Massed 'Dominion of' titles!

 Well, this lot popped through the door recently, a very nice treat. 

Many, many pre-printed 'Dominion of the' titles. These are all Lulu prints which are so much nicer than my homegrown printing efforts and only a couple of pounds more than the PDF equivalents.

As I'm planning on running Alexander the Brief at a few more events, the author very kindly sent me a couple of display copies of Dominion of the Spear and Dominion of Pike and Shot. An added bonus is that these books also contain all the scenarios for each period as well. Result!

The only downside to having the books is that they don't come with a separate QRS. As John Salt discovered with the WRG (neu) rules, Lulu seem incapable of printing those. But fear not, the QRS is printed on the back cover of the book! A very clever solution. 

I've already got the PDF of Frederick the Great, but I also ordered the Lulu version as it is so much nicer. I was vaguely thinking of doing a mini campaign of the '45 using them, but then I discovered that this edition also includes the AWI/Stuart rebellion etc already (Dominion of the Claymore/Tomahawk?). So that has saved me the bother and includes an extra battle I'd never even heard of from the '45.

Being long interested in the WSS, I just had to have this too. As an added bonus it includes a load of stuff for the ever mysterious Great Northern War as well. A period I've always been vaguely interested in, but could never be bothered to actually do anything about it. Now I have rules and a ton of historical scenarios, there is no excuse. 

What a fantastically good value set of stuff. I'd highly recommend the Lulu versions of these rules as they are very inexpensive and look so much better than my PDF prints. Hats off to those of you who understand the mysteries of booklet printing and can do it themselves, personally I'd rather pay a bit more for someone else to figure out how to do that.

Dettingen and Blenheim with Dominion of the Musket - a DotS variant

 After playing around with the Johns two player version of Dominion of the Spear,  we got onto what he'd actually wanted to do - a Horse and Musket version of DotS he had worked up. Essentially this is the Ancient set with a more restricted set of troop types, and a couple of tweaks for artillery and terrain. Again, it is designed as an opposed game so used his revised I itiative and reserve management mechanisms. 

We had a bigger turnout this evening, seven players and an umpire, but we each took it turns leading one of the sides accompanied by our 'Greek Chorus' of advisers.

First up was a generic Napoleonic battle. Four red 'missile infantry' and two red melee cavalry, vs two blue melee cavalry, one elite melee infantry, one normal melee infantry, and one melee infantry with attached artillery - which essentially gave it a +1 in combat. These might possibly by British and French.

Tonights innovation was a single use re-roll dice for each side, effectively similar to the 'rally' option in the Pike and Shot set, but the re-roll can apply to any dice roll. 

Jim and Mark took this one on. The British/Scots deployed in quite a Marlburian fashion with cavalry on the wings and infantry mainly in reserve. The French largely mirror imaged it.

As you would expect, the cavalry duly wiped each other out and then it was missile infantry vs melee infantry. If they made contact, the melee types would have an advantage over the missile types, but they had to weather the storm of British musketry first, which inevitably rolled a lot of '6's and shot the French off the the field.

Personally I'd be more inclined to make good quality infantry or those with good skirmishers, 'armoured' so they are more resiliant, not much point of giving them a +1 in attack if they get shot down in the same old way. I like the melee vs missile matchup, this is very like the relative troop ratings in 'Horse, Foot and Guns', however I'd be inclined to downgrade the melee cavalry against all infantry types. In this period, horse really need those flank attacks to be able to take on steady infantry.

That was nice and quick though, and food for thought going on.

Next up was Dettingen, using the 3x4 format. The real battlefield was constrained by a big river (maybe the Danube?) on one side and forested slopes on the other.

The French have two cavalry and four musket infantry. While the British have one cavalry, two regular musket infantry and two elite musket infantry.

The initial setup the French have packed their left flank with cavalry.

The British pull ahead mid game having gunned down a French infantry and cavalry for the loss of one British infantry.

But then the British centre collapses and it was game over soon after with an ahistorical British defeat.

In real life the French snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by advancing over the marshy stream they were defending to attack the British. As the onus of attack was on the British (being cut off), this was an insane manouvre and cost the French the battle.

In this iteration the French have wisely stuck behind their stream, which gives them a defence bonus. 

Hard pounding sees both sides whittled down!

And in the end it is a knife fight with just one unit left on each side, but the British are fortunate and get to go first, breaking the last French unit.

Both of those battles were fun, I think this rules variant works better for linear eighteenth century warfare as it has more in common with Ancients, than Napoleonics do. 

Next up is a bold experiment. Blenheim on a double width map! French at the bottom, Allies at the top. 

