"Bloody Barons?" Topic

I'm thinking of having a sniff around the Wars of the Roses, mainly inspired by a visit to Towton battlefield. Now, I know nothing about the period or the war and half intend to keep it that way (I have a lot of research to do on WW1 as part of a Masters degree, so have no time to be looking into new periods!). I know Peter Pig do the Bloody Barons ruleset, what are people's opinions on them? are they a good representation of the period and also make for a good game?

Personally I am not a fan, but I know of several people who play them.

IMHO the only rules that accurately depict warfare in those wars is the Perfect Captain's "A Coat of Steel." (free download by the way).

All the other rules treat the ad hoc armies little differently than Roman Legions and the like.

Sir, there is no such thing as a "sniff around the War of the Roses". This period requires commitment and dedication.

What size figures are you planning to use?

Pay a visit to my blog: link

You will find some useful stuff for the period and painted units and characters.

Medieval Warfare is great – if you have not tried this set of rules for the War of the Roses, I would highly recommend giving them a go!!!

Raglan

There is plenty of "sniffing around" the Wars of the Roses. Heck, the Avalon Hill game Kingmaker is always a fun start and you can build units based upon the nobles represented in the game and fight battles with the number in any "point system" with army lists for the forces available. Which can be plenty of fun. Before you can have any commitment or dedication you have to actually play a few games, seeing which rule set you like and going forward.

Bloody Barons gives an enjoyable game with a Wars of the Roses Flavour. However I don't feel that they are an accurate simulation.

They are not bad, and the best part to me is the pre game mini campaign where you bid on things that can effect the army/battle. Pretty creative.

Allen

I do recommend "Blooby Barons" by RFCM (Peter Pig) the rules are easy to learn and a lot of fun to play.
The pre-battle section is IMHO the best part of the book and results in some very interesting scenarios.
At least for me, they give a good if somewhat light harted "period feel"
Hope this helps.

Jovian1 my good fellow.

You live in the USA, I live in Abergavenny which is in the heart of some of the most interesting War of the Roses history.

I can tell you the War of the Roes is not to be sniffed at, especially if you are an English or Welshman.

Raglan

When Napoleonic gamers start spilling into other periods…

I only skirmish WotR so can't be much help.

Last time I did large scale was in Stockport (England)in the 70s, using 'Lance' rules.

We lost!

Medieval Warfare, FOG, WAB and the like all treat WOTR armies like Any others. In those rules, things like ranks and frontage are all important and units mariner in lines, perform wheels, etc just like trained troops.

Except that the armies of the period were not trained or drilled. They were ad hoc groups of adherents and supporters of great men. Any game that depicts them operating as organized soldiery doesn't give the proper feel.

I regularly play PPs Spanish Civil War set Bayonet and Ideology and have just started to play their ACW naval set Hammerin' Iron. Great fun so if Bloody Barons are anything like them you'll probably enjoy the games IMO.

I have 15mm Yorkists (hooray!) and am building 25mm Lancastrians (boo, hiss!!!). The Yorkists were originally built for Field of Glory but are now used for Impetus, the Lancastrians are being built specifically for Impetus. I gave up on FoG as it just didn't do anything for me and the FoG WotR list enables players to use their billmen like Roman cohorts in a multitude of flexible 4 element units…..it's just wrong, they didn't fight like that, it was line up in 3 big blocks against the other guy's 3 big blocks and run at him after the longbows have opened up proceedings.

So it's Impetus for me though in hindsight I should maybe have gone for Bloody Barons and built both sides, I got caught up in the FoG hype, what can I say? I'm very happy with Impetus but I do recommend Peter Pig's rules, they are in plain English and aren't the thickness of a telephone directory! Maybe it's just my perception but we seem to have gone from rules where every sentence used concise legalese and with the minimum of pages; DBA, DBM etc to rule books that look like volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica; FoG, Hail Caesar et al. Once I get past page 100 I lose interest, reading rules is supposed to be fun or at least tolerable, not a task. Peter Pig rules (and Impetus for that matter) seem to get the balance right.

A Coat of Steel by The Perfect Captain look really good but what put me off a bit is there is no points system for one off games and there's a lot of cards and counters involved, it might make games look untidy and feel a bit lost in a blizzard of paperwork, their Russian Civil War set which I use suffers from the same problem. That aside, if I had unlimited time and resources ACOS would probably give me the most realistic game.

I have strong views on PP Rule sets. I am told by those who like them that they give a very good game.

Pat

Thanks Alan. We have had a lot of fun with BB over the years. We can usually get a game done in 2.5 hours, including the pre-game. You can use most base sizes for BB because a unit fights a unit, rather than any consideration of lining up bases. Simples.

vargulver, if you want to sniff, then sniff.

