1st April, Blectchley

The 2017 SoA BattleDay 

This year was Arsuf 1191 and the event was supported by eight different game/presenter combinations.

I had previously developed an Arsuf scenario for Armati but was very impressed with the reconfiguration I tried out as the show game at Claymore 2008 ... so, after a bit of tinkering, I decided to go with that.

This was therefore a mature project and benefited from having all the components available - Richard's fleet, personality figures for all the commanders, bespoke baggage for the marching column etc.

Here's a quick tour around the tables (I'll complete the captioning when I have fuller details - I was pretty much imbedded in my own game so haven't got complete notes) ... 

This was a lot more intimate a group than we have had for some of the Hellenistic/Roman fight days - which gain support from the 28mm big beasts - nevertheless, the room set aside for the introductory talk session was full (so we probably had fewer games but more player/visitors per game) ...

I had planned to 'workshop' the battle in episodes, trying bits of Impetus, FoG, ADLG maybe ... but as it turned out one of my volunteers wanted to try out Field of Glory (so that's where we started - it worked very well, so we decided as a group to stay with FoG and play it out).

Here are some scenes from my game:

(Arsuf - phase one ... Richard's army emerges from the defile into the open ground on the road to Arsuf)

(Arsuf - looking down Richard's column towards Arsuf, Saracens massing in the hills)

(Arsuf - phase two ... the Turks advance and engage the Crusaders with continual archery)

(Arsuf - phase two ... the Crusader foot are forced to turn and face ... )

(Arsuf - phase three ... Crusader knights charge out of the lines and a general engagement ensues)

In our battle, the Crusader column was successfully stopped and bodies of knights were drawn away from the protection of the close formation ... gaps appeared in the lines and Mamluk cavalry were able to burst into the box, even as far as Richard's personal standard.

Although there were a number of routed and exhausted enemy, many Crusaders fled towards the beach and cliffs, tumbling into the sea (presumably hoping to reach the sanctuary of their ships but certainly lost for the purposes of our game) ...

Luck was not with King Richard.

Historically, it had been a different story ... though many Crusaders did drown in panic, charges from the line had been more controlled and had caught sufficient of the Saracens to disperse Saladin's army beyond immediate recovery and Richard was able to claim a victory.

Operationally Arsuf was something of a stalemate: though claiming victory, Richard lacked the resources to strike at Jerusalem ... Saladin's field army was spent, however, and he could not exploit Richard's predicament.  The two commanders were forced to come to terms.

After the battle, though, Richard held the field and was able to complete his march to Arsuf in triumph ...

18th - 19th January, Usk, Sth Wales

Godendag FoG/FoG-R/DBMM Doubles ... 

My year of ancients on the road traditionally starts with the annual doubles event in the wetlands of South Wales ....

This year I think I can still include a report ... I went along, but (no need to reiterate) opting not to play FoG-AM version 2, I decided to give FoG Renaissance a try.  The period was chosen as a George Gush tribute, and featured the Age of Lance and Pike - starting in 1420 ... so easily within the Society's remit.   And easy for me to choose ... a pike and Roman dull thud which V2 does badly, or an Italian Wars outing (which FoG-AM did reasonably well, so why not FoG-R?)

Here's a pukka ancients scene from the AM competition ...

(Patrick's splendidly elephant heavy Carthaginians take a wall of pikes)

And here's a reminder of the Italians to which I would need to add some Swiss and Landsknecht pikemen to make a late 15th Century incarnation ...

(Phil's flamboyant Florentines ... they would leave all those clumsy pavises behind and pretend to be Milanese for Usk in 2014)

We got quite a good tour of what the age of Pike and Lance might have to offer ... world tour, that is ... and took on Ottoman Turk, Ming Chinese, the Knights of St John and a Japanese Samurai army ...  Well, I guess this was the age of exploration, and Italians were at the forefront of opening it up.   

Anyway, before we get started ... just a polite word ... A very significant formation in this period, and a specified formation in the rules, is the keil.  Keil is a German word (meaning e.g. wedge) and as such (ei, always) is pronounced kyle (rhymes with pile, style, Nile etc.) ... it does not (and never did) sound like the 'keel' on a ship (which in German would have the e and i the other way round, as in the German port city Kiel ...) ...

OK, OK ... I know ... wasted words ...

(Lost against Ottomans)

So, this was our first game as a team and my first game of FoG-R ... consequently my expectations were not that high but I did get to destroy a couple of groups of Ottoman cavalry.   My Italians have done a lot of these over the years, but on balance we have never killed enough of them - and likewise in this game which was mostly decided by the Turks' more numerous and better managed artillery ...