This is the historical (and rather unusual) deployment, which arose as both sides had two armies in the field and ended up deploying adjacent to each other. The villages give a defensive bonus.

Really, it is just a massive great slogging match, rather like the real battle. The Allies are burning through their reserves.

Not looking too good for Marlborough. Jerry declared that at this point that he would have retreated, having committed all his reserves, but we played on.

And inevitably the French superiority became more pronounced until the Allies fled.

That also worked quite well, but it has moved away quite a bit from the original DotS concept (although the Dominion rules do suggest options for bigger battlefields). Although it allows you to model the OOB better, it extends the playing time and I'm not convinced it adds much in terms of army level decision making, although if playing it as an opposed game it gives both sides a bit more to do.

Since we played these variants, Dominion of Frederick the Great, Dominion of Marlborough and Dominion of Napoleon have all been published, which cover much the same sort of thing but very sensibly breaks it down into sub periods as the troop type relationships change. I'll have a look at those in due course to see how they treat this period. 

Two player Dominion of the Spear

 John A was interested in the possibilites presented by Dominion of the Spear after helping playtest 'Alexander the Brief'. We'd already discussed some options around  deployment and management of reserves. For this weeks Tuesday  game he presented a two player variant!

The mods aren't enormous, but change the game a fair bit - there are players on each side and the initiative roll determines who is the active player. The activate player (only) can initiate combat in one or more sectors. Reserves use fixed sectors and cannot stack, although there is a separate 'reserve phase' at the end of each turn turn when players can shuffle their reserves one square either way. He has also  borrowed my re-roll rule for notable commanders from Alexander the Brief. 

First up was Johns version of Carrhae. Jerry and I were one player team, Tim and Simon the other. Parthians have 3x Horse Archers, 1 x Elite Armoured Cataphract and 1 x melee infantry. Crassus has 3 x Armoured Legionaries and 1 x Ferocious Gallic Cavalry.

Jerry took the lead for our team, and Simon the lead for the other. Things not going too well for Crassus here, down one Legionary and the Gauls. 

The Romans battle back. John had made up a virtual battle set in Powerpoint using Tom Mouats Mapsymbs military symbols font, so we could easily play remotely over a shared screen.

Parthians get the upper hand again.

And having outflanked the Romans, down went another Legion and Crassus ended with his head on a stick. We had a bit of a discussion about outflanking, John thought the free attack was sufficient bonus, but I went through some of the combat modifiers, how the outflanking bonus changes those and we reinstated it.

We swapped sides and did that one again, and the Parthians lost this time. It is all down to the initial wave of horse archers, against whom the Legionaries are even and the Gauls do have an advantage, but if the Parthians roll a lot of sixes, they shoot the Romans down before they can make contact.

Next up was a hypothetical - Julius Caesers planned campaign in Parthia (he was assassinated before this happened). Same Parthians as before, but this time Caesar had a Republican Roman Army, with 2 x armoured Legionary, 2 x Auxilia (melee infantry) and 1 x Cavalry (no bonuses). Caesar was rated as a notable General, so could re-roll one combat in his turn.

I took JC for this one and was defending. The army was a tricky one to deploy, a conservative deployment would have put a Legionary in the centre, auxilia on the wings and the other Legion and Cavalry in reserve to await developments.

But I went with the bold deployment, Legionaries up front, cavalry on the right (I'd completely forgotten they were regular, not ferocious). I put one Auxilia in each corner as they can reinforce frontally or diagonally. It will look nice and symmetrical on the mosaic as well.

And the bold deployment paid off. We trounced the Parthian front line, although JC had to re-roll one combat to finish off the Cataphracts. Wit their centre broken, it was all over for the Parthians - I  managed to roll the initiative, made the centre flanking attack and re-rolled the result to ensure a win. Game over.

We did have a chat at that point about how powerful the re-roll option is, and for lesser Generals than Alexander, JC or Napoleon, just one or two re-rolls per game might be more appropriate. The 'rally' option in the Pike and Shot set is effectively a re-roll, and you only get one of those in the standard rules. 

We set it up again, I took the Parthians and Tim the Romans. Funnily enough the Romans set up in exactly the same deployment (well mirror image, but you know what I mean). Perhaps this will be known as the Caesarian Deployment in future?

I just went boring with the Parthians. Horse Archers up front and Cataphracts in reserve. I stuck the infantry out of the way, they can shuffle over once the Cataphracts are committed.

Well, that sort of worked.... after some bashing, we'd killed a Legionary and the Roman cavalry but lost two horse archers. We'd got some good matchups now though - Cataphracts vs Auxilia and Horse Archers vs Auxilia, big advantages to us. I won't say anything about our levy infantry vs the Legionaries in the centre.... 

