Sunday 11 June 2017

War Of The Roses


Talking with Mark yesterday I suggested an idea to get his War Of The Roses H & R stuff out again and use the DBA 3.0 rules so we can play the larger battles of the period with relatively little work and also a set of rules which plays very fast and works well.

I am hoping Mark will be sport for this as it's going to be a doddle to make it happen.


In DBA 3.0 you can increase the base frontage to pretty much anything you like and providing base depths are calculated in line with the ratios in the rules this will allow Mark to block together large visually stunning units.

Historical guidelines are provided in the rules

An element of foot equals 500-600 men or 1000 horde whilst an element of cavalry equals 250 - 300 riders.


So.....


Mark - please use the following guidelines and see what you can build using the army lists below.

I don'y know exactly how much stuff you have painted bu remember it being "a lot"

I have multiplied x 3 the basic 12 element lists but there is no reason why this cannot be x 4 if you have to figures.

War of the roses armies 1455-1485 OR Tudor army 1486-1515 AD

3 Generals (4 blade or knights), 3 x currours (Cav) or border staves (light horse) or unreliable levies (7 Horde), 12 x stiffened billmen (4 blade), 12 x archers 94 light bow), 3 x guns (art), 3 x Welsh (pike) or Irish (3 Auxillia) or ment at arms (4 blade / 3 Kn) or mercenary handgunners (PS)


Rebel Army of Henry Tudor 1485 AD

1 X General (Henry) CP - special rule for this unit) 2 x Generals - Exiled men at arms (4 blade), 12 French Pikemen ( PK) or French Voulgiers (4 blade), 9 French Voulgiers (4 blade) or stiffened English or Welsh billmen (4 blade), 6 x English or Welsh archers ( 4 LB), 3 Guns (art) or mercenary crossbowmen or handgunners (PS)

Rebel Army of Lambert Simnel 1487 AD

3 Generals ( 4 blade), 3 billmen (4 blade), 3 Archers (4 LB), 3 mercenary German and Swiss Pikemen (4 PK), 3 x Irish galloglaich (4 blade), 9 x Irish Kerns (3 Ax), 3 x Irish Archers (ps) 3 x mercenary crossbow or handgunners (ps)


Base widths at 60mm have following depths

Knights 40 - 45mm
Cavalry 40 -45mm
Light Horse 40-45mm
Pikes 20-30mm
Blades 20-30mm
Auxillai 30mm
Bows 30mm
Psiloi 30mm
Hordes 40-60mm
Artillery 80mm

I am conscious of your base sizes so if they are all 30mm or 20mm square it should be easy enough to calculate your base depths. It's important in DBA to represent the depths as close as can be for push back reasons.



That's all the lists from the rule book for the period and is a foundation to build on.

I would almost certainly look at modifying the army break / morale. As written once a command loses a 1/3rd of its elements it becomes demoralised and you can only use pips to hold units, the remainder break off the table

We can work on this but I think applying a -2 to command pips would simulate a loss of command and control in that command. If you roll a 1 or 2 you are not doing anything with rolls of 3 or better needed to issue pip dice.

Probably keep to the rules for overall army break which are lose 2 commands or 50% of total units lost.


Have a play with these lists Mark and blog some photos of what you can conjure up to form 2 armies from the lists above.

We can have a go of this in July after the next Spearhead operational game has been played.



2 comments:

mark said...

Russ, all my bases are 30x30 so i can make up for example 90x60 using 6 bases for infantry/bows
cavalry would be 90x60 or 90x90
let me know and i will make some up and take pictures for the blog
Are there rules for different classes of the same troops IE Levy bow/retained bow


Russ said...

Thanks Mark and that sounds fine. Your bases will work okay. Troop types are shown in army list above in brackets

You will see subtle differences between say Irish archers depicted as Psiloi to the longobws in the other lists which are LB4. All the blade troops are 4 blade so this is classed as "solid" there are nuances in the rules but in this period most of the stuff is pretty much the same. You Generals as Knights are a damn sight tougher than they are on foot as blades though.

Knock something up and we will organise a Thursday night game to start with