Siege of Novarra (1500)

Initial setup.

In 1500, Ludivico Sforza raised an army of Swiss mercenaries and sought to reclaim the Duchy of Milan from the French.  After taking Milan he moved west and besieged the French garrison at Novarra, which was commanded by Yves d'Allegre (who would die at Ravenna years later).  A year or so ago I started building modular city walls, towers, and a gate, for English Civil War games, maybe (I don't think I had anything in particular in mind)?  I had asked Pete if he wanted to come over for a in-person game and he suggested an Italian Wars game. I started trying to find a suitable battle to re-create and noticed the numerous sieges and figured it was time to give a siege game a try.  I had long been aware of The Perfect Captain's Seige! rules/board game for their Spanish Fury! family of rules, and after perusing those, decided I could make a nice miniature tabletop/board game hybrid with them.

Week 2

The concept here is a game in two parts: (1) a resource management game which includes gridded movement and abstracted  Lion Rampant shooting attacks (artillery bombardments) and melees (sorties by the besieged) that concludes with (2) a final assault on a breach by the besiegers using the regular Lion Rampant rules.  Units suffer casualties throughout the abstracted first part of the game, which impacts the final assault in the second part.   

Week 2

As you can see, I used gravel to mark out a grid in front of the city. There are five wall sections, each of which includes the 8" or so directly in front of the wall.  Then there are three "rings" of five areas each extending out and away from the wall sections: inner, middle, and outer.  The wall sections and outer ring are out of artillery range from each other.  There are two villages in the outer ring. There are also two box lids on a side table, one of which represents the besieger's outrider patrols, and the other represents the besieged relief forces or raiders. Each area is approximately 1' square.  A turn is  one week.

Week 2

Each turn the besieger can have his engineers construct trenches or forts. A trench section cannot be built unless it is adjacent to existing trench area, except in the outer ring (which is out of artillery range).  So on the first turn Sforza (Pete) built trenches in all five areas of the outer ring.  In the second week he began to sap forward into the middle ring.

Week 2

Bombardments had a range of two squares. If two squares (for example, from a city wall section to the middle ring) the gun rolled 9 dice hitting on 5+.  If one square, it was 12 dice at 4+.  Trenches increased stamina by 1, forts and city walls by 2 (to a maximum of 4). Because this was abstracted and represented sustained bombardment over a week, for the expenditure of one precious powder point, the firing gun could resolve a shooting attack against every unit in the target area.

Week 3

Wall sections had 5 "wall points" each. Expending a powder point to bombard a wall section automatically reduced the wall point by 1 in addition to executing a shooting attack against all units in that wall section.

Week 3

The French could sortie out from the town walls to disrupt trench building efforts or to try and cause casualties amongst Sforza's army.  The French would place units in the area they were attacking via a sortie.  Then Sforza could try and send rescue parties from the troops billeted in the villages.  It is easier to come to the rescue if the sortie is in the outer ring than it is in the inner ring, although there are modifiers. The sortie combat was an abtracted form of Lion Rampant - each sortie unit simply chose to execute a melee or shooting attack against a besieger unit of their choice. Then the besieger could choose to counter attack if they wanted.  Then all units returned to their starting areas. Units could not be routed if failing a courage test (this is abstracted and over the course of a week, after all). 

Week 3

There were two sorties during the game. the first was during week 2 and saw the city forces drive off some engineers in the middle ring.

Week 3

Week 3

Week 3

The second sortie was in week 3 and saw almost the entire garrison attack Sforza's forward trenches. Pete rolled exactly what was needed to and large rescue forces arrived to assist with both sorties.  As a result, the French took the worse of it, especially their precious Landsknecht troops who would end up being useless in the defense of the eventual breach.

Week 3: an aggressive, desperate French sortie

Week 4: Wall is breached.

In week 4, Sforza upgraded his forward trenches to forts and breached the wall.

Week 4

Then Sforza emptied the camps and villages and massed his army in the forward forts and trenches for the final assault on the breach.

Week 4: Massing for assault on the breach.

However, the French finally rolled for additional supplies, and because Sforza's troops did not have a complete cordon across the table, two cavalry units from the exterior off table area were able to run an additional powder point into the city!

