French Wars of Religion - Tentative First Solo Action

With both armies painted I thought I'd have a quick test of the draft rules.

I am particularly interested in how the cohesion, shooting and charge melee rules operate.

Each unit has two factors: 

• Quality, which represents the unit's level of training and/or experience and does not change during a game. 
• Cohesion, which represents the unit's readiness, order and combat efficiency. This can and does change during a game.  Together, quality and cohesion is the changing morale level of the unit.

It is against these factors in combination that firing, charging, melee and morale are resolved.  For example, in morale checks 2d6 are rolled with the score needing to be equal to or under the unit's quality plus cohesion.

On with the game.

It actually picks up after the opening couple of turns.  The Huguenot cavalry has advanced on both flanks, whilst the Catholic gens d'armes have really only progressed on their right (nearest to us in the photograph).  The Catholic infantry in the centre have been goaded to advance due to Protestant artillery fire.

The situation a couple of turns in.

On the Catholic right flank, the Huguenot cavalry (pistol and sword armed) protected by arquebusiers posted in between draw up into charge range.  As I have conceived the rules, shooting and then charges and melee take place before any other movement.

Catholic gens d'armes en haye (in line) on the left, Huguenot cavalry interspersed with arquebusiers on the right.

The arquebusiers shoot then the Huguenot cavalry, having won the initiative, charge.  The two nearest Catholic units failed to countercharge because they rolled above their quality plus cohesion with 2d6.  Whilst the third succeeded by rolling a seven - you can see the dice, green is the unit quality and white the cohesion.

The Huguenot in their deeper formations charge the Catholic nobility.

The better quality of the Huguenot cavalry defeat those of the Catholic Ligue, albeit in close run encounters.

Catholic cavalry thrown into retreat.

The victorious cavalry now have to test to maintain control or be compelled to pursue.  This is done by, again, rolling 2d6 and having to score equal or under the unit's quality + cohesion.

Even victorious units in melee suffer a loss of cohesion.  Defeated units suffer a greater loss and then have to take a morale check to see if their morale is undermined. 

Protestant cavalry stand poised to pursue.

One pistolier unit failed its test and must roll 3d6 to pursue, lose another cohesion level and then continue beyond.  Luckily they rolled 1, 1, and 3 to move only 5 inches.

A lucky roll kept the unit in command range.

The other unit passed.  Thus keeping its cohesion and crashing neatly into the rear of a unit of stradiots.

Ouch! That's going to smart!

The Catholic stradiots were quickly sent reeling back.  But being in a breakthrough melee is not risk free  and the Huguenot horsemen will suffer the loss of another level of cohesion.  You may notice that all the Catholic cavalry have red dice (not green), that is because upon failing their morale checks the green dice was swapped for red ones to show that their morale is undermined.

Great job in wrecking the Ligue cavalry.  But now the Huguenots must regain some composure.

Meanwhile, in the centre the Catholic infantry slowly trundle forward just as their flanks start to disintegrate.

The view from behind the Huguenot centre.

Whilst out on the Catholic left flank, the Protestants have thrown one unit of gens d'armes back in disarray.  Now they combine to unseat another set of Ligue nobles by moving on the front and flank.  As they do this a unit of reiters practise the caracole on a Catholic "Old Band" pike and shot unit.

Both Huguenot cavalry have deep formations.  German reiters tended to have deeper formations than the Protestant pistoliers.

Two units and outflanked is too much to bear and the Catholic cavalry are sent hurtling back.  However, they are quickly pursued in a rather uncontrolled fashion and wiped out.  Meanwhile, the other horsemen maintain control and ensure that they can harass the lone infantry unit.

The infantry's quality and cohesion are still high.  Nonetheless, I don't envy their position.

With both flanks lost, the Catholics have lost the encounter.  Especially as the Protestant cavalry starts to turn towards the flanks of the Ligue infantry in the centre.

The view looking from the Huguenot left towards the centre.

A bird's eye view of the battlefield.

Conclusions

Firing

I found that the Enfants Perdus (skirmish arquebusiers in front of the Huguenot infantry were a little too powerful.  So I need to remedy that.

For firing, 2d6 are rolled and compared with the unit's quality plus current cohesion plus modifiers (which are mostly minuses).  The dice must be equal or below the number to cause a loss of one cohesion level in the target.  Two levels are lost if the dice roll is more than 2 below the number.  However, I found this too easy for the arquebusiers to inflict enormous damage, so two cohesion levels are only lost if the 2d6 < half the quality+cohesion+mods.

Morale

I was quite pleased with how things went, but reserve judgement for future testing.

For reference a unit is destroyed/dispersed if it fails a morale check whilst its morale is undermined.  i.e. it has to fail two morale checks in a row.