I liked BB when I first played them but then found them a bit clunky compared with WAB. However we did find that the scenarios in BB translated very easily into WAB and I suspect they will do the same for HC or CoE.

(N.B. We used a slight WAB house rule, incorporating a target priority mechanism similr to that in WRG 6th)

The strength of BB is in many ways the pre-game mechanism which makes any even points picjk-up game into a scenario which could easily be part of a campaign.

Except that the armies of the period were not trained or drilled.

They weren't? The vast majority of the troops that actually did the fighting were professional soldiers. I think they trained and drilled quite a bit…

Margard

Is on the money, and most of these professional troops were retinue archers. In some battles the archers out numbered other troop types by as many as eight to one.

Raglan

Raglan, I'm sorry, you are right, as Yorkshireman, I should be careful with 'sniffing around' the Wars of the Roses. It's still being fought as far as I am concerned, we are just taking our time gathering our forces…

Thanks for the good feedback here. I play Square Bashing by PP already and find them a really fun game and one that wraps up in a couple of hours. This suits as I don't seem to have as much time these days as I did when I was fifteen…

BB have a lot of scearios and other such guides to the period, do they not?

Margard

Is on the money, and most of these professional troops were retinue archers. In some battles the archers out numbered other troop types by as many as eight to one.

Raglan

I'd have to politely disagree on that. Looking at a paper muster for Edward IVs projected invasion of France you'd be right but that was a theoretical "ideal" invasion force for a war that never happened.

The WotR battles were not long drawn out shooting matches and were decided by hand to hand combat and not shooting. The Lance and Longbow Society go for a 50:50 split between longbows and polearms in their units and I tend to think they've got it about right.

Sir Alan,

With respect, we don't actually know for definite.

However lets consider the detail of Edward IV's muster in 1475 and you can see how high the ratio of archers are compared to other troops:

Duke of Clarence: 10 knights, 1000 archers.
Duke of Gloucester: 10 knights, 1000 archers.
Duke of Norfolk: 2 knight, 300 archers.
Duke of Buckingham: 4 knights, 400 archers.

I think its too casual to cast these numbers off simply as idealism. Furthermore, archers did not just stand back and shoot their arrows, these guys got stuck into the hand to hand fighting in every battle.

Obviously from a wargaming perspective, these ratios are rarely acheived.

Raglan

Yep, I agree they didn't stand about at the back scratching themselves, they probably retired to the rear after their shooting role was done but no doubt they finished off enemy wounded and provided "rear support" too. I still believe that when it came down to it the billmen and men at arms were the deciding factor though.

You're right of course, we don't know for sure and probably never will.

As an aside this is what makes WotR so pants as a "competition army". The longbows shoot, retire to the rear and as there are no rules for them killing enemy wounded or pitching in at the back to help their friends in any set I have ever seen, you effectively have half your army not doing much whilst the other half (the billmen) gets overwhelmed by superior numbers. You can go down the "FoG route" and have zippy little Roman type 4 element bill units all over the place, that helps a bit but if I wanted Roman flexibility I'd have bought Romans. As I said earlier, I'm happy enough with Impetus.

Alan,

I think this is where we have to agree to disagree. I simply can't believe that your best troops would be sent to the rear and were just left to despatch the enemy wounded.

vargulver,

Its a wonderful period to collect and game – no matter what ratio of archers you decide are historically correct.

Raglan

Yeah, we'll have to differ on this one mate, you see the longbows as the best troops, I see the armoured men at arms and their retinue billmen as being the key elements and being the "better" troops. It's all part of the fun of wargaming having these discussions.

One thing we do agree on, it's a great period to collect and play. I've been to most of the battlefields and got umpteen books on it, along with Ancients and Spanish Civil War it's my favourite period.

Loving the Medieval boards, far less bickery than the Napoleonics…

To answer I previous qustion, I would be doing it in 15mm, as all my other scenery and such is in this scale.

@Raglan,

Where is the evidence that the men forming these armies trained and drilled as units?

Practicing with a longbow or sword on an individual basis does not mean you know how to form up, march or do any of the things that trained troops learn to do.

So what makes you think these troops were formed in ranks and files, that they knew how to wheel, oblique, all while maintaining formation,, change formation or perform any of the maneuvers that games like WAB and Medieval Warfare allow them to do?

Back to the OP, I really like Bloody Barons, a cracking set of rules, the pre-game intrigue is well thought out, but by no means essential to a pick-up game.

This set of rules and the Perry plastics mean't I finally took the plunge, and painted up a WOtR army, really enjoyed the whole process.

John

I have been interested in the War of the Roses for many years now. I don't pretend to have a vast knowledge, however it is an exciting phase in 'British' history as the war involved Scots, Welsh, Irish and those fellows from across the sea, France.

