"Crecy Poitiers Agincourt Verneuil" Topic

Of the English big four which one is the best for the tabletop to refight or could either way?

Cheers

I've recreated the first three. Verneuil would be easy. It's well documented. I look forward to doing that someday. Of the first three, Agincourt remains my favorite because it is the easiest to tweak for a French win. In order for the French to win either Poitiers or Crecy, they must attack en masse, not arrive piecemeal on the field and go in. So a purely historical refight of the first two is boring…………..

Poitiers was the subject of the Society of Ancients BattleDay in 2008 (BattleDay/Poitiers). Not boring at all.

Follow the link for lots of helpful material.

Worked well with Armati and DBA V3 and many others that I saw.

Phil
Ancients on the Move

My goal is to do Poitiers. Crecy and Agincourt are like shooting fish in a barrel, and hard to create a reasonable scenario that doesn't resemble them. Verneuil should be a good game but might require some real work in making the scenario.

What I like about Poitiers is it is a real slog. Lots of French that feed into the battle piecemeal. There's recent evidence the English may have moved more than believed. Clear evidence the bowmen were pinched for arrows. Probably a more difficult scenario to run, but a less sure thing.

All four can be interesting battles.

At Crecy the French attempted to coordinate the use of crossbows and mounted but had command control difficulties which caused them to attack in three distinct waves of course English arrows greatly increased the problem. Provided you have a good command control rule (DBX works well), this is a very interesting problem for the French. The English had to feed in reinforcements to counter some of the more furious French attacks. No stakes made the English archers a bit more vunerable had the French managed to maintains some organization.

Poitiers was the closest of the four, the English having a very low ratio of archers (less than half the army) and the French seemingly well deployed. They attempted to combine mounted attacks on barded horses with dismounted Men at Arms. The English were hard pressed and barely held their line though again command control problems hampered the French. Still the French persisted and only a final English mounted attack helped by reserve of mounted archers hooking round the French flank carried the day for the Black Prince. A great battle in which the English had to pull out every trick in their book to win.

Agincourt is a classic example of an offensive defense. The English had to move a much larger French army off their only escape route. To do so they moved aggressively but fought defensively. They used their missile superiority offensively to goad the French into attacking. The superior command control of the English allowed them to advance without losing cohesion – unlike the French -though the French had to contend with a massive arrow storm – unlike the English.

Veneuil is much neglected but also provides a great game (see my article and battle in Great Battles for DBA 3.0). Fought on an open flat field chosen by the French it featured a mounted charge by metal barded horses that broke the English line – only a late counter attack by English archers who had to fight off both Scottish archers and French mounted – saved the day for the English. Not as well documented as Poitiers or Agincourt, it can still be recreated with reasonable accuracy (Richard Wadge's recent book helps).

I've played and enjoyed all four using DBM 2.0 (don't recommend DBM 3.0) and have down Agincourt and Vernuil in DBA 3.0 with great results. Vital to have a command control rule though in all four battles.

TomT

How about Bauge? Good potential for a major English victory even though it did n't work out that way historically.

As for Bauge, gaming that with miniatures would require quite a number of mounted English MAA, something that a lot of gamers may not readily have in their collection.

True enough; OTH other battles would call for a lot of mounted French MAA, so you could just have them masquerade as English troops.