The Cataphracts duly routed the Auxilia opposite, and the Horse Archers finished off the other Auxilia. Head on a stick time for Caesar.

That worked really well - it was still very quick, we played four games in just over an hour, but the opposed aspect was good fun. Very much 'mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be corrected' as Von Moltke the Elder would have it. There isn't any reason why you can't play standard Dominion of the Spear as an opposed game of course, and I think that would be rather good fun. 

 I'm not 100% convinced about the all-or-nothing initiative roll, but it is Johns game so I'll go with it. An alternative might be, initiative winner picks one or two sectors, loser picks zero or one. On a draw, both sides pick zero or one, scenario attack goes first.

We also had a chat about what John's ideas for a Horse and Musket variant based on the Ancient set although to a large extent that has been trumped by the publication of various eighteenth century sets already. 

Fleurus and Lutter with Dominion of Pike and Shot

 Next up for DoPS are Fleurus 1622 and Lutter 1626, both from the Pike and Shot scenario book. For these I'm using Alan Saunders suggested mods, +1 for the initial bombardment for a side with an artillery unit, and treating pike and shot units as 'mixed', which negates any modifiers which would apply to 'pure' pike or shot units, even if they are musket or pike heavy. Most importantly this negates the bonus which charging cavalry would get against pike and shot units, although they'd still get it against dragoons or whatever. 

Fleurus 1622. I've actually done this a few times already with both Neil Thomas and modified Marston Less. This is a peripheral battle from the TYW, and  involved the Dutch hiring two Protestant German armies (Mansfeld and Brunswick) to aid in their never ending war against Spain. The Spanish force under Cordoba was outnumbered and positioned with its flanks protected by woods and and village of Fleurus. I dug out my 2mm terrain for this one, Irregular villages and woods made from pan scourers. 

The forces are quite a mixture, Brunswick has two units of armoured cuirassiers, two musketeers (with pikes) and a unit of Reiters. Cordoba has unarmoured cuirassiers, mounted arquebusiers and no less than three types of musketeer. Normal, armoured (the Tercio) and elite (the blokes in the woods). Although I can sort of figure out who is who from the figures, to make recognition easier, I added a command stand to all the armoured units as it is very, very hard to tell the different between unarmoured and armoured cuirassier in 2mm!

The musketeers in the woods are 'elite' as Cordoba managed to pull off an ambush with them. Although the wood is a pretty good reminder, I've also attached an artillery piece as I did in the previous set of games to remind me it has extra firepower. Somewhat oddly these guys are in reserve, but think of it as an attacker stumbling into the ambush if the woods 'move' - a bit like the ambush rule in Flames of War. Or Dunsinane Wood in Macbeth.

Anyway, things started with the artillery bombardment, the Spanish missed but Brunswick didn't and forced the left flank Arquebusiers to charge the armoured cuirassier.

With predictable results. The Arquebusiers missed (needing a 6) and the cuirassiers routed them. I've started marking any firing with bits of cotton wool to make it clearer. In the real battle the victorious Protestant cavalry ran into an ambush, and so it is here as the elite Spanish musketeers, dragging their woods with them, move up from reserve.

In the first round of actual combat, the musketeers in the woods managed to rout Brunswicks cuirassiers. Brunswicks other cuirassiers charged the Reiters on the other flank, who duly gunned them down as well. God was on the side of the Spanish today. Of course the unit I thought were  'Reiters' were actually unarmoured cuirassiers, so they should have been fighting a melee, but I forgot.... I rerolled it and the result was mutual annihilation.

When the smoke cleared, Brunswick had put his own reserve musketeers up against the guys in the woods, and the Spanish reserve musketeers faced the Protestant reserve Reiters. 

The Protestants were shattered in the next round as both flanks collapsed. A win for Cordoba. I have to say there were some fairly extreme dice rolls in that, but the activation option of each side choosing one sector worked OK. I didn't particularly notice the absence of the type specific unit mods for the pike and shot units, although it did mean there were more 'no effect' results than in the Ancient set. 

I gave it another go. This time none of the barrages took effect.

But the first rounds of proper combat were a catastrophe for Cordoba as the entire Spanish front line disintegrated! All that was left was the reserves.

And outflanked by the cuirassiers on the left, the Spanish soon collapsed too, leaving Brunswick victorious. I was pleased with the how the cavalry flank attack worked out - normally the cuirassiers would have routed the pike and shot musketeers on 4+ (using Alans mods) but the outflanking bonus made it 3+, which seems more in line with the troop type relationships of the period. Cavalry can only deal with the infantry centre by outflanking them, the same as in Marston Less.

