Presentation
32pp (? - no page numbers! no index!) stapled A4 book with glossy card covers. No diagrams, just some dense "tutorial" colour images at the end. Two copies (nice) of a 2 page QRS. VERY text heavy, not a single real table or even bullet point. Some nice info on livery colours though. Written by Barry Slemmings with Graham Towers. I picked my copy up from Barry himself at Salute. Available from him on eBay at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/144287669442
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| Had to go up to the loft whilst the game was in progress, so nice overhead shot! |
Set-Up
Mortimer's Cross again, just hit reset after abandoning the Flower of Chivalry game.
How It Played
Far better. The Yorkist horse and bowmen ambushed the Lancastrian left flank. The Courror's brushed aside their opposite number and rode straight on to catch Warwick with only his own personal guard. Luckily Warwick is made of stern stuff and his DMAA managed to fight the Currours. The bowmen pinned the advancing Lancastrians allowing Yorkist Bow and Bill to start inflicting casualties. On the opposite flank the Lancastrian bow crossed the river, but by the time they got to an enfilade position the game was pretty much over. Just left of them, on the "home" side of the river the Lancastrian handgunners did a reasonable job of trading shots with the Yorkist archers. The main effort came as the Lancastrians hit the Yorkist line on an ~3 unit front. They had their best success on the right, alongside the handgunners, routing the Yorkist archers and getting in a tussle with the second line bill. The other two units though were stopped by the Yorkist archers, who then let their bill and DMAA through to finish off the weakened Lancastrians. The final move of the game saw the lone penetrating Lancastrian bill unit make contact with Edward and his retainers just outside the village, but like Warwick he fought them off and victory was claimed.
Rules Impressions
I think that Bills, Bows and Bloodshed is one of those cases of having a good ruleset struggling to get out. As mentioned above the whole thing is really just solid text, with no nicely laid out tables to help grasp/find the key points. The QRS is basically the same text as the main rules with just some of the paragraphs dropped. The core rules are fine though, pretty classic 1D per stand, roll 4-6s or whatever to hit, plus saving throw. Movement is variable, 2 x Average Dice, which I like. Morale though has 11 triggers (and if more than one roll dice multiple times and choose worse - nice!) and 55 (!) modifiers. To be fair the rules say that once you get the hang of it you'll roll the 2 x Average Dice and if they're good assume a pass, and if possibly bad do the tests, which is what I did start to do, but even so. One issue is that the rules do account for almost every situation, and have lots of Nationality modifiers.
There are two big (huge?) omissions:
- There is no activation/command & control/ friction system. This is old school units do what you tell them unless they fail a charge morale test. A huge contrast to Flower of Chivalry that almost goes to the other extreme.
- There seem to be no victory conditions or army morale, so every game is a game to the death?
On the plus side though the rules do allow you to have mixed bill/bow units (which modern research seems to suggest was possible/common), allows bow to fire into second ranks, allows bow to risk withdrawing through the bill behind and a host of other niceties which a lot of other rules miss - so Barry certainly knows his period (as befits a long time member of the Lance and Longbow Society) and gaming.
Overall
The rules are good enough though that I'm almost tempted to do my own QRS, or I might just steal a few bits for my own rules. If I as doing a QRS I think I'd do 2 versions, one a "quick play" which just pulls out the main DMs and loses lesser weapons/Nationalities, and one with everything. They would be though JUST tables, quick and easy to read. Despite the negatives the actual rules are as good as, and probably better than most medieval I've played, but just let down really badly by presentation.
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| Edward's turn to fight off the attack! |
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