Fm Poitiers 1356.zip- (6.48 KiB) Downloaded 277 times
Designer's notes:
Like most seemingly one-sided affairs, this was not an easy battle to simulate. By this time, i have eschewed the traditional way of doing a historical scenario: find out the order of battle, the starting positions, the lay of the land, and just line up the armies, because doing so gives rise to unrecognizable, unhistorical maneuvers and developments, that is no different from a DAG battle. Coaxing the flow of the game into historical events has become the guiding principle. Creating a scenario now has as precondition the structural analysis of the battle in question in order to delineate its main patterns and identify its obligatory way points.
At Poitiers, the French attacked in distinct waves. There were 4 battle groups: the advance guard, followed by the forces respectively of the dauphin's, the duke of orleans', and the king's. The advance guard came on first, most went right with the constable into the Anglo-Gascon van, some (Clermont's troopers) straight ahead. Then came the attack of the dauphin's command against the Anglo-Gascon centre. Although the two actions were not really simultaneous, it is possible to portray them here as such because they occurred at different locations. It is a compromise since there is no way to force a player to attack in two waves as his preference would be to attack with one single overwhelming one. This is where I chose to start the scenario. The third line, the duke of orlean's, did not fight. most of it left the field (among the notables who remained were Guichard d'Angles who later would become the tutor to the future Richard II, the Black Prince's son!). By the time the king's division went into action, the previous waves had been broken. The key design decision here is to start with the dauphin already engaged and the king still far away so they can't combine.
The English player should be able to destroy the first 2 waves. The key is to minimize the losses to be able to counter the last French push when the king arrives. If he is wildly successful, as it is possible, the French may not attack and adopt a defensive posture. then the English player should have the strength to take the offensive, which happened historically. Beware of the immobile units. they are so to prevent the English player from entertaining maneuvers that would disrupt the historical flow.
a note on the french crossbow unit: i have not used the mf crossbow counter but a hf pavoisier crossbow counter because 1) there was one pavoisier (shield carrier) for 3-4 crossbowmen. 2) that would keep those units more or less static and not engaging in some DAG type flanking maneuvers.
