"Stuck choosing Rules for Italian wars 25mm. Please help us!" Topic

My club have a bunch of avid collectors and I myself have given in to their temptations! First time dabbling with Renaissance ( Landskneckts if anyones interested)
I like to game with my minis though so I turn to you guys for help.
We have tried and cant get away with WAB
Armarti and subsequent ventures.
Gush (wrg)
DBR
Maxillian ( for the oldies out there)
Piquet.

All for various reasons from lack of fun to unhistoric results and lack of flavour.

Have we missed any? Is there something we should be trying?
Please help some gamers in need!?!

Many thanks TMP er s, really appreciate it

13

Apologies 18th century lot….wrong one..

I have not tried them but To the Banners from Partizan Press are interesting.

Also you can try Age of Renaissance or, if you wish something really old, you can look for the old ruleset of GRW: Tercio.

Although not for the Italian Wars, you have Spanish Fury in the website of The Perfect Captain. It is free and, perhaps, the rules can give you ideas about what you want.

Cheers

You might consider Band of Brothers from the Piquet stable. If you like fog of war – it's a good set.

I'm building up 25mm Italian Wars armies (for Pavia) and am planning on using Frank Chadwick's as yet unpublished Ancient Rules. There is a Yahoo group dedicated to these if you are interested.

Piquet just came out with a new edition of Band of Brothers for the Renaissance.

Its definatly possible to mdoify Spanish Fury into Italian Wars if you change the unit stats. The important thing is to seperate the pike from the shot/X-Bows.

I'm in the process of doing this now. I'm very impressed with the completeness of the system and the ineraction of the campaign, skirmish, seige and Battle games. Its very cleverly done.

Hopefully when you are done you will let us know, Barmy. I have also been looking for a 'good' set of rules for this time…

Greg

El Grego,

Yeah, I'll be happy to share with all who are interested. I guess I should ask the Captain et. all what they think is appropriate for sharing the files. Wouldn't want to tick those guys off.

My take is that its not too much of a change. Basic changes as follows….

Throwing out formations and formation changes. Everyones basicly in column except skirmishers and maybe missle troops.

Thinking about having pike block able to take on small numbers of satelite stands of skirmishers, missle troops or 'Forlorn Hope' Type Blades.The Skirmishers would screen missle hits, the Missle Troops would inflict them and the Blade Infantry would have a chance of lowering the enemy pike blocks cohesion.

Tone down the Spanish, I'm aiming at the War of the League of Cambrai and its follow ups through 1516 in particular, so no Tercios and the pike blocks are newer formations for them and presumably not as polished (still only second to the Swiss in prowess though)

I would like to cleanly mark a single stand in the Battle rules as one 'Strength point' from the campaign rules, just for simplicities sake. This would be regardless of the number of figures on the stand.

I'm thinking of limiting formation sizes to about four or six stands to a unit with probably two for cavalry.

****
What do people think of this?
****

Thats what I'm thinking in addition to the obvious adding of unit types. Where possible I'm sticking with the stats from the Captain, I love the national and psychological flavour of the units (For example the profesional, but not over eager Landssknechst with their low tolerance for casualties contrasted with fine drill and orderly retreats). I'm working on those stats now in MS Excel

After that, I will have to make up some spiffy looking unit cards. I have done this kind of thing for Full Thrust, but I don't think i can make them nearly as nice as the Captian (i'm also inclined to make them in Black and white).

Oh, one thing I'm considering now as I am about to work on making the Cavalry stats is what to do with the Gendarme.

I am wondering….

1) I think the 'Archers' and other mounted retainers should be included in with the Gendarme as an integral component of the unit. What I have read pushes me in this direction, but It seems its popular to have these guys as a seperate body in wargaiming.

2) The national characteristics of said 'Gentleman at Arms'. My inclination is to make the Gendarme of France slightly more powerful psychogicly than their Italian counterparts. Thats my gut feeling, but I'm not sure. The Maximillian era Holy Roman Gendarme I realy have no idea about at all. As for the early Spaniards I'm thinking of more or less plugging in the English Demi Lancer stats as the equipment looks very similar (3/4 armor, unbarded horse and lance). They would be no match at all for any of the other Shock Cavalry if I did this, but it seems reasonable.

I'm very open to suggestions here.

What I have read pushes me in this direction, but It seems its popular to have these guys as a seperate body in wargaiming.

Used in both ways: separate bodies or as an integral part of the "lance", etc.

My inclination is to make the Gendarme of France slightly more powerful psychogicly than their Italian counterparts.

