A good start to 2009

Winter/Spring shows 2009

2009 kicked off with the usual string of busy days out for the Society - Vapnartak in York, Alumwell, Cavalier (helping the southern shows team out in Tonbridge), and Triples where we again sponsored the DBA Northern Cup on the Saturday and ran through Welcome to Jerusalem on the Sunday. We also visited some tournaments ... including the ever popular Godendag weekend in Usk.

(FoG at Usk - Patrick's infantry push up as some Latin mercenaries appear on the enemy flank)
We were pressed for space at Vapnartak, so made a popular return to the Society of Ancients stand-by, Gladiolus (the big figures version). This always seems to please the visitors and we played some entertaining games, and recruited some new members to the fold.

Cavalier is another worthwhile 'early' show, this time at Tonbridge. Actually it has become quite a big event with plenty of traders and a good choice of games. It was also a good chance to catch up with people or renew old acquaintanceships - Neil Thomas, Bob Cordery, Martin from PP ... even Gareth Simon of Pallas Armata (and former editor of Slingshot ) ...




Philip Sabin ran the scaled up display version of Roma Invicta ..


At Cavalier, Gareth passed me this old copy of Miniature Wargames with a collage of pictures from the Devizes show, way back. Full of Society of Ancients personalities. Hmm. I wonder if you can name them?

(MW back cover - who can you spot)
Yes indeed. Plenty of other stuff to look at, too.

(Some other attractions from Cavalier)

Alumwell saw us back on the road with the Jerusalem (FoG) siege game ..


(WMMS 2009)


Welcome to Jerusalem at Alumwell

This time, in order to give a broader taste of the basic Field of Glory mechanisms, we opted to include a 'what if' sally by the defenders from the side gate in the Kidron Valley ...


(Sally party - a BG of Turkish cavalry)
This worked very well, and allowed the Crusader nobles to get on their horses for a fight. FoG does Knights vs heavy horse archers very well, I think, and the scenario provided a good tour through the game's charge, evade, impact, shooting and melee mechanics ...

At Triples this year, we offered the usual mix, sponsoring the Society of Ancients DBA Northern Cup on the Saturday, and taking our regular show game on the Sunday. This year's DBA event was won by former SoA Treasurer, Graham Fordham (he's not from Sheffield, but I suspect that still counts as a 'home win') ....

Siege Game - Project Update

Welcome to Jerusalem
The first decision that has been made has been to define 2" as the MU (effectively doubling all the distances). This is because everything in FoG happens (broadly) within 15 MUs - mostly the last 6 or 7 - so a game using a 1" MU is needlessly confined to a narrow band of the playing area.

I made up some additional personality figures ... Here is the governor of Jerusalem, Iftikhar ad-Duala ... He can be a Troop Commander (he will be useful within 4 MUs/8", but can't be everywhere at once).
Iftikhar ad-Duala, Fatimid governor of Jerusalem in 1099
(commander of the Turkish garrison)

The general aim, of course, is to get something with a plausible feel and look - but which allows us to use the game mechanisms to play out the historical events.

Schematic view of what the siege might have looked like (though only two towers are mentioned in the sources - one from the north and one from the south) ... this is from a series of drawings here ... (Peter Dennis)


Treat the siege engine as a transport or capability marker. Stack the figures, commanders etc. that represent the BG up behind it. Use it for the movement and combat position. A shooting gallery or belfry is a stand's worth of shooting (the tower might have more than one), the draw bridge is a stands worth of combat frontage.

The Tower makes its final move into contact in the impact phase, and fights one stand (against a single enemy stand). If the attackers win the combat, the attackers must make room for the fighting stand to be placed on the rampart, and an expansion from this is allowed in the movement phase (again, the defender must displace figures to permit this): pick stands up from the stack behind the engine, and place them in the developed combat position.

(click on the picture to see a bigger version)

This scene from a game we played at the Derby show illustrates and easy situation (there is plenty of space for the BG to debouch into ..).. The Tower is part of a BG of 6 assault troop stands (5 armoured HWs + some archers in the gallery). The unit has been successful in its impact and melee and has placed a stand in the fortress. Two further stands have expanded from this (and two are left in the stack behind the engine). The enemy have just broken, and the assault troops will measure their pursuit from their current position in the usual way (and the rest of the BG will join in behind them). This is fairly easy to do when the entry is into a bastion or similar (i.e. where there is space to put everyone into frontal contacts)...

Where wall walks only allow a single stand's depth, it is sensible to use the same system, but count side to side contact as it front to front. Again, if the attacker wins, an expansion must be made room for by the defender (this way, the assault parties can push their way out from a successful attack).

If they assaulters fail to win, they are not established on the wall. The defender can overlap them - they cannot expand or count as more than the single base. If they break, they rout away from engine/equipment at ground level. The defenders can pursue them - but are not obliged to (no test required). Any bases from either side that are not counted as fighters in the melee can be shot at in the usual way.

'Ownership' of equipment ..

