"Agincourt - How to Make a Refight Interesting?" Topic

Perhaps, not only for Agincourt, but also Crecy, Poitiers, and the various Wars of the Roses, and the early Italian Wars battles (1494 – 1525/1530), how do you make refighting them interesting?

I'm curious about all of the above, in general, but especially the HYW battles, since most are so well known to many, and such special circumstances seem to have been in play for all of them, that it seems like it would be a challenge to make refighting them interesting, since many will already know the tactics used, and the outcomes.

Of course, you can tweak them slightly, with various what-if options that might change them a bit (perhaps random cards for those, for each side), and then tally up points for each to see if they did better than their historical counterparts, I imagine.

Still though, with various rules systems, I suspect it would be a challenge to make many battle worth replaying at all.

Thoughts?

Adding random but mandatory actions/reactions would be helpful. Do English knights counter charge against orders from the safety of their prepared positions? Do the longbowman ever run out of arrows? I think there are a couple of rule sets that include this type of play. Stuff by the Ed the Two Hour Wargame Guy comes to mind, also Perfect Captain rules which are free.

Play the campaign leading up to the fight and don't be bound by the action happening at the actual battlefield. Let the players determine via map movement where the action will take place and let them implement their own strategies.

Still though, with various rules systems, I suspect it would be a challenge to make many battle worth replaying at all.

Depends what your intentions are (you could say that about any battles in any period) …

I have just spent the weekend at the Royal Armouries in Leeds with a HYW wargames event TMP link where battles including Agincourt and games from skirmish to mega … map games, figures games … they all seemed compelling and exciting.

Most of the battles of the HYW seem close run things (Agincourt itself? Verneuil?) and most of them against the odds (what the wargamer wants … ) ..

Poitiers made a great Society of Ancients battleday a few years back (so many options and possibilities) …

So a great and compelling period, seriously ..

Works well with Armati (certainly, if simplistic), Basic Impetus, DBA V3 and BBDBA, FoG probably go with FoG-R – and I've seen some good games using Pike & Shotte (which look better for Late Medieval than they do for C17 from what I have seen) ..

Most games end with English wins, of course, but I don't have a problem with that

Phil

I've played Poitiers, Crecy and Agincourt as refights. Just laying the armies down in their historical OBs and letting the various players do their thing throws in the "wild and woolley" element.

"Can I retain my horses or do I have to fight on foot?" Player's choice. There goes the historical version out the window. Could have happened that way.

"I ran out of arrows? Are you serious? Now what do I do?"

"Hey! I thought that those guys are supposed to rout!"

After playing the historical versions, with players' choices allowed, you don't really need to inject anything to make them interesting….

The historian Hans Delbruck has some differing views on Agincourt (and at least one of the Scottish battles) that provide an alternate take. I know the Flower of Chivalry rule/scenario book had variants for his scenarios.

Not sure how Delbruck's theories hold up today (he was pretty well respected), but IIRC for Agincourt he believed the French chroniclers had it in for the French king and their versions made it seem like he blew a sure thing with superior forces, when in fact it was much closer.

Anne Curry's numbers, by the muster roles, recruiting areas nobles involved), makes Agincourt a much closer thing. The two armies are not that different in size: either side of 9K for the English and somewhat over 12K for the French….

All good suggestions, and I have only one to add: personalities. The noblemen within an army each had their own goals, troubles, friends, enemies, interpersonal conflicts, etc. that affected their behavior in the field. If you give each player a commander personality (or two? Or three?) with a unique combination of goals and/or abilities, it can add a very "Medieval" character, and influence player activities during the course of the battle.

- Ix

To expand on this theme: It seems to me that what makes many Medieval battles interesting is the very personal nature of the combat.

Typical Medieval armies had a wide variety of personal interests driving the participants to be there – fealty, pay, booty, ransom, glory, political ambition, personal rivalry or grudges, home defense, cultural hatreds, religious zeal, and on and on. Since the era generally lacked professionalism, training and discipline, the problems of command were mostly related to uniting such a frayed assemblage long enough to win a battle before self-interest dissipated the combat power of the army. A fun way to make Medieval battles interesting might be to bring to life these personal aspects of the participants. In other eras I've experimented with individual VP scores accrued in different ways by each contingent or commander, so it might be fun to try something similar in a Medieval context. For example:

• Nobles gain VP by killing other nobles (glory!) and even more VP for capturing them (ransom!)
  