Don't forget that famous joust between Italian and French Men-at-Arms where the French got their handed to them! I think there were differences, but probably exaggerated a bit.

I'm thinking of limiting formation sizes to about four or six stands to a unit with probably two for cavalry.

Gendarmes (according to Taylor) charged in compact bodies of 300-400. Larger infantry formations probably also actually fought in smaller groups (not the whole 3000 man pike square in one coordinated effort, for example). But, much of this is open to a steady diet of debate. Go with what feels right and your interpretation of the sources.

Hullo Barmy,

TPC here. I'm keen to see your Italian Wars stuff too. No worries about modifying Spanish Fury; in fact we have a policy that if a fellow gamer comes up with a variant that they are willing to put the effort into (such as you seem to be doing with the Italian Wars) we would be only to glad to put our graphics department at your disposal! An example of this is Dan Staberg's "Nordic Fury"
link

He put so much work into this and did such a fine job that we came up with the graphics for unit cards, counters (one bearing his name), even flags for miniatures.

So fear not ticking us off. Even if you don't need us to help you out feel free to come up with your own ideas and implement them. That's the best part of our hobby, the "Do it yourself" element….

One other note- as far as integrating the systems as you say built around the strength point, we have already produced easy-to-read charts that graphically show all of the counters in the Spanish Fury system and what they convert into from one module to another. You can find them in the download for "Spanish Fury, Campaign!"

Enjoy,

TPC

Wow, This thread is a fine testament to the power of TMP.

I hope that my work is worthy of everyone's attention. I've just begun on this and I must confess to not having a doctorate in the period. For example, in my bawdy romp, I was plugging in characters from Othello and Romeo & Juliet for the secondary officers di Venezia! An ambush from Iago Sottile'nere or a quick about face from Mercutio Amaro Di Lealta' seemed to have more personality than some nameless guy who I have no referance material on. So with that misnomer adressed…..

Jon,

Thanks for the info, I admire your enthusiasm for the period and the archives here have a lot of helpful information from you that I appreciate. I'm going to have to work out the scale as far as what fits with the rules and what fits with the period. For example, with vanilla SF, a Single ‘Strength Point' as per the Campaign is 300 men. For a small ‘Action!' skirmish, this would be broken up into six stands, wich would work well, but under ‘Battle' that would be would be a bit inconsequential (and fusy to track all those little units). Then one must take into account what would be a reasonable number of figures to expect people to have, how does that tie into the number of combatants in the campaigns and battles of the period and how will these look and feel moving around in formation on a table. Once we have ‘zoomed out' to that 12,000 combatant level, does that 3,000 man pike block composed of separate formations basicly become one big block when were talking about 15-45 minute turns? Maybe what equates to 1,200-1,800 men works better even though its iffy historicaly.

My take is a fair bit of ‘fudging' and abstraction is going to have to be performed and not all of these considerations can be placed in a balance that is entirely satisfactory to reality. My plan is to try and appease ‘looks good, practical and plays well' and if that means a 600 man, two stand Gendarme formation is the norm, that's Ok. Well you probably knew all that anyway, but theres the explanation of my intentions ;^)

Mon Capitan,

Thanks for that, If I could get it together well enough to have you guys adopt it, I would be honored. I would join your yahoo group, but since I changed ISP's, I have been unable to open any Yahoo Groups pages (I've checked security settings and had my tech friend take a gander without any luck so far). I'll post what rules I have about Pike Regiments in my next post and then try and find a way share the files. Inexplicebly, my ability to send attachments has tanked on both my E-mail boxes too, I can't explain it. Maybe I could upload to displaced miniatures once I have some more meat, probably the best way to share files for me at the moment (I imagine its approriate content for them to host for a little while).

As far as the basing system ‘integration', I must confess that this has more to do with asthetics and budget than anything else (so it wouldn't be appropriate for an offical conversion at all). I did see the system conversions and it's well layed out and clear. My idea though was that I wanted all the bases the same size and I didn't want to have to buy 100 Men at Arms and 800 pikemen to cover all the combatants. So I was thinking three heavy cavalry to a base would do well. When I calculate any portion of the ‘Battle' rules that takes into account figure count, I would count those three horsemen as six figures. I also don't want to put six arquebusers or crossbowmen all crowded on a base for this period (Its appropriate for the Spanish Fury time frame). So, I was thinking I'll put four missle troops on a base and call them six ‘figures' as per the rules too. It's simpler for my private purposes, but it would not be approriate to force everyone else to didle with changes like this. Now that theres outside interest I'll have to rethink all that.