One more run through. Again the barrage was ineffective, but Brunswicks cuirassiers were routed early on, as was the Protestant centre. The Tercio rolled forwards (it is twice as effective as a normal pike and shot unit, hitting on 5+ but being hit on 6).

Brunswicks centre collapsed.

The tercio outflanked and destroyed Brunswicks Reiters on his right. A heroic effort by the Protestant cuirassiers routed the Spanish infantry in the woods, but  Brunswick failed to rally any units and reduced to just one unit, withdrew. A Spanish victory.

I really enjoyed that, Fleurus is an interesting engagement as it features actual Tercios and the cavalry is very asymmetrical. One thing I did realise is that along with keeping track of armoured and elite units, I need to keep track of which side has used up their rally entitlement. I've got some wagons, perhaps I could use those as a reminder.

Next up was Lutter in 1626, which isn't one I've done before. King Christian IV of Denmark joined the Protestants in the TYW and inevitably Tilly marched forth to duff him up. There was a dried up river between the armies which I left off, but I still put some woods and buildings around the battlefield edges as it looks nice.

Tilly has the better army in this one with Reiters, armoured cuirassier, musketeers, armoured musketeers (the Tercio) and an artillery unit. I'm really not sure about artillery in these rules, they seem a singularly useless unit. I'd be very strongly tempted to let them hit anything on a 5+, not just armoured infantry, but treat them as missile foot vs cavalry, so you can do the rock, paper, scissors Napoleonic thing. Anyway, I played them as written, albeit with a +1 to the initial barrage as per Alans suggestion.

Christian has got a large but very average army. Unarmoured cuirassiers (melee horse), two units of Reiters and three musketeers (with pikes) who I treated as mixed missile infantry.

Tillys Catholic League. The front rank is Reiters, artillery and armoured Cuirassier. Reserves are the Tercio and musketeers.

The Danes. Front rank is Reiters, musketeers and unarmoured cuirassiers. Reserves are two units of musketeers and one of Reiters.

The opening barrage. Tilly fired on the cuirassiers to try and force a charge and the Danes fired on the Catholic artillery because I got muddled up! Everbody missed anyway.

The first round of proper combat had Tillys cuirassier charge the Danes and the Danish musketeers engaged the Imperial artillery as I reckon it is such a lousy unit it should be easy to destroy.

The Imperial Cuirassiers duly routed their opposite numbers and hilariously Tillys guns actually rolled a 6 and blew away the impudent musketeers! Perhaps artillery are better than I gave credit for. Christian committed more musketeers to the centre and his reserve Reiters to the right flank.

The Imperial Cuirassiers just repeated their attack on the fresh meat and routed them too. That is the disadvantage of this activation system, why would anyone pick a sector to fight unless they have an advantage? I guess that is military reality though.  In the centre however, the odds finally told in the favour of the Danes and their infantry duly overran the guns.

The Danes managed to rally their Cuirassier and put them back on the right flank, but it didn't help as Tilly routed both their centre and left flank. The Danes were down to two units now.

The Imperial Reiters outflanked the musketeers in the centre but missed (would normally have need 5+, +1 for outflanking). That is fine. I really can't imagine Reiters having much luck against a pike block surrounded by musketeers.

Tilly got them on the second attempt however, and having already used their rally, the Danes fled.

That was an interesting game, and tends to reinforce my view that a) Alans suggestions are sensible and b) that artillery is weak. Perhaps it should hit anything on a 5+ but be vulnerable to charging cavalry. OTOH it is such an uncommon unit type that perhaps it isn't worth fiddling with. 

One last run through. The Imperial guns were wiped out before they could do anything, but both sides lost units in the cavalry battle on the Danes right. The loss of the armoured cuirassier was something Tilly could ill afford. The Tercio was curiously ineffective, but I actually quite like the infantry blasting away at each other turn after turn, that feels very period appropriate.

Eventually even the mighty Tercio gave way, but not before more Danish units were routed, leaving both sides with just two units each and nothing in the centre!

The Danes prevailed and the Tilly failed to rally, so King Christian was victorious!

I really enjoyed those games, it was a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon and it was nice to spend a little bit longer on each one as well as thinking about various aspects of the rules. I liked adding the eye candy terrain, smoke and other markers and maybe next tie I'll actually use four bases per unit for a bit more mass. I preferred the look of the smaller bases side by side rather than in the columns which I'd used before as well, even if it possibly looked a bit like the War of the Spanish Succession. Anyway, there are plenty more scenarios in the book.