(Battle against the Ottomans: seen from the Turkish side, all guns blazing)

Siting and directing your guns is clearly one of the key skills in FoG-R ... Something which wasn't such a challenge for the Ming Chinese ... they had 16 of them (yep, 16 ... 10 mixed weight field guns and 6 'Regimental' guns) all across the front, as some kind of oriental firework display gone mad.

(Lost against Ming Chinese)

In a thoroughly enjoyable game, we just about survived the gunnery, got right the way across the table to that far distant and fairly low rated infantry line ... then stuttered ... fortune favouring the Chinamen ... Full Plate Gendarmes - who had shrugged the gunnery aside - disintegrated in the face of average bow and crossbow storms, while our superior armoured Swiss pikemen lost melee rounds to unarmoured archers.  The former is actually quite likely in FoG, though I dismiss it from my mind when I need to make an attack ... the latter is not remotely meant to happen - but I guess sometimes you just don't get what you paid for.

(Won against the Knights of St John)

Well, they call it winning ... a draw in our favour but not by much.   Ignoring the advice of Marco Polo, in round 3 we returned to the Mediterranean and found an inland heath to battle with some Maltesers.   I say inland in reference to those splendid DBM games of yesteryear when the Knights of St John would come replete with a waterway, BUA and fleet ...

More lessons in artillery management (ours changed hands ... twice!) but the Maltesers did have a plucky cavalry wing for my Condottieri to mix it with ... Despite the Knights being Elite, my Italians are very good at cavalry fights (whatever nonsense you might read in Machiavelli) and we won the right wing by enough to carry the game.

One of the more splendid sights was a tercio the Knights had brought along to hold their centre

(this is how FoG-R does tercios ... quite a daunting prospect)

I was happy to keep my horsemen away from that ... We peppered it with gunfire and arquebus shot, but to little effect.

The it was back to Pikes & Paddyfields ...

(won against Japanese)

FoG seems to do a reasonable job of representing Japanese (being more hardwarist than DB, so less dependent on interpretation of the tactical role of the soldiers involved) ... and it was good to feel that we would have the edge in firearms - I remembered that bit from Shogun ...

We had got much better control by now and I had confidence the Swiss would hold as we stripped away units from the fringes ...

(no difficulty finding the enemy on this battlefield)

OK ... Italians vs Japanese is a ridiculous battle and who on earth could speculate on how it would be resolved.   That said, this was keenly fought and good fun.  The Samurai were a spectacular army to fight against and we managed only to lose 1 attrition point.

So, 2 timed out wins out of 4 games ... (one rout and one timed out defeat complete the stats) ... not too bad for a first outing.

I think I prefer FoG-R ... certainly for medieval games ... What, say, Mike Ingram speculates about Bosworth ... the way pike fights, the influence artillery has on deployment etc. all comes out in this game in a way it doesn't in AM or, say, DBx.   That gave me food for thought.

Cavalry manoeuvre very quickly in FoG-R and, although you need lots of figures for it, there is something quite plausible in the way some of the formations work.

There are good reasons why I would not favour these rules by the time you get mixed units in the English Civil War, but the Keils and Columns seem to work well and the Tercio has the right look.

Rules for the Wars of the Roses?  FoG-R, I think.

Look out for the Society of Ancients at Cavalier next month ...

16th/17th November, Reading

Warfare 2013

Warfare is the last outing for the Society of Ancients main UK show team for 2013.   The 'Shows North' team still has Recon and Wargamer to come, but for the big show we were as usual helping as day 2 volunteers.

Saturday saw Phil Sabin recreate the Battle of Carrhae, which I understand went well ... On Sunday, Secretary David Edwards provided a taster Crusades game loosely based on some 13th Century sources as a tryout for Field of Glory.   The Kingdom of Heaven look proved attractive ...

The way Field of Glory handles the interaction of charging Knights with lighter shooting cavalry is both plausible and entertaining and shows the game off to its best.   It has enough fun in it to be a good introduction to the Crusades period and is simple enough to explain in a show environment.

(a closeup of some of those splendid 28mm knights from David's collection)

Elsewhere around the Societies zone, John Curry's History of Wargaming Project had a memorial exhibit remembering Donald Featherstone including books and trophies from his estate ...

(Donald F. Featherstone 1918 - 2013)

Many thanks to Chris Scott who explained the significance of some of the memorabilia to me.

Don Featherstone made a massive contribution to turning an almost invisible fringe activity into the recognisable leisure activity I could get captivated by in the late 1960s.   He was a key contributor of the books I could find in the library as a lad.   Without him, Tony Bath, Charles Grant and Peter Young things might have been very different.   We miss them all.

The Lance & Longbow Society also attended with a display of publications and a WotR skirmish game ..

(Rollo guards the L&L Soc treasures)

In the rest of the show:

Overall it did seem to me a bit quieter than previous years (we usually get asked to help on the Sunday, so that is the day I am most familiar with) ... and some traders thought so too - OK takings but not particularly busy.   There was plenty of good stuff to look at, of course ...

