Battle of Wakefield, 1460

[stockwellpete]

This is the last of the first batch of Wars of the Roses scenarios that I have been working on recently. There will be more to follow in the New Year. This one was a crucial battle inasmuch as it saw the end of Richard, Duke of York, and his ambitions to replace, or succeed, Henry VI as King of England.

The actual battle itself was a hopelessly one-sided affair - basically Richard of York charged out of his castle into an ambush - so this one will not work as the usual default FOG battle where all units are active from the start. For this to be fun, the "historical variation" requires that the Lancastrian contingents of the Earl of Wiltshire and Lord Roos start moving on turns 3 and 5 respectively.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15461007/Wakefi ... 20PWv3.rar

As per usual, any comments or suggestions for improvement are most welcome.

[tonymcenery]

I enjoyed this - though I can see that you would want the coinditional features being discussed. Things ease up considerably for the Lancastrians here without them.

BTW - I meant to say that all of the names in your WotR battles really reminded me of how much I used to enjoy playing Kingmaker years ago!

[stockwellpete]

I enjoyed this - though I can see that you would want the coinditional features being discussed. Things ease up considerably for the Lancastrians here without them.

BTW - I meant to say that all of the names in your WotR battles really reminded me of how much I used to enjoy playing Kingmaker years ago!

Yes - and this scenario goes right to the heart of the issue concerning "re-creating history" or "making a good wargame". Basically Wakefield does not work at all well as a straight re-creation of history - Richard of York is almost bound to lose. But if you focus on the timing of the ambush and introduce differential starting turns it really comes alive as a wargame and the Yorkists do have a bit of a chance. The terrain is basically right, most of the units are historically accurate, the main personalities are there - and hopefully it takes the players into the period. So hopefully, it ticks most of the boxes. And players can mess about with the historical factors here too - instead of using turns 3 and 5 as triggers, how about 2 and 4 or 1 and 4? And hopefully this will mean that players will want to re-visit the scenario.

I still have a copy of Kingmaker in my cupboard. One of the really great board games and it was responsible for first getting me into WotR - I have late medieval TT stuff too now.

[tonymcenery]

Great - will play with the parameters as you suggest. As you say, though, conditional 'fixing and release' of units would be great.

[stockwellpete]

Great - will play with the parameters as you suggest. As you say, though, conditional 'fixing and release' of units would be great.

Yes, I think all it needs are for the scenario notes to be available to players throughout the game for easy reference - and if the chat facility could include a pre-game exchange then that would be good too. I don't think that the game engine would need to be modified at all, although I am not a "techie". I have been playing online since October and I am finding that lots of players and quite interested in investigating the historical what-ifs in my scenarios - and once you have played one battle, maybe the default version of the scenario, and had a bit of a chat about things then all sorts of possibilities are opened up in subsequent games.

[tonymcenery]

Agreed - am working in 'Ain-Jalut at the moment. That drips with what-ifs! Will take a leaf or two from your book on how to deal with them.

[stockwellpete]

Updated to version 3.