Slitherine

This is great news. I've been searching without success for a decent set of rules to cover the Thirty Years War. Finally, I can paint up my large collection of 10mm TYW Swedes

Dale

already been asking questions of potential beta testers here.

tercio?

a 12 base BG, with 4 Shot, 8 Pike?

shoots with 2 or 4 dice in every direction, fighting as HF with 8 dice?

don't forget the other side of the pond for the napoleonic rules -- War of 1812

might have to paint up some Mughals for Ren rules . . .

daleivan wrote:This is great news. I've been searching without success for a decent set of rules to cover the Thirty Years War.

For starters there is ECW from Warhammer historical and 1644 from Wargamesfoundry. Both might not fully apply to "decent", though, depending on your wishes. 1644 is imho not flexible enough to handle anything outside the ecw/30y range. I am sure FOGR will provide better results

Having made a modest contribution to the Scot's lists for FOG medieval, I would welcome a chance to contribute to those for the new rules. One of my pet annoyances over the years is that there are always lists for Flodden and then an almighty gap until 1639 with the Bishops War and then the Covenanting period. The period for Pinkie, Solway Moss and The Rough Wooing are always excluded. It is as if the Scot's went to sleep after 1513 and then woke up 124 years later to find out the firearm had developed a bit in the period.
John Munro

puster wrote:

daleivan wrote:This is great news. I've been searching without success for a decent set of rules to cover the Thirty Years War.

For starters there is ECW from Warhammer historical and 1644 from Wargamesfoundry. Both might not fully apply to "decent", though, depending on your wishes. 1644 is imho not flexible enough to handle anything outside the ecw/30y range. I am sure FOGR will provide better results

You're absolutely right that "decent" depends on the wishes of the gamer

In my case, my friend Mark and I got into Thirty Years War gaming a few years ago playing Father Tilly, the second edition, liking some of the mechanics but on the whole finding the system unworkable for us. The third edition removed what we liked. We also tried a home brew version of Volley and Bayonet. I'm looking for grand tactical "big battle" rules. My impression is that 1644 and ECW both are more tactical, though I could be wrong.

Cheers,

Dale

marshalney2000 wrote:One of my pet annoyances over the years is that there are always lists for Flodden and then an almighty gap until 1639 with the Bishops War and then the Covenanting period. The period for Pinkie, Solway Moss and The Rough Wooing are always excluded.

Not to forget Haddenrig, Ancrum Moor, Langside, the various feuds within Scotland and the Scottish contingents in the continental armies (eg Rijmenant) and in Ireland.

Would you consider the Scottish army at Flodden as still medieval (using the late Scottish list) or aldready as Renaissance force?

I think Flodden is probably the the transition between one period and the next. It is certainly probably the first drilled Scottish army with full size pikes rather than the half pikes/spears of tradition. I also cannot believe that part of the Scot's army did not have firearms as James was fanatical about gunpowder.
I should also corrct myself by saying that the Bannockburn army should also be drilled due tpo the training in the months prior to the battle as demonstrated by the way they manouvred out of the Tor wood to intercept the abortive attempt by the English knights to relieve Stirling castle.
John

Forgot to say there is an excellent book on Scottish mercenaries in this period particulalry those in Northern Europe. Particularly poignant were the mercenaries who landed in Norway sans weapons and wer emassacred by the Norwegian peasantry who thought they were there to do harm to them when in fact they were heading for I think Sweden.
John

Well, mercenaries where the nemesis and bane of the peasant for centuries before and to come, probably well into the introduction of standing (and thus paid and disciplined) armies. No wonder that they took the chance to kill them. Peasants account for a lot of killed mercenaries whenever they had the chance, and the other way around, too. BTW: how did that contingent planned to reach Sweden? Where they equipped to pay for their food on the way? And, more important, what are title and author of that book? I am more interested in the history of the early Landsknechts and German contingents (and there were a lot o f conflicts with peasants around in the first decades of the 16th centures, like the battle of Hemmingstedt, or the peasant war of 1525), but learning more about the Scottish mercenaries who show up on all theatres of Europe in that period is a chance not to be missed.

30YW Tercios and Brigades of mixed pike and shot have been problematic in other rules sets. I urge the authors to take care to get the differing BG depths & frontages to fit together on the table and function appropriately.

MarkSieber wrote:30YW Tercios and Brigades of mixed pike and shot have been problematic in other rules sets. I urge the authors to take care to get the differing BG depths & frontages to fit together on the table and function appropriately.

I agree that mixed battlegroups will be the challenge to master. But we have to go back to the Italian wars as the place where these tactics developed. They have to start with mixed groups of mainly pikemen with swords and helbards or other close combat specialists (invented decades before by the Swiss) and then need to add the cooperation with handguns (as in Bicocca) and also artillery (eg Marignano). The development from mixed battlegroups to closely coordinated different armed units will not be easy to do right. The Spanish Tercio is probably the first "formalized" application of it. I wonder at which level this will be displayed.