Massing

Each wall section has an integral "wall gun" that cannot be moved and can only fire into the inner ring. Firing these wall guns costs a powder point just like the "normal" guns (the normal guns can also be moved to different sections of the walls).  With the arrival of the extra powder point, the French were able to unleash 3 bombardments on the massed troops in the forward forts! Keep in mind that as this is abstracted, that meant that each separate gun got to execute an individual shooting action on all four to six units in the fort the gun was targeting.  As a result, none or almost none of Sforza's units at the start of the assault phase were at full stamina points.

Massing

The assault part of the game was played as a "regular" Lion Rampant melee.  Play would continue until either side had lost half of their starting units on table (so units in off table areas did not count).  the arrival of the French cavalry meant the French had to lose 4 and Sforza's army had to lose 6.

Assault underway

Landsknecht doppelsoldners initially attempted to hold the gap, but were easily pushed aside by the Swiss.  French crossbows and archers poured missile fire down from the walls  and towers on each side of the breach.  But with both Landsknecht pike units in poor shape (9 and 6 casualties respectively!), the French gendarmes and "archer" cavalry had to sally out to wreck has much havoc as possible.

Gendarmes sally out.

And havoc they did wreak, as the French were able to destroy 4 Sforza units! However, almost as quickly, the French cavalry was gone and the loss of an additional unit left the French 1 unit away from defeat.

Swiss carrying the breach.

Many of Sforza's units were weakened, so as the French player I felt I had no choice to be aggressive. Units continued to counter attack in the breach, but finally the last unit fell, ending the game with Sforza's carrying the city.

French archers on the walls.

Gascon crossbowmen on the walls.

Endgame or close to it.

In history, Novarra surrendered to Sforza after 21 days. A few weeks later his Swiss refused to fight against a French army that also contained Swiss mercenaries (this is sometimes identified as the Battle of Novarra (1500), not to be confused with another Battle of Novarra in 1513 featuring another Sforza!).  Sforza tried to sneak out disguised as a Swiss soldier but was betrayed to the French for 200 gold coins (about five years wages for a mercenary).  When the traitor returned to Switzerland some years later he was identified and beheaded.

There was quite a lengthy post-game chat as we tried to puzzle out some of the things that did not work. 

• Although strategic decisions about use of powder were tense (both sides finished the game with no powder left, and the last minute arrival of extra powder for the French made the final assault less of a sure thing), the relationship between remaining food, besieging troops sleeping in the trenches, and resulting attrition was flimsy and inconsistent. The Spanish Fury! rules require the besieged to take Attrition tests (which I translated into a Rally test, teh failure of which caused said unit to lose one stamina point, reflecting loss of men from deserters, disease, starvation, or exposure) on any turn there were 6 or less Victual points remaining (both sides started with 7).  This ended up with the French taking a "Rally" test every turn except the first for every unit in the city!  Per Spanish Fury!, the besieger must take Attrition tests based on the number of units in an area exceeding the billet factor (usually a base of 1, increased to 2 if trenches added, increased to 3 if a fort added).  Seeing as Pete was fine with limiting the number of units to 2 per trench the besiegers thus never took an Attrition test, unless a unit had acquired a disorder marker from a Bombardment or Sortie. This felt unbalanced and needs to be made clearer.
• Sorties need some clarification.  The besiegers getting an attack and then the besieged getting a counter-attack makes sense but what about the rescue forces for the besiegers? Do they get benefit of entrenchment bonus to stamina?  How does cavalry fit in?
• The odds for getting reinforcements, whether additional provisions or troops, needs to be increased slightly.  Both sides were slightly counting on getting maybe a unit or two more but none were received at all.
• If relief forces run supplies into the city, can they return to the exterior areas?
• The final assault part of the game needs more clarification and possible changes.  I think all the gun models should simply be removed from play when this part begins - they have shot many many more times than they typically do in my usual field battle Lion Rampant games, and in the assault segment they just cluttered already crowded spaces.  Again, the role of cavalry needs to be addressed - French gendarmes and Spanish ginettes fighting over a breach in a city wall during a siege did not feel right.  Some better definitions about set-up for the assault segment might help a lot. I'm thinking that abstracted movement may help as well (Lion Rampant does work well on a grid, after all!)
• On review, the original Spanish Fury rules contemplate that each ring has 10 areas instead of 5.  But it also only have 5 wall sections.  10 areas per ring is not really possible in my current set up, but I think that this means that the besieger in my game was doing half the work for the same payoff compared what the Spanish Fury rules envisioned (it takes half as many troops to cordon the city, half the engineers/time to trench complete across the board, and troops only have to cover half the territory).  Furthermore, the villages are supposed to separate areas outside the outer ring and not part of the outer ring - this made establishing the cordon even easier.

