Slitherine

Does anyone know of any plans near or distant to expand FOG into the Renaissance period?

This question has come up a few times in the past. The answer seems to be "Not now; maybe not ever." The authors want to get the ancients stuff fully accomplished before contemplating anything else. Which is good. I want to see the Chinese army list book(s) before anyone even thinks about the Renaissance.

Having said that, it does seem to me that the underlying game mechanics would adapt well to the Renaissance era.

Marc

I vote that they do an expansion up to at least 1650 or 1721 maybe, in another place we even discussed a name, Pikes Into Glory. I would be willing to act as a play tester and list checker and I don't put myself forwards for extra work veyr often.

It pretty much plays up to 1520 for Western European armies anyway (I've trialled it with Italian Wars French & Italian Condotta). I suspect you could just about stretch it to 1550ish without too much effort.

Greg

babyshark wrote:I want to see the Chinese army list book(s) before anyone even thinks about the Renaissance.
Marc

Not to mention Elephant Wars (Armies of South and South-East Asia), New World Wars and The Lost Scrolls, or equivalent.

I guess for the foreseeable, those of us who want to use FOG for after 1500 will have to adapt it for ourselves and when the time comes, forward suggestions to the design team?

We'd need to primarily consider arquebus and later musket range and effectiveness...eg their POAs...and the emerging types of horsemen such as Reiters/Cuirassiers. We would need to allow mixed pike/firearm battlegroups and maybe allow some extreme examples of 16 fig battlegroups...Spanish tercio? It maybe that, unlike in ancient FOG, we would need rules on altering the formation of a BG in the light of different tactiical doctrines when facing different battlefield situations?

Any other thoughts on what we may need to do?

Martin

Well, firearms are easy to deal with -- Reiters start as Cav HArm/Arm Drilled Firearm Sword. Tercios can be modeled as a number of BGs in non-linear batteline, but my thought is that doing it right requires subunit rules, and that is a big change.

You might consider starting a Yahoo group specifically for discussion of Renaissance (or other historical but out of period) applications.

Mike

In many ways think the FOG paradigm of 'Battlegroups' fits Renaissance bettter than ancients - a Tercio is a BG par excellence for example. However, I do not think thati it is a simple cross, for some troops it would be - gendarmes spring to mind. For a Tercio you would need to have shooting and impact and melee POAs, which sounds simple enough, however how these new troop types interact with all others is the complicated bit.

SO if you want to experiement sure, I know some people at mt club who are already thinking about it. Not sure how much 'offical' input you would get however.

MikeK wrote:Well, firearms are easy to deal with -- Reiters start as Cav HArm/Arm Drilled Firearm Sword.

Reiters would need some sort of IMPACT PoA for their pistols, not a shooting PoA like Firearms are in normal FoG. So not that simple either...

Easily done - create a new weapon type 'Pistols', which gives an Impact POA, but has no shooting POA.
Probably do want to be able to shoot so they can caracole, but it would be short range - say the same as Javelins.
Might also need a POA for Reiters in more than 2 ranks (like Pikes), since they often fought very deep.
Mixed Pike/Shot formations might need some new rules, because unlike ancient mixed formation, they weren't mixed at the file level, so the Shot files should be able to shoot at full effect, but if adjacent to a Pike file should negate enemy POAs like Steady Pike normally do to reflect musketeers hiding under the Pikes.

There you go. Half done already

pyruse wrote:Easily done - create a new weapon type 'Pistols', which gives an Impact POA, but has no shooting POA.
Probably do want to be able to shoot so they can caracole, but it would be short range - say the same as Javelins.
Might also need a POA for Reiters in more than 2 ranks (like Pikes), since they often fought very deep.
Mixed Pike/Shot formations might need some new rules, because unlike ancient mixed formation, they weren't mixed at the file level, so the Shot files should be able to shoot at full effect, but if adjacent to a Pike file should negate enemy POAs like Steady Pike normally do to reflect musketeers hiding under the Pikes.

There you go. Half done already

Reiters [Pi(I) in DBR] should have a shooting capability but not a impact capability.
Cuirassier [Pi(S) or Pi(O) in DBR] should have no shooting capability and a "pistols" impact capability - + POA in impact in open terrain, lance doesn't count against pistols.

I think the only rule needed for Mixed Pike/Shot formations is to allow the pike to be deeper than the shot - the current rules would only permit the pike to be 1 rank deeper than the shot, which doesn't work if the pike are 4 ranks deep and the shot have taken a loss. I am assuming that mixed pike/shot is represented as 3 or 4 HF Pike with 2 MF arquebus/musket on either side.

i'd actually have unique POAs for mixed units that apply to all the elements in them, as otherwise you get odd effects of having only the shot (or pike) elements contacted by enemy