Equipment - from ladders to siege towers - 'belong' to BGs. They can be parted in two ways. If the assault party is successful, the equipment can be left at the walls and the BG press on. If the enemy make unopposed contact with any such equipment that has no friends on it/in it/defending it, it is lost. Otherwise other BGs can make temporary use of it to enter the fortress etc. (apply some common sense and be prepared to put scenario notes in should there likely be complicated interactions). If the BG assaults but is routed, likewise it loses the equipment (normally, this means the equipment is destroyed, but scenario notes are useful ..)..

Here a BG approaches the walls with a Cat or Shed .. The whole BG .. 4 stands, the Cat and an attached commander have been placed on a movement tray. It helps the player treat it as an entity (and makes movement easy!) .. it is a BG, formed for an assault. It counts as 4 stands, it has a singles frontage ... it has a Cat with a ram and there is a commander present.

Newbury Racecourse 13th - 14th September

Where have we been since Partizan?Sorry to regular visitors for the uncharacteristic gap in posting - work and other issues have meant a few items have backed up a bit. Well here goes - lets get caught up...
Colours 2008
September always brings the prospect of a pleasant day out at Newbury Racecourse - now the long established home of Colours. It always seems to be a sunny day - and the big windows characteristic of these racecourse venues flood the exhibition spaces with light. Vapnartak is similar. Sometimes this is a disadvantage - especially if you are too near the windows ... but I, for one, would much prefer plenty of natural sunshine to the dismal corners one gets in some pokier spaces. Nice turn out this year, and plenty of good games around - photogenic too.

my 'postcard from colours'

Colours is a two day show, and we usually have the 'A team' - Philip Sabin with something from Strategos or Lost Battles and the impressive Eric Cruttenden 28mm collection (see the entry for Salute, e.g.) to give it shape and figure appeal - on saturday, with Shows North taking over on Sunday. This year, we had a bit of a manpower issue, so I went on both days ... manning the stand on Saturday, putting on Welcome to Jerusalem on the Sunday. A bit of a strain, time-wise, but a great weekend ... affording time both to meet people and work on the project. Most of the significant historians and wargames personality of the age were calling in on the Society stand on Saturday, so it was an interesting place to be all day (and if the promises I managed to extract on behalf of our august journal are redeemed, Slingshot will have some good reading coming up!).

Saturday


In a very impressive last minute revision, Philip Sabin presented a scaled up version of the new Society game - Roma Invicta ... 6' x 6' of relief map, with 10mm figures replacing the counters used in the standard game. The vast map was created, Phil tells me, following the 'artroom' tradition of fixing the sheet up on the wall, then painting in over an image projected onto it. The effect was them enhanced by building up the back to raise up the contours. Very impressive.

The game was virtually the same as that issued out earlier this year, just everything boosted up. Clearly the way to present a boardgame at a public show - and it attracted a lot of visitors and favourable comment. Good show, and a worthy variation on our usual displays, I think.


The map follows that issued with the game. Troop counters were
replaced with 10mm figures (1: 1,000 horsemen/2,000 foot)

Sunday
Sunday saw the Shows North team take over, and the up-dated 'Welcome to Jerusalem' game back up to full size. A quieter day, as usual, on the Sunday - but a good chance to play through what we had learnt from the Partizan experiment and put the full display together.

The key zone, of course, is the area around the walls, within range, through which the assault parties will move. The garrison needs space to move about inside the city - and some rules for doing this, too ... but outside, and beyond the range of the defenders, the space is very much decorative (and/or available for game components, charts etc.)... As the defenders aren't really going anywhere, there is very little point forming any assault parties up outside shooting range. And it is probably not that realistic either (although they would obviously move up from the camp or whatever, the point at which they would form up for combat would probably be as they come into range of shooters on the walls). This will need to be a deployment feature of any full 'siege system' for FoG. And probably in an ambush variant also (so that surprise attacks can be launched). More anon.

In 1099, of course, the surprise assault failed. The main attack centred on two mobile towers, one - under the control of Raymond of St Giles threatening the southern approaches - the other, featured in our game, attacking the north east corner. Raymond's tower was burnt by incendiaries, and abandonned. The northern attack was under the leadership of Godfrey de Bouillon. Although his tower was also on fire, it was close enough to the walls for the troops to gain the battlements. As in the game we played at Colours, the successor failure of the incendiary weapons will be critical to the outcome. History seems to give us a tantalising 50/50!


Will had taken Godfrey's role, and the tower -largely undamaged - duly gave forth its complement of assault troops. The results were not good for the wavering Fatimid defenders. They were put to the sword, and the Crusaders flooded into the city. Elsewhere, the ladder parties were struggling to get a foothold - but the collapses elsewhere undermined the resolve all round.

Many thanks to John Curry and Matthew Bennett for important contributions, and to the players for helping us move the project on.

Next time out will be at Derby.

See you there, I hope!

Newark 7th September

Kelham Hall - The Other Partizan

The Society of Ancients and the Lance & Longbow Society back together again for a combined 'ancient and medieval' zone ...

