LORDS OF HISTORY, 3rd edition

[fogman]

Lords of History 3: English battles: Hastings, Verneuil, Towton.

Lords of History 3b sked.jpg (44.72 KiB) Viewed 6443 times

Round 1:
Saturday 21 June - Friday 4 July

Round 2:
Saturday 5 July - Friday 18 July

[fogman]

Recruitment open

Before you sign on, make sure you are able to follow through your commitment.

A. 5 games per round, each round is 3 weeks long. A player will normally have to make 2-3 challenges, and receive 2-3 challenges.
B. All challenges must be posted and picked up within a week of the start of each round

Failure to comply with either A or B will result in being removed from the tournament and not considered again.

Start date : Saturday 21 June

[iandavidsmith]

I'm down for it
Cheers
Ian

[Londo]

Yep, me too!

Cheers,
Paul.

[rexhurley]

tah muchly I'll be there

[fogman]

recruitment closed.

We'll go with 4, all reliable players and with knowledge of the format. I've reduced it to 3 battles: Hastings, Verneuil, Towton, and to 2 weeks per round. See first post for schedule.

[rexhurley]

Thanks Fogman could I just check are these your scenarios or those of the scenario part of the army so paired games no double moves, no FOG etc eh

[fogman]

my scenarios. you'll need to study them as armies are mostly already in contact and there is no time to redeploy as you wish and do whatever you want with them. play schedule is as with the non-scenario tournament: if you challenge, you play side 1 (not paired game). Same with settings.

[rexhurley]

Morning gents could I get a link to the location of your scenarios please Fogman so i can download them and get into it, cheers Rex

[fogman]

Scenario Design -> Fogman's battle's recreations -> #5, 7, 37

viewtopic.php?f=92&t=44195

If you can't download, your opponent will challenge you instead. Just make sure you take the time to study the field and units (many immobile units) before you move.

[fogman]

Mount your horses!

Settings: no double moves, no fog of war.

Challenge out for Ian
Hastings - pw: Hastings

[iandavidsmith]

Att : Rexhurley

challenge posted for Verneuil
password= sicemrex

Cheers
Ian

[rexhurley]

Scenario Design -> Fogman's battle's recreations -> #5, 7, 37

viewtopic.php?f=92&t=44195

If you can't download, your opponent will challenge you instead. Just make sure you take the time to study the field and units (many immobile units) before you move.

Could you challenge me please I have downloaded and unzipped in the right folder but cant see anything sorry

[Londo]

I have posted 3 challenges. The only one which I have played before as a Fogman recreation is Towton - a murderous slugging-match between two good-quality lines of heavy infantry. The last man alive wins!

Rex - Hastings - pw sexyrexy

Fogman - Verneuil - pw tyrant

Ian - Towton - pw bloodbath

Have fun everybody!

[fogman]

challenge for rex

Towton -- pw: Towton

[Londo]

Verneuil

Londo (French-Scottish) 48/70 - fogman (English) 70/70

Londo 10.0
fogman 6.9

A couple of questions:

1) I thought about having the Italian knights go riding off to the right, where there is a little gap that would allow them to come up behind the English men-at-arms. It would take several turns to get there, though, and the battle might well be over by the time they arrive. On the other hand, attacking the baggage - the historical action - nets a few easy VPs, but then you hit the wagons representing the baggage guards. I chose the latter, and got lucky dice vs one of the wagons. But is it a real possibility to send the knights off to the right instead?

2) I managed to get 4 or 5 of the arriere-ban and crossbows into the protection of Verneuil. Is this about what you'd expect given average luck? If they're still fighting disorganisation markers once the front line breaks, they're toast.

I've started playing Hastings with Rex. Ian hasn't picked up my challenge yet - I'll send him a PM.

[fogman]

1)no they would arrive too late although i never actually played it out. the design discourages them through the overlay and the woods. attacking the baggage train is what they historically did and therefore made to be more appealing in the game.

2) the number of units getting back into Verneuil is about right.