As to which ruleset to use I would advise trying out a couple if you can get your hands on them cheap. I have a copy of Bloody Barons, Poleaxed(by Lance and Longbow), A coat of Steel, Medieval Warfare and WAB (1st Ed). The only sets I have played with have been Medieval Warfare and WAB. Over the next few months I will play with the other rulesets and see how I get on. When I find a set I like I'll stick with those.

Just as an aside, when men were raised for the campaigns they would have rudimentary training. Men were trained to form up in 'rays' (as in array for battle, representing the rays of the sun). They were given simple commands such as 'trail your staves, shoulder staves, avantranche your staves'. These commands were given by a commander. There were other commands, I am sure but when it got down to hand to hand fighting all orders and drill went out the window!

Over the years I have collected a 15mm collection of Essex and Peter Pig miniatures. More recently I have invested in Perry 28mm WotR miniatures which I hope to get started on in February. You can check out some test pieces I did earlier this year on my blog page jerseyprivateer.blogspot.com

Cheers

Richard

Hi Richard, I have heard these commands in reenacting

'trail your staves, shoulder staves, avantranche your staves'

but after extensive reading on the hundred years war, wars of roses and tudor period have never seen where this comes from. What source is it from?
I would love to know as I always thought reenactors just made these commands up!

Hi Malatesta1500

I am unsure as to the source, however I was taught by someone who'd been in the reenacting game for a long time. All I can suggest is keeping searching.

It would be interesting if it was a real source but I think I would be searching in vain, I am pretty sure it's a reenactor myth.

Thread resurrection!

I am hoping to get some 28mm Bloody Barons games in soon, hence the trawl of older posts.

On the ratio of archer to other troops debate I thought I would chip in. Last Year I was at a Richard III conference where this was briefly discussed. I am relying on memory now, so take this with a pinch of salt, but I think it was Anne Curry who said that the term archer was often used to mean ordinary foot soldier during this period. So if Lord X raised 1000 archers then that could easily be 500 archers and 500 billmen.

What's the latest view on the best ruleset for this period now.

Not much better off really. People like the rules they like and that's as it should be, but I've never found a set that adequately reflects the nature of what we know about later medieval war (say 1300 to 1450) in Britain.

You may wish to try A Game of Fire and Ice which has a War of the Roses campaign.

About 70 pages but that includes three campaigns, naval rules, sample battles etc. Rules themselves much shorter.

Based on DBX (which has a nice medieval feel) but written in "normal" English and with many additional rules for late medieval warfare (crossbows and longbows are different as are swords and poleaxes etc.)

Available on Wargame's Vault.

Thomas J. Thomas
Fame and Glory Games

Peter Pig figures are brilliant but the Bloody Barons rules leave a lot to be desired. Longbow are treated like Vickers machine guns and just keep firing and firing, with no concession to fatigue, etc. Rules for cavalry versus cavalry melee are missing, a fact I raised on the BB website a long time ago.

There's an awful lot of die rolling and that might put people off. My re-write of my original Bills, Bows and Bloodshed from the 1980s was an attempt to address some of the issues raised by Bloody Barons. Like Bloody Barons my new rules use modules but I have opted for the DBA/DBM sizes. My rules will work with any base width provided both sides use the same base widths.

Average dice are used in Bills Bows and Bloodshed for movement, D6 and D10 for shooting but all longbow shots, after the first, diminish in effect. I've also written a very detailed army list which has already been published on TMP.

TMP link

Barry

@ Lord Raglan
Beware of the Edward IV 1475 list. It is a payroll and indicates pay grades not actual weapons carried. The 10:1 archer figure is highly suspicious as a separate list shows that hundreds of bills were stockpiled for this same campaign. So who was carrying those bills? Manuscript illustrations of the period show billmen as a separate troop type.
The 'archer' entries show men that were paid at the archer rate but they may have served with a bow, crossbow, handgun… or bill.
The 1475 list was much discussed in the Lance and Longbow Society about 10 years ago. Another member threw up the separate weapons inventory for that campaign.

At best the 1475 list indicates that high numbers of longbow MIGHT have been recruited for a foreign campaign. However the Walter Strickland indenture of 1452 shows that 50/50 parity in bows and bills on English campaigns is far more likely and Strickland was in a 'frontier' county of Westmoreland which would have to be ready to defend against Scottish armies.

In essence longbowmen were a national resource and for the so-called Wars of the Roses you have to roughly halve that resource between both sides. Then you have to make up the numbers to create large armies… Longbowmen take many years to train, give a man a bill and you have a soldier in two or three days at best. As Richard III (Peter Cook) says in the first Blackadder series… "Arrow fodder…"

Barry