This is not so much a battle report as a look at the `Father Tilly' ruleset for the 30 Years War, which was mentioned on these boards. I visited the site, downloaded the rules and read them through. It struck me that the recommended base sizes were very close to my moribund ( because the battles turned into a bit of a bore ) 10mm ECW PoW armies.
I grabbed a couple of volunteer playtesters and gave it a go. I decided on a pickup game set in the early part of the Swedish intervention, with Swedish infantry regiments with regimental guns and trotting horse against Imperialist late tercios and caracoling horse, with a couple of guns each. Each side had two generals who were rated `Average' in all respects. Both sides had a mix of veterans and regulars, with about a dozen units a side. The battlefield was generally open with a few woods and hills to add interest.
Each side is able to spend points on pre-battle advantages, including deployment, which decides how many units start on the table, bombardment, which allows you to fire guns at the enemy before the battle starts, entrenchments and scouting. Both sides, being cautious, spent most of their points on One of the interesting rules is that each side dices to see how close to the centreline they can deploy. For this battle, the two sides started about 12" apart – within artillery range but out of musketry and movement range.
Both sides advanced what they could – generals have limited command dice, so a whole cavalry wing spent most of the game sitting still because the commander was focussing on the infantry battle. The tercios trundled forwards, doing their best to stay together ( not always easy, because the move distance depends on the die roll ) flanked by the caracoling horse. Guns fired a bit in support, with little result ( actually, none ) and then fell silent for the rest of the battle. When the tercios got closer, the Swedes attacked. One cavalry wing drove off the Imperial horse facing them, but on the other flank failed to win the first round of combat and the superior armour and greater depth of the caracolers prevailed. This meant that on one flank the Swedish foot was able to manouevre against the flanks of the tercio while on the other the Imperialist horse kept them from doing so. While the victorious Swedish wing pursued the routing Imperialist horse off the field, the tercios ( with one exception ) ground down the Swedish centre, resulting ( eventually ) in a narrow win for the Imperialists.
I don't know much about the period, but the results seemed plausible, and it is an interesting ruleset. Having a single table for all the dice effects is good, and you soon get to know whether it is worth working out the results. There is a certain amount of mental arithmetic involved but this becomes obvious after the first couple of calculations. When you consider that none of the people involved had played the game before and we fought to a result in less than 3 hours, the rules definitely have something going for them. In fact, we enjoyed them so much that we have since played several more games, and each one was enjoyable – and it's something we shall continue playing.
The rules are definitely a `work in progress'. They are available as a download from link together with a pile of army lists and scenarios. Stephen Danes, the author, belongs to the yahoo group at link and responds quickly to comments and questions.
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