• Princes gain VP by killing/capturing political rivals (e.g. Yorkists/Lancastrians killing off rival claimants)
  
• Mercenaries and lower class soldiers gain VP by gathering loot
  
• Berserkers and fanatic glory-seekers gain VP for each stand lost
  
• Religious fanatics gain VP by destroying stands of the opposing religion
  
• Nemeses gain VP for killing stands of the hated enemy (no quarter!)
  
• Feudal levies gain VP for each stand still alive and unbroken at the end
  
• etc.

Once you start dreaming up ideas like these, the possibilities become endless.

Personal ability is another highly prominent feature of Medieval combat. DRMs and unique mechanisms can be used to represent these things, such as +/- DRMs in combat (prowess), +/- DRMs to command rolls (tactical acumen or experience), +/- DRMs to rally rolls (charisma), extra/lost/special cards in card-driven command systems, unique abilities such as automatic rally or automatic pass/failure of a charge/stand test, and so on. These can also be combined to give individual commanders or units unique personalities, like a poor tactician who inspires his own unit to fight fanatically, a hated leader whose troops fight hard (out of fear) but break quickly, a religious figure who inspires bravery in nearby units but can't move quickly (confined to a litter or something), a local levy that fights poorly but stands its ground to the last man, and so on.

- Ix

BAD WOOD special rule – all English longbows snap in half when pulled back for their 1st volley.

Anne Curry – aaaargh! She's more right than contemporary French authors is she? (Some of whom were even actually there). What possible reason did they have to inflate their OWN numbers?

Curry also predicates her numbers on every English (or Welsh) man anywhere nearby, but insists on only counting French forces SHE says were in direct combat contact – leaving out the ones SHE says were a bit further away…..

I was a guest of Azincourt at the 600th Anniversary re-fight. Nobody there believes a word of Curry revisionism. Well, perhaps the museum curator verbally edges in that direction for a laugh (but not in anything serious he has published). If the French of both yesterday and today are willing to accept the remarkable nature of the victory, why do we want to believe yet another self-hating liberal academic? (Although I must say her actual research is very good).

Curry's reach is outstanding. She is not to my knowledge "self-hating". Most French sources give lowers numbers (some as low as 9K) for the French. Those with high numbers reflect a political agenda reflecting their side of the French civil war raging at the time.

Her English numbers are based on actual muster roles. The English cleric my have underestimated the English numbers to amplyfy his theme of God giving the victory despite incrediable odds.

Her numbers are quite sound and based on in depth research into the sources. It was a remarkable victory and does not need bloated numbers to make it so.

TomT

The English were outnumbered. Enough so that the French could have won with better tactics, including better ground. They could have let the English pass. But that was not an option culturally. So we can discount that entirely as a possibility. All of the French command were intent on bringing the English to battle, because they knew that they could win.

If you wargame this with a larger French army than the English army, it gives the French a chance to win. Having two or three times more than that does not make any difference. If the French vanguard is defeated, the French lose the battle. Period. The reason why this is true is because of the effects of masses of routing men upon a column of divisions battle order. Once the English have eminent prisoners to hold to ransom, they can command the rest of the French army to leave, or else have their lords and compeers killed. It worked to see off the French third battle. It doesn't matter how big that battle was….

>how do you make refighting them interesting?

Depends on what you want. If it is just for the challenge of who is better, fight the battle twice with swapped sides and compare the results.

If its for historical lessons, try to emulate the decisions made in the battle and see wether your rule system offers the same result as history. If not, figure out wether the rules are broken, your OOB is wrong or wether history just draw a freak result.

Once you have rules that emulate history, fight again and change the decisions. Follow the "what if", and let your imagination run with the consequences of YOUR battle upon history.

