King Henry's War... An Update on Fiddling with a Perfectly Good Set of Rules!

 Over the long and dreary winter months, I have continued to work on my 12th century campaign, King Henry's War. When I first started out on this little venture, I found and downloaded the skirmish rule set Knyght, Pyke and Sworde from Nordic Weasel Games, to use in the table top battles that would take place between the devious Bishop of Durham and those supporting the beleaguered King Henry.

Although I really enjoyed the rules, there were things about them that left me feeling as though the battles I fought just didn't quite feel historically right, particularly the melee combat, which was just too random in its outcomes. For an armoured knight to be bested by a lowly peasant, should be a rare event to be applauded and recorded in the annals, but, in the early games of the campaign, this was happening more often than not!

This was the reason why I started thinking about adapting the rules and giving the random die roll much less weight in the outcome of the combat. In my adapted version of combat, the outcome is determined by the figure's combat skill, a random factor, which is also related to the combat skill, and a small number of situational factors, such as the defender's position and the combatants' level of fatigue.

In the example above, a group of Armed Peasants are in melee with a group of Men-at-Arms! The fight takes place in the open, so there are no Situational Modifiers and neither side has gained any Fatigue. The Peasants have a Combat Skill of 1, but the Men-at-Arms lifelong combat training gives them a Combat Skill of 4. In ten sample combats between the two figures in the foreground, the Man-at-Arms was victorious in all ten! Using the un-adapted combat rules and the same dice rolls, the Peasants would have won 5 of the combats, 3 of them would have been tied and the Man-at-Arms would have won the remaining 2! Historically somewhat unlikely I think!

10 victories out of 10 may seem a little unfair on the poor Peasants but, fighting a group of Men-at-Arms out in the open was doomed to failure when you compare the training, weapons, armour and sheer aggression of the two opposing groups. However, in the situation above, the Peasants have applied a little grey matter and positioned themselves behind a very handy obstacle. The Men-at-Arms have been busy prior to this fight and gained themselves 2 Fatigue Points and this one has managed to get himself in a position where he is facing two opponents. The result of these factors is that the two Peasants outscore their opponent by 2 to 1 before the Dice Roll Modifier is rolled. Again, ten sample rolls were rolled, but this time, the Man-at-Arms was victorious in only two of them, while the two Peasants won three and the remaining five were tied! In fact, because the Men-at-Arms have Fatigue and the Peasants don't, means that the Man-at-Arms would lose the combat and be pushed back and possibly suffer melee damage!

A final test run with the amended combat system pitched the group of Men-at-Arms against a more well matched opponent; a group of seasoned spearmen. Out of all the combats, the Men-at-Arms won 60%, the spearmen 20% and 20% were tied, which seems pretty much what you might expect, even though the dice were rolling quite poorly for the spearmen. Just to complete my little experiment, I fought the whole engagement between the spearmen and the Men-at-Arms as they appear in the photograph. Only one of spearmen defeated his opponent (the axe wielding leader of the group second from the bottom) and he inflicted a single wound on his opponent. The other four spearmen engaged were all pushed back without injuries being inflicted, which, considering the large shields and padded gambesons seems a fairly realistic result. Those results would have gained both groups a point of Fatigue to be carried over into the next activation. If the Men-at-Arms continued to push the spearmen back then, eventually, Fatigue, rather than injuries, would  cause them them to break. As an outcome, that seems to me to fit with descriptions of medieval battle being an almighty scrum-like push and shove, rather then every stroke of sword or thrust of spear resulting in a bloody wound.

So, now that I'm a little happier that my amended melee system gives a reasonably honest, if somewhat dour portrayal of a skirmish, as it may have been fought out in the later 12th century, it's back to the table top in a couple of days to fight out the next instalment of the ongoing conflict between the Bishop of Durham's forces and those loyal to good King Henry.

 

Wolfshead Warriors.

Creating Outlaw Figures for King Henry's War.

Wolf's Head: "Such persons were said to carry a wolf’s head, (caput lupinum;) for if caught alive they were to be brought to the king, and if they defended themselves they might be slain and their heads carried to the king, for they were no more to be accounted of than wolves." (Black's Law Dictionary 2nd Ed)

Under the cruel and evil tyranny of Hugh de Puiset, many innocent Haliwerfolc of the Liberty of Durham were unjustly proscribed as outlaws and condemned to eek out an existence in the dark and savage margins of society. These wrongly dispossessed were branded "Wolf's Head", outside the law, and legitimate targets for any who wished to eliminate them!

I decided a while ago that my Great Revolt of 1173 skirmish campaign needed some extra forces to bolster the resistance to the acquisitive machinations of the Bishop of Durham and his French allies. The last battle was a total disaster for the "Good Guys", ending up with most of them lying dead on the battlefield by the Char Beck. I could have painted up more Fireforge spearmen and archers in the black and yellow livery of Hugo Flambard, but I was itching to try something new and use up some of the hundreds of figures, from various historical periods, that are cluttering up my painting shed.

I think it was while I was browsing on the Footsore Miniatures web site, that I came across their sets of "Outlaw" figures for "Barons' War", that the idea of creating a band of outlaws for the campaign first began to materialise. I had a few nearly empty sprues of Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors, which would provide a good basic torso for the outlaws. The only issue with the figures is that they only come in two basic poses; a left arm stretched out for a shield and a Yawkshireman using his left hand to clutch onto his purse, but their dress is perfectly passable for a feudal outlaw.

The first outlaw on the work bench was put together from all GB parts, so I decided to make him more feudal age looking by giving him a Green Stuff cowl. At the first attempt, I only had a picture showing someone wearing a cowl from the front and it was only after I'd finished him that I discovered that the cowl should have the peculiar pointy bit at the back!

A bit of tinkering with some more Green Stuff resulted in the extra material and a figure that looks uncannily like my Dad.

 

In spite of only having the two basic poses, the application of some bending, shaping and appropriately applied Green Stuff, makes it possible to make a group of figures who all have their own indidual characters.

Each Group in King Henry's War needs a leader and this one has a Fireforge head and a Greek cloak with a Green Stuff fur collar and bit of ragidisation with a nice sharp craft knife.

The rest of the group all have assorted bits of personalisation using parts from different manufacturers or the application of Green Stuff.

The Outlaws will, of course, need Heroes to lead them into battle and, at the moment, I have created two; Brother Gilbertus and Fulke Everill. Gilbertus was an absolute must, as all bands of Outlaws have a rebellious monk to be found somewhere amongst their ranks, although this one is a bit more out there in terms of military demeanour, wielding a weapon that could do a lot of damage. 

Fulke is definitely a more conventional hero, simultaneously brandishing sword and bow, meaning that he can be used in both missile and melee attacks with equally heroic prowess.