Agnadello II (1509)

Playtesting my Lion Rampant Agnadello game to be played at Ambuscade! in a few days (I previously played this battle last year if you would like to know the background).  Made some significant tweaks to the unit profiles for arquebusiers and the various artillery.  Also reworked the Gendarmes/Elmeti profiles, and also experimented with variations on the "Wild Charge" rule.  Royally screwed up with how to treat the dry riverbed.  Stated that it halved movement (no problems there), but stupidly also said it counted as rough terrain, the invariable result of which was that some French gendarmes got mauled by lesser quality troops in the riverbed.  That result then led to both sides advancing up to the edge of the riverbed and just standing there waiting for the other side to step in it.  Obviously, the rough terrain designation will not be included in the Ambuscade! version!

(Above: the French advance)

(Above: Venetian stradiots ride out)

(Above: the Venetian center and left)

(Above: French gendarmes)

(Above: Venetian elmeti)

(Above: the situation before the French gendarmes got mauled)

(Above: the situation AFTER the French gendarmes got mauled)

(Above: action in the Venetian center)

(Above: Grisson mercenaries in French service)

(Above: Venetian center consisting of arquebusiers and generic polearm infantry)

For the final Ambuscade! version, I'm thinking of removing any variations of Wild Charge entirely, and also of getting rid of Close Order for pikes and just baking that ability into their basic stat block instead.  More generally I'm feeling like my Italian Wars games are starting to have too many units for the Lion Rampant mechanics to handle.  Abilities like Skirmish, Evade, and Wild Charge seem to wildly unbalance and even ruin a game.  Of course, I still enjoy them and they are very useful and fun as a convention ruleset (especially if you test the game several times ahead of time!).  I'm currently taking a very hard look at Kings of War Historical, which retains some of the elements I like from Lion Rampant but might handle the larger armies more appropriately.