Melee

The mechanics seemed to work well.  What I found was that some modifiers seemed to be a little unnecessary when different units' quality and cohesion can differentiate between the units fighting.  As for all the above, further testing required before final judgment.

Other

I never got the infantry into contact.  So I will need to concentrate on them, and infantry vs cavalry, next time.

All in all I was pleasantly surprised that I was getting out of the solo action a lot of what I had read about the battles of this period.

I was also pleased that the turn sequence seemed to work.  Though I must put more stress-testing on this.

For reference the sequence is as follows:

1. Each side refresh cards in their hands to 5.
2. Check command radius and allocate cards.
3. Artillery fire and any cohesion goaded advance tests.
4. Small arms fire.
5. Movement bidding - winner is player A for the turn.
6. Player A declares and conducts charges.
7. Player B declares and conducts charges.
8. Melee
9. Melee results and pursuit.
10. Player A rolls activation dice for number of non-meleeing units they can move; and moves.
11. Player B rolls activation dice for number of non-meleeing units they can move; and moves.
12. Rally and Restore - morale and cohesion
13. Army cohesion check.

This looks like it's quite fussy, but I was encouraged by how neatly and quickly it skipped along.

I would like to introduce this to the Rejects sometime in the Autumn/Winter for play testing.  For now, on to thinking about the next solo test.

Same Game But No Hex

After trying a remote game using Koenig Krieg adapted to hex movement - see here, I just wanted to confirm my remote gaming bias which is inclining towards hex grid based gaming.  So, I decided to host the same game without hex and applying a measuring stick especially made.  This way the players could see a better representation of ranges, movement rates.

The armies and objective was the same as previously.

Here's the view of the table at the start.

The view from the French position with the objective of the hill ahead of them.

The view from the Austrian side of the table.  You get a sense of how outnumbered the Austrians are.  However, their heavy cavalry is the best on the table.

The Austrian view from the hill towards the French.

The French decided to throw their heavy cavalry around the hill and the woods. Forcing the Austrians to divide their cuirassiers to avoid their infantry on the hill being outflanked.

Both sides' cavalry brigades squared up against each other on the flanks.  While the French, hesitating in the centre, came under Austrian artillery fire from the hill.

The Austrian left threw back the French dragoons after bitter struggles which left them unable to fully exploit the situation. On the other flank, honours were even with both sides needing to time to reorder.

Meanwhile, the French infantry, seemingly waiting for the right moment, suffered losses from the cannons and one unit decided to retire to redress their lines.

The game was going much better than I anticipated. After a brief consultation, the players were happy to continue it to a conclusion on a second evening.

As the battle continued the Austrian cavalry gained the upper hand on the flanks. However, they seemed unable to exploit it as the French mounted remained in sufficient strength to curtail unfettered flanking movements.

Austrian cavalry loop around the woods, unable to grapple with the French infantry while a French dragoon unit remains intact.

Likewise, the Austrians' have to remain wary of the French heavy cavalry that is reordering after having been forced to retire.

This left the French infantry to advance on the Austrians set up on the heights.  With at last producing some accurate artillery fire, they convinced the stubborn imperial soldiery that it was getting a bit "hot" on the hill, and retire.

This withdrawal left only one artillery and unit unit on the hill.  With plenty of gallic infantry arriving on their flanks things look shaky.

Now the French launched a frontal charge at the enemy guns and, with a pinch of luck, swept it away before reorganising themselves onto the flank of the last Austrians on the hill.

At this point it was called a French victory.

The Austrians had not been able to turn the French flanks with their cavalry.  Plus, French numbers proved too much for the imperial quality.

I asked the players of both sides if they would have withdrawn their armies from the field if this was a game in part of wider campaign.  All sides said yes, as they would need to be mindful of the strategic situation.  I found this interesting if we were to play a campaign in the future - which remote gaming seems to offer very readily.

This is what the field looked like by the end.

This game was played to confirm me and the Rejects in using a hex grid system as the most practical and stress free means of playing a remote game via Zoom.  Well... what actually happened was this game worked really well and instead of crystalising the decision, it placed it in question and divided opinion in the group.  Personally, I wonder whether this is more about the rules used and how they translate to remote play.  For example, I would never dream of using They Died for Glory for a remote Franco-Prussian War game.

French infantry overwhelming the Austrian position.

From a technical point of view, having the terrain tiles out meant that the glare from the last game was gone.  I had also learned some lessons concerning cameras etc. which made this a better experience.  I suppose what it really means is that we can successfully play with or without hex.  Though I do believe that having the clear and coloured measuring stick gave a clarity that using a tape measure wouldn't via a camera.

I'll reflect on the experiences of these two games.  Considering the technical, but issues around practical upper limits on table size and number of units per side, and how this can change for games designed to reach a conclusion in one or two evening sessions.  In the meantime, I'll start with feeling a little pleased about how they went.