The game revolves around the superior units on both sides overcoming the average units on the other side on each wing. And you were more successful, although a lot more than I thought possible, partly because:
- the leader spearheading in my right wing died in the first combat which bogged down the whole attack for maybe 2 turns which affected the timetable of the flanking attack on the Scots.
- the leader in my left wing did not die in his first combat but lost badly and his unit was destroyed in the following phase, that hastened the demise of the entire wing as he was counted on to delay the Scot's advance to give my flanking attack a chance.
- I forgot to turn the archer that got behind the Scot's right wing (that would have given him a rear attack) that would have delayed the destruction of that portion of my line.
- I made the mistake of leaving space between my two lines in the flanking attack that allowed you to get in behind and destroying it. the second line was coming up short because of the first point. I thought I was saved when I got 3 archery hits on that average unit but it did not break. The other one got 2 hits and did not break either. Those were 2 crucial morale tests as disorganized archers are unlikely to attack, even rear attacks.

You were consistent in what you were trying to do while I kept changing my train of thoughts, which led to inadvertent blunders, like forgetting to move the units defending the baggage train in the penultimate turn, needlessly losing one, 2 points, that would have given me another turn to inflict some casualties. Congrats.

Overall the design did what it's supposed to do and it conforms very well to the historical narrative which was its purpose. The point is that a scenario can guide strategic choices but that within that framework, it's still possible to have a game with plenty of tactical possibilities, without being a mere DAG game with pre-set terrain and OOB.

[fogman]

Hastings

fogman (Normans) 30/50 vs iandavidsmith (Anglo-Saxons) 64/64

fogman 10
iandavidsmith 6

archery was more successful than usual on the right and the normans broke through there.

[Londo]

I've almost finished Hastings with Rex. It will most likely be a very slight Norman victory.

While I like the use of archery tokens in this and other scenarios, I wonder if they could be modified a bit.

1) Maybe make them mobile? On one occasion in Hastings, the archery token rolled well, and ultimately routed the unit it was engaged with. Fair enough, one can imagine units breaking under missile fire. But then the archery token just sat there immobile, and indeed blocked the path of Norman knights that would otherwise have ridden up into the hex occupied by the target. That was rather annoying! A mobile token could have shifted across to another target, as no doubt archers would do when their first target breaks.

2) In Hastings, either have some mobile archery tokens starting back, or some actual archer units, on the Norman side? The way it plays out, archery has a major role at the start, but once the archery tokens are gone, no role in the mid and late game. But given what happened to Harold, archery was still significant towards the end of the battle. The Norman missile troops presumably didn't down tools and walk away after the first hour.

[fogman]

1) if the counter was mobile a saxon unit would be pulled off the line when it routs. this did occur, notably on the saxon right and there are provisions made for that to happen, but not all over the line which would skew the course of the battle. it is rare that the archery counter survives; so you may not have been able to move into its hex but you saved 2 points, not a bad trade-off.

2) once the hands to hands fighting starts archery becomes secondary at best. for one thing, archery has to become indirect and the game only allows for direct fire (target within line of sight), the other is the issue of unlimited ammo. sure harold was shot by an arrow near the end of the battle but it's not because there are no archery counter that there are no arrows flying around. At towton, one of the commander who was killed after the initial archery volleys was lord dacre who was shot by an arrow. now it is indisputable that towton was a close combat weapons battle even though each side fielded large amounts of archers. and dacre was killed when he took off his helmet to breathe so he must have been killed by a stray arrow rather than a volley (or he would not have taken off his helmet). the archers didn't 'walk away', they presumably drew their swords and joined the fray and whoever still shooting would do so in a non organized way, not worthy of a counter that assumes a community of purpose and command structure dedicated to it. the first version of Hastings had archers counters (still downloadable) but it was found that the norman can just sit back and shoot at the saxons with impunity. there is also the problem of the player being able to concentrate the volleys onto one unit, then moving on to the next, something not realistic.

in the end, it's a matter of historical flow not of details, even though i can explain them. it is how well the game conforms to the historical narratives that is the main object of the scenario. one thing many people has difficulties getting over with, is that they expect to play a DAG game (albeit with preset map and order of battles). i design the scenarios to be anything but that. it is an acquired taste but i defy anyone to find holes in its historical validity and research.