In the end though, this hybrid of a miniatures game and a board game, was a visual treat and also a great combination of strategic thinking and resource management on top of crunchy combat rules and considerations for troop types. We will certainly be revisiting this!

Mounted Infantry and Volunteer Rifles

I have been keeping busy repairing and painting and converting old Britains 54mm toy soldiers for my various games.  My main buying strategy for these is lots of broken figures or incomplete figures. I end up with a lot of Canadian Mounties as as result.

However, I did luck into 3 South African Mounted Rifles figures, and since my The Men Who Would be Kings variant has 5-figure cavalry units, I figured I'd paint two of my extra Mounties up as SA Mounted Rifles instead.  I was so happy with the result, that I went ahead and painted the other five extra Mounties I had as well, giving me a nice big unit of 10!

A mighty brigade of South African Mounted Rifles!

Matching that olive drab was an absolute nightmare, and in the end my version is a bit darker.

You can pick out the 3 originals versus my 7 copies by looking for the lighter shaded jackets.

Overall I am quite pleased with the result, and look forward to these deploying in my next game as two units.

Same group but in two lines of five.

Next up is six figures representing a unit of Volunteer Rifles.  These are headless Britians Guard figures (usually with the rifle tip broken off as well), to which I was going to add replacement regular army home service helmets.  The idea to paint them as Volunteer Rifles was last second. I based the paint scheme heavily on the Cheshire Greys Rifle Volunteers covered at Suburban Militarism.

Volunteer Rifles

The paint shade is a dark gray but possibly the combination of the white undercoat and gloss varnish has given them quite the blue sheen which I like.

Volunteer Rifles

Next up is an assortment of lancers that I can finally finish repairing. Thanks for looking!

Charge of the Miracle Brigade!

H.G. Well's original Little Wars needs a lot of terrain or a lot of space.  Wells his self played it on the floor, and had access to these large cork panels that he could stack as hills and into which he could stick trimmings from shrubs to make trees, both of which serve to obstruct the fire-arcs of the 4.7" Britains naval guns (since we are using matchsticks or q-tips as ammunition here).  Apart from some buildings, my hills and the vast majority of my trees are scaled to 28mm figures, and look out of place with the old Britains.  Playing on a floor, which I wouldn't mind, isn't really an option because that would involve rolling up rugs in the living spaces.  I'd play outside but don't really trust myself to not step on my own troops!

Recently I played a 54mm medieval game on a grid and really enjoyed the feel and look of the game.  Grids allow individually based 54mm figures to be loosely-arranged and have that "toy soldiers at play" look, eliminating the need for formations.  So I cleared the table, rolled the gridded felt back out, and reset the Britains into two armies, with 10 man infantry units and 5 man cavalry (which worked so well in the prior Lion Rampant game).

This has the right look!

I pulled out an old stat sheet from an attempt to play at the Crimean War my 20mm figures, and refreshed my memory of The Men Who Would Be Kings.  Much like the Crimean War experiment with these rules, I was not satisfied with the result.  Both sides shot the heck out of each other in a pretty bleak affair.  I thought about switching to Pikeman's Lament and just "modernizing" those.  Then it struck me that my issue with The Men Who Would Be Kings is its "one hit = one casualty" dynamic.  To compare to its cousins Lion Rampant and Pikeman's Lament, this is like every unit having an armor or stamina rating of 1. I reset the armies on the table and tried things again but with two hits equaling one casualty (three needed at long range).  This seemed to do the trick - you had the simplicity of the The Men Who Would Be Kings rules, but the decreased hit-to-casualty rate allowed for units to be pinned or slowed by enemy fire but not destroyed outright quite so quickly!

