Some Thoughts on my French Wars of Religion Rules

When I had finished my lengthy pondering about starting the French Wars of Religion as a wargaming project, one of my first and significant periods of reflection and energy was about the rules.  Yes, even before buying the miniatures.

Having already looked around, I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing that really satisfied me or had everything that I wanted.  This was doubtless made more difficult by deciding to proceed in 2mm.

It wasn't a hard decision to write my own rules.

I began with first principles and drew up some design guidelines:

• No figure or base removal.  This was a no brainer really.  At 2mm, a base was going to represent a formation.

• Everything should be centred around two attributes: unit quality and the unit's cohesion.  All my reading to date really highlights these as determining factors.  Quality will remain the same, but cohesion levels will ebb and flow during a battle.  This means that all tests, movement, firing, morale and combat will be hanging on these two attributes.

• Morale grade is not a factor in itself but the sum of the unit's quality and cohesion.

• Use six sided dice only.  I'm not opposed to using a range of dice (my own WW2 aerial rules use d6, d8, d10,d12 and d20s) but just wanted to reach for the dice... not decide which dice to reach for!  In most cases decisions should be determined by rolling 2d6 - i.e. 2-12.  I need the bell curve if I am going to pin everything on quality and cohesion.  Essentially both quality and cohesion have settled into a 5 to 1 range, with 5 being the top.  So a veteran unit (quality 4) with a cohesion level of 5 will pass a morale test on 2d6 with a score of 9 or under, so 83%.  However, if the same unit's cohesion has dropped to 2 then the pass is 6 or under, which is 41.6% and not so good.

• As few markers/counters as possible.  Impossible to have none, but I think 2mm figures will be overwhelmed by too much clutter on the tabletop.

• I want to introduce cards to give the players extra decision making, not just in moving their troops, but in playing event cards and trying to win initiative.  So the idea is that cards can influence events, but they also come with a value; this value can be used to bid for initiative, but it may mean not being able to use that card to influence an event.  I hope that the basic rules will provide a flavour of the period and the conflict, but the cards will (fingers crossed) have specific references that will enhance that feel for the warfare and the times.

Basically I ended up writing the rules before I purchased the figures.  They are under constant personal review and have yet to be used in anger by anyone else, other than solo on my dining table.

No rules are written in a vacuum and my thinking has no doubt been influenced by rules that I have read, played or seen reviewed.  There is seldom anything entirely original.  I also understand that further research may impact on my design.  I'll keep you all posted on how these develop.