the river early on at the ford. Philip Egerton’s foot regiment hurried to prevent the crossing, but they were driven back and then very roughly handled once the horse were safely ashore. On the opposite flank a lengthy and vigorous fight between the remainder of the horse (2 regiments on either side) caused heavy loss to both sides, but was not decisive.

Eventually, the infantry forces in the centre came into contact, and the Royalists just about won the day in this area – a bit of a grinding match. On the Royalist left, Byron’s horse – delayed by a lack of orders (i.e. suitable cards) eventually rolled up the Parliamentarian right and the King’s men had won. Lord Byron and Sir Wm Fairfax were both wounded in the process. They’ll be back.

Observations on the Rules:

The Chaunce Cards had no effect at all today – only one was played, and it was a False Alarum. I would expect a typical game to have more of these.

We saw none of the unstoppable, rolling cavalry melees that Clive and I experienced at the first playtest. The Gallopers had an edge in the first round of any melee in which they were attacking, but did not necessarily sweep away the opposition. In this action the cavalry pretty much cancelled out, though I think the Parliament guys might have had some lucky dice to sustain that.

Artillery in melees, as designed, cannot fight back. The best they can possibly hope to do in such a situation is somehow survive until someone rescues them. If they are isolated, they are dead ducks in a melee.

Command Cards worked well – the Evade card was well used (one for each side) and a card called The Lord Is with Us produced a good advantage for the Royalists at the end, contributing bonus dice in three simultaneous close combats.

Harcourt House, home of Lord Meols

Meols village

Rigby's men [P] behind the tavern

Parliamentary horse on the left - Dodding's & Lambert's

The ford

Sir Wm Brereton's RoF [P]

Rigby's again - waiting for orders...

Belching Norah

It is recognisably C&C

Lord Byron's Horse [R] ford the river

The cavalry action beyond Harcourt, which lasted most of the afternoon

Philip Egerton's Foot unsuccessfully try to prevent the Royalist horse
crossing the ford

Prince Rupert's Horse just about hold on to defeat Dodding's

General view from the Parliament left, mid afternoon

Gallopers from the Northern Horse [R] attack Lambert's Trotters (who held them)

The infantry battle in the centre develops...

...and things look very bad for Rigby's, who should have stayed at the pub

As is usual now, Nick did the photos. Thank you, Nick.

Commands & Colors: Napoleonics - More On-the-Job Training

Russians & Prussians down the right hand side. Terrain is based on the Rolica scenario. I wouldn't drink from that river.

This weekend I finally played my first CCN games with an opponent. Clive - the Old Metal Detector himself - kindly came up to the Land of Mud to help with the action. I even got to see his umbrella, which he brought along.

The CCN game is now sufficiently well established for there to be a good number of players with more experience and better understanding than I have, so there is not a great deal of point in my revealing my findings in great detail, but we did learn a few things.

We fought three battles which were closely based on the first 2 scenarios in the CCN book. I say closely based because:

(1) My hex table has the hexes rotated 60 degrees from the CCN board, and has slightly different proportions. None of this is a big problem, but I am now giving some serious thought to painting CCN-oriented hexes on the reverse side of my war boards, complete with painted-out part-hexes on the edges of the table (don't hold your breath).

(2) Clive brought some lovely vintage Russians and Prussians - mostly Hinton Hunt and Der Kriegspieler - to fight my French army. In the absence of an official GMT national chart for these armies, we defaulted to making their characteristics the same as those for the French.

To finish 3 battles in a day, still able to speak and walk about, is a rare event indeed at my house. We learned a lot, almost all of which is certainly well known to many other players already. The main things were:

(1) The game makes a whole lot more sense with two players. It is an excellent game, though I do not think it is the only game I will ever wish to play.

(2) For players with little experience of CCN, defending is far easier. We decided that attacking needs very good co-ordination of troops (and thus shepherding of suitable cards). In particular, bringing artillery up to support attacks needs a lot of skill.

(3) The limited activation of units, about which I had misgivings, works well. Luck with the fall of the cards helps a lot, but the turns are crisp and logical, and the game seems inherently sensible as you play it through.

(4) It does matter where you place your generals - if you are sloppy about this, a leader may get in the way of one of your fighting units, and he might even be eliminated by enemy attack.

(5) The game works well with miniatures - we had no problems with the rules, though inexperience required us to do a lot of reading of the fine detail of Bonus Combats and so forth. It is vital to make best use of the terrain, and to use troop types to their strengths.

Retrospective edit: Clive now has a couple of very nice slideshows of his photos of these games posted here or here.

Commands & Colors: Napoleonics - Observations #3

Getting serious now. This evening, I had a bash at one of the published scenarios using miniatures, or at least something very similar to one of the published scenarios. I fought a battle which was strangely similar to Vimiero, though all thoughts of Vimiero vanished as soon as the table was set up.

I'm not going to relate the progress of the battle, this will just be impressions gained during the action. In fact, I called an intermission after about 8 turns, and will resume tomorrow. Bear in mind that these are all aspects of the game as seen by a novice. Tomorrow I'll be less of a novice...







Observation 8 - the battlefield was worryingly busy, from a scenic point of view - since hills have no effect on movement in CCN, this turned out not to be a problem, but I'm not used to having that much terrain on a tabletop. The game mechanisms, the lack of fussiness in the rules and the combat dice system all work quickly and give fast, bloody action, but, because of the command cards, at any moment this action is restricted to small numbers of units and specific areas of the field. The build-up appears slow, but the turns alternate quickly, enabling your hand of cards to change quickly (though, naturally, you seem to collect a lot of cards allowing you to issue orders on the flank which isn't supposed to be doing anything).

Observation 9 - the game is not complicated, but there is a lot to remember. I think I'll make up a one-page crib sheet which covers movement, combat and terrain effects - if it's any good, I might make it available on this blog. The rules should produce a battle which develops quickly and smoothly but, as a rookie, I spent huge amounts of time checking odd situations - can you carry out a Combined Arms attack on a square? (yes - well you can try) - can you do a Combined Arms defence? (no) - what exactly happens when a general is left on his own after a bad melee result? (if he isn't dead, he retreats) - and so on. I read and re-read the rule book so many times that I was starting to flag after a while. All the odd bits in the rules that I glossed over on the first reading - you know the sort of thing? - well, as far as I could see, they all came up! The rule book appears well enough structured, and there is a pleasing lack of ambiguity if you can find the right sections, but finding things when it matters is not always easy. I learned a great deal, but I learned, by and large, by arriving at each situation and playing it through, rather than by remembering details from my preliminary reading. I think a couple of trial actions will be needed before I get anything like up to speed, but what I saw thus far looks very promising. All you guys out there who try a new game every week have my wholehearted admiration - I don't think my brain does that any more. I'll take the rules to bed with me and read them over again, and this time I expect a few more lightbulbs to go on. Ah - yes - so that's what that means....

Observation 10 - the command arrangements are very relaxed – almost casual. Each army is allocated a number of general officers, but there is no implied structure - any general can join or assist any unit. I'm not used to that, but it works OK. Unless the scenario enforces one, there is no higher organisation beyond the unit. You can, of course, be like me and place all battalions from a single brigade together and so on, but there is no need. In fact, a unit does not really have an identity in CCN - only a classification. This is closer to Joe Morschauser than I expected.

Good fun so far - I'll be back to the table tomorrow, I'll know more and I'll be quicker (and make less daft mistakes). The huge advantage of buying a commercial game is that knowledgeable people have put many hours into making sure it works and produces reasonable results, but you do have to trust the system!