"Kershner's Age of Discovery" Topic

We dusted off this moldering tome yesterday and had a great game of 80 years war post 1600 trying to showcase Maurice's reformed battalions against some later Royalist tercios. It worked quite well and the simple and unique combat system reflected the feel of the period well I thought. This led us to conclude gamers would do well to re examine this somewhat forgotten rules system. One gets quite accustomed to simply counting castings and then adding and subtracting the modifiers then rolling the up/down die and consulting the universal table. Fast, fun and really brilliant. Also like the ways casualties are inflicted on pike or shot parts of units, or, even on halberdiers! The pushed back modifier also simulates the feel of a grinding pike block very well. The only critique was that commanded shot elements have no command and control and are free to wheel around and sting like insects which they didn't do in reality. The aftermath of the game led to a few comments and questions:
1. Is anyone aware of additional author created or fan created material such as additional army lists for 17th century wars which is quite lightly treated in the book itself. Also other scenarios or any updated rules, errata, etc.?
2. One time in a very old thread a member by the name of Daniel S. from Sweden who seems to be an expert on the 30 years war made the comment that he used this set occasionally and had his own special rules. Given the erudition he has displayed on the 30 years war and his access to primary non-English sources I would love to hear what modifications he has used. After looking in the directory he hasn't been active in just over a year. Perhaps there is a member who has the ability to contact him and ask him this question! What modifiers were used for the 30 years war?

Wealdmaster,

Interesting piece, I'm not familiar with the rules at all. Daniel S. may refer to the late Dan Schorr. I do t believe he was native Swedish, I met him in person. He was an expert on the era from the Thirty Years War through Charles XII, and as I recall did have his own rules for the Great Northern War.

I've posted some text from his various posts here where he refers to "his native Swedish". I don't think Dan Schorr was from Sweden? See text:

Thank you for taking the time to explain your position.
Now I can understand the problems caused by the language barrier, my native Swedish is after all a very minor language. But German, Spanish & French are major languages and should not be nearly so difficult to handle, particularly in the age of constantly improving internet based translators. Add a good wordbook and you have all you need to translate a lot of texts, certainly enough to handle order of battles and the like.

Getting the sources is the true problem, a lot of these works are hard to find unless you have access to a major research library. But even there the situation is improving, archive.org and google books have online several very usefull sources like Reitzenstein's work on the 1622 campaign, Mankell's & Klinkowström's huge collection of Swedish military documents from the time of Gustavus Adolphus, Mankell's work on the strenght and location of the Swedish army from the 1590's to the 19thC, Konze's work on Wallensteins army in 1632-1633 Villermont's biography of Tilly and so on.
Sources you had either read at a library or spend a lot of $$ to purchase just a few years ago.
Even modern works like Pavel H's fine "Spanier auf dem Albuch" can be purchased as e-books, in this case for less than 5 Euros.

Dr. Pierre Picouet's excellent website is available in english and have been active for years, his information on Spanish tactics and the battles of Fleurus, Nördlingen and Rocroishould more than fill the void left by discarding Guthrie's erronous descriptions of those parts.

He also says he lives on the West Coast of Sweden near Goteberg. At any rate, AOD by Tod K. remain available from On Military Matters.

MWAN 101 – had both additional army lists and official errata

Check Wargames Vault for copy

Other lists
Early Irish 1500-1560
Later Irish 1561-1600
16th and 17th Don Cossacks
16th and 17th Zaporizhian Cossacks
Early Hungarian
16h Moldavians/Wallachians/Transylvanians
30 yrs war Moldavian
16th and 17th Tartars
16th Persian
17th Persian
16th and 17th Moorish
Mamelukes 1470-1517
Early 16th Moghuls

Thanks for this info. I just got it and downloaded.

Daniel S. Is probably Daniel Staberg, who used to post regularly here on 17th warfare matters. He is Swedish. He still may be posting here, but I haven't seen anything from him recently.

Well, here's hoping he might see this thread!

We still use this set of rules for Renaissance as well as early Wars of Religion battles. Once you figure out the combat and morale system, you find that it does a pretty good job of portraying the chaotic nature of Renaissance warfare. The army lists could use some work and it badly needs an index, but we've been playing it for well over 20 years now and everyone seems to enjoy the games.

Those rules are from Tod Kershner and are for Early and Mid Renaissance. He also sells some rules on Wargames Vault. He has a page on facebook Tod Kershner games. I don't do Facebook but if you do you can contact him there and ask about his out of print stuff.

The rules do indicate they sort of stop at the year 1600. After the reforms of Maurice and beggining of smaller linear units and increasing shot it remains unclear how well they can portray matters. Still, the game we had yesterday was very good. The last bit of the book goes into a discussion of how to deal with the 17th century. I think there is potential here for a follow up edition all these years later for sure.

Daniel S. is not the late Dan Schorr. Daniel S. has a photobucket account in the name 'Dstaberg', so Daniel Staberg as dbf1676 speculates.

Druzhina
Illustrations of Costume & Soldiers

I think I found him on Facebook and thank you.