I agree that mixed battlegroups will be the challenge to master. But we have to go back to the Italian wars as the place where these tactics developed. They have to start with mixed groups of mainly pikemen with swords and helbards or other close combat specialists (invented decades before by the Swiss) and then need to add the cooperation with handguns (as in Bicocca) and also artillery (eg Marignano). The development from mixed battlegroups to closely coordinated different armed units will not be easy to do right. The Spanish Tercio is probably the first "formalized" application of it. I wonder at which level this will be displayed.

Indeed, the evolution of these formations will need to be reflected. Fortunately (?), the two sub-periods I have figures for are the Italian Wars and 30YW!

MarkSieber wrote:30YW Tercios and Brigades of mixed pike and shot have been problematic in other rules sets. I urge the authors to take care to get the differing BG depths & frontages to fit together on the table and function appropriately.

i wondered about this somewhere else. it's probably not too difficult.

a tercio could be a 12-base BG. 8 pikes, 4 shot. fights to its front as all HF Pike, shoots in all directions on two (or four) dice when not engaged in melee.

would be deployed as

shpkpksh
shpkpksh
00pkpk00
00pkpk00

OldenTired wrote: a tercio could be a 12-base BG. 8 pikes, 4 shot. fights to its front as all HF Pike, shoots in all directions on two (or four) dice when not engaged in melee.

would be deployed as

shpkpksh
shpkpksh
00pkpk00
00pkpk00

So you lump in the swords (or helbards in earlier pikeblocks) with the pikes. Makes sense, since they rarely showed up as independent units. But we also have to consider that early blocks contain less guns, while later contain far more. There must be a mechanic to decide how to deploy, calculate the number of attacks and decide the losses for different configurations.
Since shot usually deploy in some kind of line, we probably need a state for the battlegroup, like: "shot deployed" or "shot included". Deployment takes a turn, fleeing back does not (or something similar). Once the first ruleset is available it needs to be checked against the historical battles of the era.
It probably makes sense to collect some typical battles that the developers or betatesters should consider when checking results - but in another thread...

OldenTired wrote:

a tercio could be a 12-base BG. 8 pikes, 4 shot. fights to its front as all HF Pike, shoots in all directions on two (or four) dice when not engaged in melee.

would be deployed as

shpkpksh
shpkpksh
00pkpk00
00pkpk00

One of the real attractions for me, visually, is the arrangement of troop types in some versions of the tercio, with the shooters in blocks on the corners of a larger block of pike. I hope that the rules stipulating articulation of bases would reflect this. I would be disappointed to see only a functional representation.

http://www.anselm.edu/academic/history/ ... en%201.jpg (center, foreground.)

For arguments sake let's say each of the four groups of shooters is two bases, one behind the other. One of these stands would connect to a pike block (size depending on period and army type) by touching side to side.

The functionality of close combat would need to take into account that the shooters would retire; the trick is finding a simple solution to this change in formation.
Swords, Halberds etc.--when appropriate to nationality and date--could be represented by figures, but in usual elegant FOG fashion would be factored into the predominant weapon type, the pike.

One of the real attractions for me, visually, is the arrangement of troop types in some versions of the tercio, with the shooters in blocks on the corners of a larger block of pike. I hope that the rules stipulating articulation of bases would reflect this. I would be disappointed to see only a functional representation.

I agree completely. This makes the real feeling of the era. To put the different kinds of formations into rules is for me the No 1 objective for the authors. Cross fingers

Maybe a base of 3" x 3" with 1 arquebucier in each corner and a block of 4 pikemen in the center would do the trick and still function as a single unit.

Ranimiro wrote:Maybe a base of 3" x 3" with 1 arquebucier in each corner and a block of 4 pikemen in the center would do the trick and still function as a single unit.

That sounds a bit smallish for a scale.

They should allow for flexible unit sizes and flexible compositions. The ratio of pikemen to handguns was constantly changing. At the start the handgun (or still crossbows) was just a support for the main block of pikes, while at the end of the period the pikes just offered protection for the muskets. From the start, however, handguns were also often deployed independently. The cavalry also went through a lot of development during that period, probably more so then the infantry. The artillery is present during the whole period but also changes its efficiency from 1500 to 1650. The appearance of the artillery probably is a better indication for the start of the period then the handgun or the pike. It certainly started the frantic building of the new fortress types.

Imho the main challenge for FOGR is to capture the transformational character of the period, while keeping pike and shot to various degrees as the base of its armies. Still, 8 models to represent a pikeblock or tercio seems a bit on the small side. It does not allow for the necessary variation in the composition and will probably not look like an organized army on the table.

PS: Just looked it up in the Parkinson. At the start of the period the ratio was roughly 1:3 from handguns to pikes. Around 1650 the ratio was roughly 3:1 or better. Cavalry reached its lowest point and sometimes was only present at 1:20 at the start of the period, before pistols and the higher percentage of muskets made them viable units for battles again.

Is there any timetable for when/if someone has been successfully appointed as a beta tester?