And yes, Dave, I'm sorry. I have been attending shows at Kelham Hall for a decade - but somehow the A1's lack of junction numbers can still leave me confused. Jinxed from previous visits, we were on schedule this time at least not to be late ... then somehow just cruised past the junction and on for about 15 miles before even realising. In total, the unscheduled round trip was 45 miles. Fantastic! Why does this nonsense happen?

Ah, well. Thanks to everyone for their help and patience.


Tell you what, though ... like all the recent Partizans, it was a great day, once we got going. And that's the main thing. Historical wargaming, and meeting fellow enthusiasts.

We had decided to follow up the popular *Crusader battle using Field of Glory* formula we had tried at Claymore, but this time reviving one of my earlier scenarios, Welcome to Jerusalem (the first Crusade 1099 siege of the Holy City)...

I had first devised this game in time to do the shows circuit back in 1999, the 900th anniversary year of the city's fall. After a fair bit of experimentation with (then) fashionable rules, I opted to write the scenario around the more traditional Medieval Warfare by Slim Mumford (so-called Mumford's Siege Rules ...).

These are still available from the Society of Ancients, and are a classic. The nearest contemporary equivalent would be Warhammer Ancient Battles: Medieval Warfare assumes you use individually-based figures and retains that skirmishy feel, with characters dicing for hits, making saving rolls for armour etc. - but with very little instruction on how to play (just a framework of mechanisms and modifiers around which you have to develop your game yourself ... ).. Ideal for adapting to scenarios, and lots of ideas for the big equipment already built in for assault games.

I think individual (sometimes heroic) characterisation has its place in siege games, however grand the notional scale. So often, in history, citadels hold or fall according to the success of one man
at the top of one ladder! The Crusades is also one of those eras rich in heroic personalities - and, like the medieval chronicles we base them on, I think we really want the Bohemonds, Stephens and Godfrey de Bouillons of legend to shine through our games. So any scenario or adaptation will need to balance the modern player's desire to use armies based up for current (often quite abstract) battlegames with the asymmetries of siege warfare and the dynamic contributions of the individual.

(a medieval style Godfrey de
Bouillon in the Crusader camp)

There has been chat, on one forum or another, of whether the very new Field of Glory might work for a siege game - and in terms of its actual game structure, no obvious reason why it wouldn't. And the equipment built for the Jerusalem assault has long been gathering dust. It seemed like a worthy challenge.

For Partizan, we devised some basic accommodations of the equipment and kit into Field of Glory (we replaced most of my 'Mumford' single figures with bases of troops from Chris's DBx Norman army - the singletons would now serve as equipment markers or similar, as appropriate - artillery would be 'bases' as in the battlegame, Siege Engines - towers ans such like - we would have to experiment with as the game progressed) ... and set about devising a list of potential points of advantage for shooting, impact melee etc. What would be Complex Moves? ... what additional factors might need adding into the Cohesion Tests and modifiers (incendiaries?) ... how might we go about the whole process of hitting/destroying siege engines ....

So, with limited space and a lot of question marks, we set up a very simple array - a shallow playing area with some assault parties lined up ready to go, a modest artillery battery to worry the defenders, and some homesick Fatimids lining the walls (determined to keep the Franks out - but unlikely to hang around once an incursion was achieved).



Each part comprised the equipment and/or markers (rams, ladders, axes, mantlets etc.) and a BG's worth of conventionally based Normans to indicate the strength, take the casualties and do the fighting.



The main function of the colossal Beam Slings would be to cause Cohesion Tests on the defenders (the odd 'disruption' result being likely to influence the chances of the ladders parties..)..

The defender artillery were equipped with incendiaries - we decided a simple Complex Move Test (pass or fail) would be sufficient to indicate whether an artillery group's shooting going to be normal or volatile ... the volatile hits igniting the target and causing extra panic for the crews.

(yes, those are Airfix walls -

a great job they do, in 15mm)

Who wins? Well for a full siege or assault game, that's an interesting balance - given that there won't always be a 'fair' balance of resources between the forces. In 1099, the issue was clear cut - if the Crusaders get in, they have won, and the defenders have lost. If all of their equipment is lost or destroyed, or the assault parties flee, the day's endeavours will be called off - and the Fatimids have won (for now, at least ...)...



Well, suffice to say this was just a preliminary outing - a chance to give it a go and get some opinion as much as anything. We were able to play through the sequences enough to see that the game will work, Field of Glory will provide a suitable platform, and that the Crusader siege of 1099 has lost none of its appeal to the showgoing enthusiast.

I will update information as this project progresses - and assuming it is all working, will build up the FoG Siege Game resource as problems are solved/fixed. Follow it here, and I will let you know as/where material gets collected.

Thanks to everyone who helped or took part - whether playing or chewing over some of the ideas. I got a lot out of both forms of involvement, and I hope you will join in again.

We are going to do all this again on Sunday, on the Society of Ancients stand at Colours (Newbury Racecourse - see the link in the side panel) ... Come along and join in if you are free.

Thanks to Chris for his assistance, figures and pictures - and thanks, too, Mike T. for some excellent ideas.