"House rule amendments for TtS Early Crusades" Topic

Here in Olicanaland we love the Crusades and we love To the Strongest, so please don't think I have a problem with the rules for the Crusades as they are written.

All I've done is tinker with the rules around the edges to bring out specific differences in technology (Eastern Vs Western) and make the rules a little more period specific for extra flavour.

Probably, the biggest change I've made is to remove ammunition chit mechanism, mostly as a table tidy exercise, and replaced it with something else.

The changes are in my army list and quick reference sheets. They are posted here:

link

I hope they might be of use to someone, or provoke thought, or start a conversation.

James

So if I get this right; when a shooting unit draws an Ace to activate to shoot they are out of ammo (I assume that means they don't shoot either as the Ace will end the Command's turn normally) and get a marker to denote that. The marker is removed when they replenish as per the rules until such time as they draw another Ace to activate to shoot?
How do cavalry lose their lances? When drawing an Ace to activate a charge?
Somehow ordering someone to shoot or charge only to find they need to replenish seems out of sequence. How about if they draw an Ace when shooting or in combat with a lance? That way the more you use it the more likely you to need to replenish.

I had miswritten the rule in the blurb on the blog. You activate as normal. If you turn a 1 when trying to hit, you go out of ammo. Same for lances.

It was actually written correctly on the QRS all of the time, but I confused myself somewhere in the translation.

I've edited the blog post blurb to make it clear. Thanks for pointing that out early.

We've play tested it – Pre Covid – and it works well.

Sounds good to me, I like TtS but am not a fan of table-top clutter so I'll definitely give this a go, although my armies (Hellenistic Successor) do little shooting but have plenty of lances.

Where not much can shoot, the ammo chit thing works OK as it is, and we've used it quite successfully for Punic Wars. Also, where things are not very mobile the ammo chits are not so much of a problem and we've played a lot of Wars of the Roses battles that have gone OK. It's the combo of shooters and high mobility (having to move lots of stacks of counters about constantly) that becomes a pain, and the early Crusader period is that in spades.

Crusaders set up for a set piece TtS battle.

We like TtS because it can do big battles in a reasonable time and without much brain drain. This was a Punic Wars Battle of Trebbia TtS game. The last pic is Mago turning up in the Roman rear.

If I remember rightly, for the Punic game, tufts were ammo markers for javelins and pilums (which is fine because you only get one or two a unit and they look better than piles of chits, archers require far more). The shield counters are 'heroes' and broken wheels are disordered markers.

Thanks for the ideas on 'disguised' markers – I do particularly like the the tufts of long grass for javelins.

Lances will remain effective much longer than the one turn they normally get. I'm not sure how much I mind about this, but maybe losing lances on a 1 or a 2 would be closer to the original.

Tufts are very cheap and simple to make.

Materials are natural bristles from a brush head, a penny coin and whatever you use for troop basing.

The trick is in how you glue the bristles into a stack. Cut a whole clutch of bristles off the brush at the head so, when squeezed together, you have a bunch of bristles about 3 – 4" long and 1/2" diameter.

Wrap around an elastic band half way up so you can put it down without it all splaying apart.

Hold firmly together at the end you want to glue and squeeze in the 'plastic' from a hot glue gun.

Allow to set for a few seconds, moving the elastic band down the stack if required.

Cut off the required 'finished tuft length' with strong scissors.

Repeat until the stack is all used up.

After that you can simply glue the tufts to penny coins or cut the tufts into smaller diameter tufts before you do. After that, base as you do troops.

I bought a brush head years ago, and it's still going – one brush make a lifetimes tufts. I also use them when making swamp pieces, etc. As seen here in my battle of Zorndorf scenario, tufts are very versatile, and every boy should have some.

You can use doomat, but IMHO they dont look as good when finished.

Hi Advocate, lances breaking:

1 or 2 is effectively what you get. You draw two chits for lance attack, if either is a 1 the lance breaks. Both hit chits are deemed to be drawn at the same time so if one is a '1' the other still counts for that round if it hits.

I made little dice docks. Each has a unit ID and a dice dock. Each holds a die which tracks ammo:

The numbers onteh back replace keeping cards on the table. The logs slide to show the current activation number.

James,

Thanks so much for the modifications. This period happens to be the one in which I have almost all of my 15mm medievals and can surely use!

And I really like your various markers. I'll have to give some of them a try.

Jim

Thanks for the eye candy. Your markers are fantastic, really giving me ideas. Both about tufts and other markers. I never thought of using removable pieces for rivers and so on …

John

Probably, the biggest change I've made is to remove ammunition chit mechanism, mostly as a table tidy exercise, and replaced it with something else."

Interesting- I'll be curious to read how it works! The chits will remain, but I'm planning to get rid of ammo resupply in Renaissance. I should probably make up some ammo tokens…

I liked your "whirling masses" idea!