That said, most battles are fun when you know WHY you fight – so embedded in a campaign. Rarely do armies line up and state "now lets find out who is right by might of arms" – even when that often was floundered (usually after the event by those who won). Avoid the battle you loose, fight the battle you must. A good campaign will offer the chance to win without battles, and gives sense to those fought nonetheless.

Weren't the English in quite a poor state, starving, diseased and demoralised after a spectacularly unsuccessful campaign? Any half decent rules system could account for that.

Any half decent rules set will produce a historical outcome most of the time. The morale of the English army was not poor, but quite the opposite! Their weakened physical condition was noted and their subsequent prowess at shooting and melee was considered a miraculous thing. Whereas the French ability to fight was so poor that it was considered an amazing and unlooked for thing. The arrows and the mud exhausted the French, evidently. While the shooters on the English side had a lifetime of training to prepare them for combat under inimical conditions such as hunger and illness….

"Anne Curry – aaaargh! She's more right than contemporary French authors is she? (Some of whom were even actually there). What possible reason did they have to inflate their OWN numbers?"

How many Medieval chronicles have you read? Chroniclers numbers were all over the place for no reasons which are immediately obvious to us.

Even if the reasons are well-known to scholars, they are often ignored by enthusiasts I'm afraid.
Also, an eye-witness is not always a reliable source even when their intentions are perfectly honourable. If they were serving with a unit how much of the army/armies could they actually see? If observing from a distance did they have a really useful view of the action?
It's difficult to estimate large numbers of people by eye…or 'guessing' to use the technical term. Did the witness have access to muser rolls? If so, were the rolls valid and up-to-date and even if they were, did the witness really understand their significance/relevance?

I've read many medieval chronicles. Anne Curry has collected all the contempoary material for Agincourt in an extra volume. Rogers and Barber have similar collections for Crecy and Poitiers. Jehan de Wavrin, Frossiart and Monstrelet are widely available in reprint.

Numbers vary in chronicles for many reasons some are more reliable than others. That's why Curry and most historians depend on muster rolls and other material assembled by clerks.

They reveal that the English army may have been about 7-8K at Agincourt while the French probably did not exceed 15K. For wargame purposes a 2-1 ratio works.

The English had an exceptionally high proportion of archers at Agincourt (Henry V had hired extra all archer retinues). Hence all replay should reflect how difficult it was for the French to close.

The French had a decent plan but faltered in execution. They orginally planned to use both crossbow and men-at-arms on barded horses to neutralize English shooting. For various reasons this failed resulting in massed archery shooting unfettered into the mass of struggling French foot.

A wargammer armed with hind sight should do better.

Great Battles for DBA 3.0 (now available) has my version of Verneuil sort of a second Agincourt but fought on open ground with no weather issue. Still a big English victory but not without some tense moments.

TomT

The huge difference between Verneuil and Agincourt is the successful use of armored cavalry to ride down the archers. Oddly enough, the archers largely survived this encounter. While the cavalry did not turn around and finish the job, but instead rode off to attack the English baggage park. With no staked line of defense, archers are completely unable to withstand a cavalry charge sharply delivered in large numbers….

The challenge with "simulating" any medieval battle is that a modern wargamer is highly unlikely to make the same hairbrained choices their medieval counterparts made.

The modern wargamer is ruthlessly focused on winning as efficiently as possible.

Medeival commanders had many competing incentives that often undermined their ability to win in the 21st century sense. These included a desire for booty and refusal to engage troops of lower social status. If modeling such incentives in rules or victory conditions you face the prospect of legislating player choices or making them irrelevant.

One can set up historical terrain and historical orders of battle. But once we gamers start making tactical choices based purely on a desire to win rather than concepts of personal glory or income at the expense of military success history goes out the window. And we're about more than simple pursuit rules. It goes as far as prohibiting knights from engaging archers in melee due to concerns of social differences!

I had a multiplayer Agincourt game with 4 French and 1 English commander. I gave each commander a different set of victory conditions, which for the French conflicted. Caused a bit of chaos when the french nobility pushed passed the crossbowmen out of the way to get to the English men at arms and then competing knights commands were trying to get to Henry V 1st. Was a very fun game.

Ian