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.