Empire's left flank. Essex Regiment with Life Guard cavalry in reserve.

I was able to build only a few 10- or 5-man units of matching figures, but since a 6" square is pretty roomy for 10 figures, I had fun putting 6 figures from, say, the Essex Regiment, along side 4 from the the Scots Guards to get to the requisite 10.  This lent the game some easy narrative flavor as "the Essex Regiment supported by elements of the Scots Guards broke up under enemy artillery fire" is fun to say.

King's Royal Rifles and 10th Hussars

The opposing armies had seven units each, with the Empire (Red) having a gun, four infantry units, an two cavalry units, and the Allies (Blue/Green) having a gun, five infantry units, and just one cavalry unit. Areas with woods and buildings were impassable.

The Allied Army in starting posts.

I was the Empire and my son played the Allies.  I decided to try some actual tactics, and would try and keep my two cavalry units in reserve and out of LOS as long as possible, so that they would be available to strike at the end of the game.

Empire infantry on the advance.

I had some poor leadership rolls and my infantry did not advance as quickly or as uniformly as I would have liked.  As a result the Allies were able to get into better fire positions.

The Essex Regiment holding down the Empire's left flank.

Empire troops advancing.
Some pin markers have accumulated from fire on the pioneer unit at the top center there.

The Allies' Westminsters Volunteer Rifles. Between these, the Zouaves to the left, and the gun, the Sepoy Pioneers, and the Royal Marines in the distance, the Allies havequite the crossfire set up covering the middle of the table...

View from the Allied gun.

Action underway. Allied Hussars are attacking the Imperial left.  Imperial infantry advances up the middle under fire.

Allies directing fire into the Imperial advance. The Imperial Dragoons cavalry have slipped behind the cover of the woods at the upper right and wait. Imperial Life Guards cavalry is also in cover near the center left of the above.

The Allies' formidable crossfire death zone.

High water mark for the Imperial infantry advance.

After a lot of haphazard command rolls, two of the Empire's somewhat fresher infantry units managed to finally get up into the middle ground. The attack by the Allies' 10th Hussars on the Imperial left had effectively dispatched the Essex Regiment but the majority of the Life Guards escaped and moved across the rear into support of the right flank.

Keep an eye on the charging highlanders on the left supported by the marching Scots Borderers.

After the infantry attack fell apart.

Unfortunately, a unit of Imperial highlanders and Scots Borderers took a pin marker, and then rolled snake eyes on the subsequent rally roll, and were routed.  Then the remnants of the Imperial Worcestershire Regiment (in the white helmets) were shot to pieces, leaving only the Irish Guards and the Empire cavalry units. As we were playing until 7 cumulative units (from either side) were removed, and the Empire only had four left and practically no infantry and the Allies had all five of its infantry units still, it looked dim for the Empire.  But then! A pin marker on the Allie artillery! A charge by the Imperial Dragoons! The gun is overrun. A followup charge by the Life Guards. Absolutely repeatedly awful shooting dice by every single one of the Allied infantry units do nothing to stop the Imperial cavalry. Unit after Allied unit is pinned by one charge and then devastated by a follow-up.

End game.

And so, a shocking victory for the Empire. The entirety of the Allied infantry and artillery swept from the field by the 5th Dragoons and the Life Guards.

With the increased-by-1 "armor" values for all units (as to shooting only), The Men Who Would Be Kings is quite a nice ruleset. The definitive power move (but which still feels realistic) is to soften up a unit with rifle or artillery fire and get a pin marker on them, then hit that unit with a melee attack (pinned units fight with half their dice rounded down).  I might tinker around with more diverse unit types seeing as this game was just same-same infantry/cavalry/artillery units.

I also ignored TMWWBK's leader-generation system (I just gave all units a leadership of 6+).  Although I do like this system it can lead to the addition of chits and tokens to note the various leadership abilities and values which clutters the table.