(Celtic village terrain by Kallistra)

(Elephant action from the Old Malvern 28mm Armati game)

(54mm cattle from the Skirmish Wargames Society)

(this chap will pass for a soldier, perhaps ...) ...

(sticking with 54s, here's some ECW chaps from the Rearguard at Rowdeford game last seen at Colours)

(splendid Napoleonic Egyptian campaign game - these always look great)

(detail)

(beautiful Sengoku period Samurai game with home grown rules)

(detail)

Well, those some of my favourites, and there was alos the 1/35 scale Stalingrad game (seen at Campaign) and Peter Pig's Longships in the main trader hall.

John Curry and Chris Scott were good neighbours on the Don Featherstone stand, and Ian Lowell was a welcome guest for the Society of Ancients.  Roy Boss dropped by, too, although he was playing in one of the events.   And Richard Jeffrey-Cook.   

Notable too, Colin Froud stayed for a chat.   He was the outgoing Committee member from whom I took over sales and Back Issues in 1987.  1987!  I had to hire a van and collect the stock from Colin's attic and - another 100 miles away - Bill Thurlow's garage.   Not a home owner all those years back, I was able to store the stock together at the vicarage in Wellingborough courtesy of Ian (who became President in 1993) ... Some of us are still around, but it isn't often we meet for a chat.

10th November, Manchester

NDBML end of year MANCHESTER

Early November saw us back on the road to Manchester for the final round of the one-day Northern Doubles - probably my last FoG ancients outing* ...

We took my Later Sicilian ... probably the most flexible and rewarding army to use in open competition, if not a big points scorer.   Although almost all the figures are more recent, this army dates back to the days of 7th edition and the original Society of Ancients series.

(Manchester Doubles: the Later Sicilians drawn up against Hungarians)

We were very fortunate to get two pretty plausible 'historical' opponents ... Later Hungarian and a less contemporary but very similar Later Castillian.   Both essentially cavalry armies, both with plenty of knights to fight.

The first game was a close draw, cut a bit short due to the tight schedule of the day.   The second game swung against us in the last turn or two and would have seen us defeated had another half hour been available to complete the game.

Despite the changes, I still like these cavalry fights and we can usually get a result somewhere along the line:   two keenly fought games that combined a good attitude with a will to outmatch the enemy and a proper understanding of the rules.    

Good tournament play.

(The Glittering Prizes: lots of trinkets for players of DBMM, FoG-R and FoG Ancients)

I thought we would beat the Castillians by overwhelming their knights ... my worry was that our light troops might be driven off and the Sicilian Medium Foot would not be able to hold the line while the knights did their usual work.

Actually, the medium spear fighters repelled 3 knightly charges and the archers 2.  This enabled all the knights to get committed ... and on my side of the battle, at least ... get killed.   The Saracens finally succumbed to lost bases (auto-break in FoG) but by this stage they had been deserted by their noble compatriots ...

(the Duke of Bavaria leads his formidable Swabian and Ghibelline cavalry)

So a mid-table finish for the year - but we did get to pick up our second place trophies from the Derby round (so we didn't go home empty-handed).

The Castillians were commanded by Peter and Richard Butler who finished top of the Fog League, so we can perhaps pat ourselves on the back that we kept the game and the League in the balance for as long as we did.  Well done to them.

NDBML results 2013

This was the last year of the current organising team, so many thanks need to go to Colin Betts, Geoff Pearson, Mike Goss and Dave Ruddock ... I think Geoff and Dave will be part of the new team, Colin and Mike are taking a break.    

All the great wargames events we enjoy depend on the time and forbearance of volunteer organisers (and they are always outnumbered by players who don't get their lists in on time, roll up late, leave armies at home, don't know the rules etc. etc. i.e. the rest of us ...).  

Take a bow, all you volunteers.

Also in November, we had a big AMW Raphia refight in Northamptonshire ...

Here are the pictures:

(yellow tokens denote average units, red raw)

(down the lines from the Ptolemaic left wing)

(1/72 scale heavy infantry action: stylish old school soldiers from Trebian's expanding collection)

It looked splendid but was by turns engaging and clunky.   AMW has some limitations 'straight from the box' and we haven't got all the tweaks refined for a big Hellenistic battle like this.

Work in Progress.

See the Society of Ancients next at Warfare.   Lost Battles (Sat. only) and the Crusades.

*I enjoy all these wargaming gatherings, and look forward to meeting up with friends at Usk and Burton next year ... I just think I have got what I want out of FoG-AM, now it is in its second version - so I am hoping to try FoG-R for these upcoming events.   I will still take some photos of the ancients games, of course.