Never Mind the Billhooks Rules Test

 

#6 in this series of 8 (!) medieval rules play-throughs.

Presentation

32pp downloadable PDF, including 8 pages of cards/tokens and a QRS. £6 from Wargames Illustrated. Really nice looking rule set, well laid out, and good pics/tutorials.

Set-Up

Time to move on from Barnet and out of the fog, so this one was based on the Battle of Tewkesbury, 1471. Lancastrians advancing from the N against the Yorkist line in the S. No fancy tricks, just a straight head to head.

How It Played

The Lancastrians advanced in the pre-game, but the poorly led Yorkist Rear Battle loosed it's crossbow belts a bit early and the game moved into its main phase. The Lancastrians aimed to get a few rounds of missile fire in before sending in their billmen. The Lancastrian Cuorrours saw off the Yorkist horse whilst the arrows flew. 

The Yorkists ended up being first out of the blocks, swopping ranks and sending Billmen and MAA in against the Lancastrians. In the Main Battle the Lancastrian bowmen tried to hold off the Yorkists, failed, then broke in the melee and took their bill with them. The Lancastrian Van archers wisely evaded and let it be bill on bill. Draw for the first round, but then the Yorkist MAA piled in and won the melee, and again Yorkist bow and bill fled. 

The Lancastrians still weren't quite broken, and in the next turn the Currours returned and fell on the flank of the Yorkist Rear Battle. The Yorkists lost units to this and the remaining Lancastrian Bill and MAA, and for a brief moment it looked like they might pull it off, but the last bill on bill melee finally went the Yorkist way and it was all over.

Rules Impression

The rules are set up for figure removal, and 1D per figure so I changed that to base removal (well marked) and 1D per base. That probably meant the game played faster but was no bad things. Activation is by battle by random card (my favourite), with some random cards for extra actions (although annoyingly they need a dice roll and another card draw when they happen). Missile fire is a straight roll to hit based on weapon/range, and a save based on armour, no real DMs. Melee is similar  roll to hit and save. There are morale checks triggered on various things (mainly 50% casualties). Losses trigger Morale Tokens, and once you have as many as you had units it's game over ( a basic loss = 2 tokens, so effectively 50% losses).

The rules make a big thing about Disarray and Daunted states, but the post-melee rules for the loser are such that I never triggered Daunted, it was all OK or routed.

A few weapons were missing (spear, handguns) and the QRS missed some key info but otherwise everything there for a normal game, and some extra rules for  mustering, and there are points values there if you need them.

Conclusion

Really good, played a lot better than any of the other rulesets, and a lot slicker and faster than Poleaxed - although not with the same level of detail. I think I'd tweak the random events mechanism, and add the Poleaxed orders system, and maybe something like the Battlegroup:Northag system for Battle breakpoints and a few other tweaks and I could have a near ideal system. Think that might be the #7 game.