Black Powder! (Not That One)

Fellow South Florida Miniatures Gamer Mark Ritchie - who wrote Tactical Combat as played here and here - has Ancients and black-powder rules too - Pilum and Firelock respectively. Last Sunday he ran me and "Oriskany Jim" Johnson through a late-16th-century encounter. The club has been very busy lately, with games almost every Saturday, but I've been working every Saturday for over a month and jumped at the chance for a Sunday game. Unfortunately that meant there were only four of us there. Mark GM'ed the game.

Ron and I played an Imperial/Hungarian force:

Jim got the Poles, including their famous winged lancers:

We played the battle of Byczna, January 24, 1588, part of a civil war between Swedish- and Imperial-backed claimants to the Polish throne. The game is low-scale - each base represents a company of fifty to eighty men.

The battlefield, from the Imperial side. Brown for roads,
blue for rivers, the colorful patches round the village
are cropfields. There is a low hill at center-bottom.

The goal was for at least one Imperial base to hold the road for 15 turns, or alternately to eliminate twenty opposing bases. Both had a mix of pike, shot, pistoliers and lancers or hussars (lots of these); the Imperials also had two guns. A hex is 50 yards, and musket range three hexes. There are also rules for caracole - cavalry move-and-fire - and limicon, which I hadn't heard of before but is roughly the same thing for infantry.

We set up first in the southeast (from my perspective) quadrant, and our options were dire. It wasn't obvious which way Jim would come, as he could set up anywhere about 15 hexes from our line. Ron took the guns and half our army to the left, setting up on the hill east of the village. I set up my infantry across the road, wary of an assault from the northeast, with my cavalry in reserve to go either direction as needed.

Jim, of course, then set up his entire army on our left flank. My troops would have some humping to do...

The Imperial forces, badly strung out; to rear of picture
the Poles. Clumping of troops is deliberate, as orders
are best issued to groups.

My half, now facing the wrong direction, but with
cavalry positioned to support.

Ron's side. Each unit had 6 or 8 hit points, with loss
denoted by colored pipe cleaners; here the guns start
with only four HP apiece. Tags denote leaders.

Jim's cavalry races forward.

Not all units could be moved; each commander generated 1d6 orders, which could be transferred to other commanders. This is where the clumping comes in; a single order can be issued to several units at once provided they are contiguous. There is an action economy, and there were times our side rolled poorly enough to have to seriously think about what moves we could make.

Our side fires. In addition to HP loss, units can be
shaken or routed, denoted by colored caps.

There is more to firing and combat than just the fighting; units must take morale checks when they take casualties or when fired on by cannon (even if it does no damage). On one failure, the unit is shaken and takes a yellow marker; on two it is broken, takes a red marker, and retreats a random number of hexes. If broken in close combat, it is eliminated outright. Like in Warhammer Fantasy, close combat would make the real difference here, and units could overrun and enter combat with another unit.

The combat result table links number of attacks plus assorted bonuses to a 2D6 score that can cause up to three hits on the opposing base (though both sides may attack). Hits may be saved; those that aren't require morale checks, which ultimately resolve the combat. It's possible to be eliminated by hits alone, but more likely to eventually fail a check and either retreat or, with two failures in CC, be eliminated that way.

Turn 1: Jim threw a unit of fast horse archers at us, then swept across our left flank while his infantry followed more sedately. I hastily moved my flank towards the enemy, but at the rate they were going, the infantry wouldn't make it in time to participate. Roads do allow extra movement provided half the unit's move is on that road, and luckily I was mostly deployed near it.

Turn 2: The hussars charged Ron's hill. We lost two pike units, a gun, musketeers, and horse, while a second horsed unit broke and fled. Five units lost already - close combat in this game is a quick way to die. The other gun managed to hold off the winged lancers, and in our turn, we variously rallied shaken units and advanced. Our counter-attack was weak and did little to push the Polish army away from our flank.

The winged lancer charge goes in. Units can also support, so
it's good to gang up on each other. After the forward lancer
eliminates the gun, for example, the rear one handles the pikes - 
which don't help against the longer lances of the cavalry.

The first gun captured, lancers go after the second.

Reiters attempt to rescue it.

Turn 3: The hussars continued to chew through our flank, but I passed eight (!) morale checks (which, like Warhammer, are roll-under). I exchanged dice during combat but then started rolling high on morale checks and lost a few units any way. I charged on my own "northern" flank, to little effect. My infantry, some of them very good landsknechts, were too far away to help.

Turn 4: More of the same. My infantry finally got close enough to fire shot at Jim's also-slowly-slogging infantry while his cavalry continued to rampage through what remained of Ron's end. Partway through, we lost our twentieth base and the game was over - Jim had lost four, two of them on the last turn. I'd taken a lesson from his tactics and made sure to gang up on his units to force more morale checks. If we'd continued, my infantry close-combat types were now close enough to do some serious damage, but his cavalry would have swept behind me and finished the job.

Lancers tear the crap out of Imperial reiters, though in the
distance you can see my own attack going in. The yellow-
capped bases are in trouble; one loss in CC and they'll be gone.

Melee on the road - from the darker colors of chenille
and the yellow caps, I'm finally achieving something.

A fun and exciting game, but unfortunately lost in the deployment phase. Tactics have never been my strong suit, despite far too much reading on the topic. Maybe that's why I like 18th-century, when they were mostly stolid. Pike and shot isn't my thing either, and the revelation that lances could basically ignore the whole point of pikes was devastating. Jim's winged lancers lived up to their reputation.

A few more close-ups of Mark's nicely-painted figures:

Infantry in trouble. This arquebus base has 1 of 8 hp left.

Jim's view of same combat.

Poles hold off the Imperial charge.

Poles closing the trap. Dice denote order "pips" available
to commanders; the CinC can distribute these to others.

I neglected to bring some of my 18mm Wofuns to test on the hexes; I'd be happy to play again using horse-and-musket tactics with these rules. We'll see. Jim again took video for Sitrep Podcast but it won't be published until August, I'll post a link then. Happy gaming, all.