"Keeping italian Wars Fresh as a gaming interest" Topic

What do people observe or advise on good scenarios for the Italian Wars?

Do you generate your own scenarios or simply re-fight historical battles? Mini-campaigns?

Do you prefer symmetrical opponents, ie. both sides have pikes and gendarmes or asymmetrical opponents such as sword an buckler or bill/halberd forces vs pike armed armies?

Any good products that assist in gaming the Italian wars? From personality figure and terrain sets to period flavor booklets?

Try the resources here pikeandplunder.vexillia.com and set up a campaign?

I do strictly historical scenarios. Now working on Ottomans for Mohács

I would like to do Italian Wars in 10mm but I cannot find any such figures on the internet.

Has anyone any suggestions?

Sure. Pendraken Medieval (choose Late Medieval here) and Renaissance (choose Landsknechts here). Unfortunately there are no pictures of the Landsknechts yet. Link: pendraken.co.uk

Nice figures and a very extensive range. I expect you can use lots of the heavy cavalry from the Late Medieval range.
Good luck !

I had already looked at Pendraken but was not convinced that their late medieval range would cover the Italian Wars. I assumed the Landsnechts would suffice even though there are no pictures.

Fornovo is most interesting for me for the 2 army lists. You might need to modify weather for a better battle.

Historical battles is what I'm interested in, though a campaign could be rather more interesting, I suspect, with the right set of rules for that.

Tons of factions, shifting alliances, colorful armies, and great terrain to fight over. What's not to love.

Add in some mercenaries, which can play on multiple sides, just to keep things "interesting", especially if you have to perform a die roll just before or during a battle to see if they'll stay loyal to you, shift to your opponent(s), or just stand firm and watch the show.

Sieges seem like they could be interesting too.

Historical battles seem very limiting to me because there are so few of them. How many times can one game Pavia or Fornovo? And after Pavia not much at all for 20 years. I think hypothetical battles have their place.

I do a bit of all three.

Have a look at Peter Sides' "Renaissance Battles 1494 – 1700 vol.1" (if you can find a copy) which covers a lot of the better known IW battles. It's a good start for figure collection composition, though there are one too many crossbows (IMHO) in some of the early ones.

Not sure about that Pike and Plunder site (LOL), but thanks for the plug.

Top tip – interchangeable flags. Just about everything you will ever have can fight in any army, so why restrict your command bases to any one side.

link

It's a great period no matter how you choose to approach it.

There were many other battles other than Pavia and Fornovo.

A small company in the UK put out a wargaming scenario booklet for the Italian Wars. It is worth seeking out.

Sorry, can't recall the name, offhand, but I think it is from Freezywater.

@Olicana,

That's a beautiful collection. How did you get the colors so rich looking?

I am in the process of fighting Historical battles in the period 1496 to 1525. In that period you have a fair number of battles, including Seninara, Fornovo, Cerignola, Garigliano, Agnadello, Ravenna, Novara, La Motta, Marignano, Bicocca and Pavia.

These battles show an evolution in terms of army organization and tactics with the assent of the arquebusier and the decline of the gendarme, and also the move from charges of unsupported pike blocks to combined arms operations. You also have a range of terrain from open fields and valleys to fixed field defenses.

As I probably play each battle three times (a play test, then a club game and then a final game around someones house), these battles alone probably give me 30 games.

I then plan to do a day long campaign style game with each player taking on a state or country.

After that I may put together a few scenarios. So I don't see myself running out of gaming options for the Italian wars for a good few years yet.

On Olicana's comment about changing flags to allow you to represent different armies to fight different battles, I do something similar. My figures are all individually based and then I put them on movement trays to form units. I simply have a few extra flag figures so that I can swap out a couple of flag bearers to change the nationality of the unit. This swapping of flags allows me to fight all of the battles with my collection.

MiniPigs,

thanks.

Enamels, Humbrol mostly.

Most of you use "mirror" armies? Both sides have gendarmes and pikes, etc.?

I tend to use historical orders of battle, or at least my best interpretation of what that might be. For many battles this does give the usual mix of pikes, gendarmes, light cavalry and arquebusiers.
However, the next battle that I am planning on playing is the battle of Marignano. This has three large Swiss pike blocks (with almost no cavalry support) going against a large French army with both infantry and gendarmes – so certainly not a mirror of each other.

@Wargamorium- here's a good place to start for 10mm Italian wars….
link

There is no actual Italian War historical battle that I love. Fornovo is the closest and if you play it historically then you are fighting across a flooded river while it was raining which may of negated any gunpowder use whatsoever.

When it comes to building generic armies, to me, it comes down to 3 options with 2 variables.

You can build Italian, French or Spanish armies more or less. Your variables are that they can be early period (more crossbows) or later period (more firearms).

The other variable is who do your Swiss fight for? And who do your Landschnekts fight for?

I'm not sure if these would be of use to you. It seems like it's one of the few gaming sets on this period.

Swiss may fight for themself or for the French. Landsknecht will fight for the Imperials (campaigns vs. Venice early on) or – at times – for almost anybody, from Fornovo (Milano) over Cerignola (Spanish), Ravenna, Novarra and Marignano (French) to Bicocca and Pavia (Imperial & Spaniard AND France) to Rome and Naples.

Necromancy!