Anyway, thanks for the great rules! My friend and I are about to undertake the Dreux campaign with the counters from your art department. I was going to use some proxies, but the only pike I can scrounge up have Phrygian helms and silver shields and my ‘shot' would be from Crete, so better to use the counters.

I'm going to do some work tomorrow on that excell file.

Take care all,
Barmy

Ok, heres an excerpt from my notes on pikes. Its a first draft and is worded to be clear rather than exciting or brief (thats for the edit). It sounds more complicated due to the current wording than it realy is.

*****

Pike Regiments
may be from four to six stands strong?
suffer one extra casualty for every 2 disorder points generated in missle fire. Thus a missle fire result of ‘2d/1' (‘d' being disorder) counts for 2 points of disorder and two casualties.
For every two stands in a pike regiment, there is one Satelite Stand (needs a new name). These Satelite Stands are free, separate from Campaign Strength Points and have no effect on the regiments' casualty tally if they are destroyed.

Italian – Skirmisher
German – Blade or Skirmisher
Swiss – Blade
Spanish – Blade or Skirmisher

In additon to these free satelite stands, pike regiments may be assigned a single ‘Missle Stand'. These are detached from a Crossbow or Arquebus regiment at the cost of one Strength Point (SP or stand) from that regiment. When a Missle Stand is attached to a pike regiment, it takes the place of one of the free stands. For example, if a four SP German pike regiment was assigned one Missle Stand from a friendly Crossbow regiment, then it would only be able to field one additional Blade or Skirmisher Stand.

Satelite Stands
Satelite stands are attached to pike regiments. They are placed near the regiment, but exactly where they are is irrelevant as they are considered to perform their function regardless of placement (so put them where they look best!)

Skirmishers – A Skirmisher stand allows a Pike block to ignore the ‘Extra Casualties from Missle Fire' special rule for a single enemy missle unit that fires upon it. In order to negate the fire of two enemy missle units, two stands of skirmishers must be present (and so on). When a Pike Block with Skirmishers suffers a casualty from missle fire, the Skirmisher stand is destroyed on a roll of 4+. Skirmishers are never destroyed in mele combat (place them behind their regiment when mele is engagedand put them back out front when its over).

Blade – A Blade stand may be used to either launch a ‘Forlorn Hope' (FH) or to ‘Follow Up' (FU) in mele combat. When Mele Combat is commenced, any FH attacks must be designated, if none are then the unit is considered to be in FU stance. Blade stands only affect enemy Infantry regiments; FH and FU attacks have no effect against enemy cavalry.

Forlorn Hope
A Forlorn Hope (FH) can only be attempted against an Enemy Pike Regiment. A FH is launched in the first turn of mele. A Pike Regiment either charging or receiving a charge may designate a FH. The FH causes an enemy Pike Regiment unit engaged in mele to have to make an immediate marshalling test. Only one Blade stand may be used to FH even if there is more than one Blade in the unit. If the enemy passes the marshalling test, the Blade stand is destroyed on a die roll of 5, modified by ferocity as per mele casualties (ie. A enemy Pike regiment with +1 ferocity destroys it on a roll of 4+ and so on). If the Marshalling test is failed, the unit loses one(?) point of cohesion. If the marshalling tets is failed on a roll of 6 the blade is allowed to FU this turn too. If the enemy has a blade stand too, then it cancels out the FH on a roll of 4+. A defending regiments Blade stand must be used to try and cancel the FH and may not be used to FU this turn. If a mele continues into a second turn, a surviving Blade unit used in the first turn to launch a FH will automaticly be used to FU in any subsequent turn.

Follow Up
A Blade unit not used for a FH is automaticly used to ‘Follow Up' (FU). Every Blade stand that FU's adds one to a casualty resolution roll. FU casualty bonuses are cumulative, so two FU blades will give a +2 to casualty result (If one Blade FU's, then enemy casualties are scored on a 5+ instead of 6+, if two Blades FU, then casualties are scored on a 4+ and so on). This bonus is in addition to any Ferocity bonus. If both sides have Blades that are performing FU actions, they cancel each other out on a one for one basis (so two FU Blades against one would still get a +1 casualty bonus). FU's never cancel out enemy ferocity bonuses.

Missle – They shoot, work in progress

Warfare in the Age of Discovery might be something worth looking at.

I recently played a game of Gush's (WRG) Renaissance for the first time in maybe 20 years. It was a pretty impromptu thing, but it was enjoyable. I'd forgotten how much I liked those rules. I plan to paint a 28mm army for it some day.

I've played a few games of DBR and have a couple armies yet to paint for it. I can also recommend it as having a lot going for it, though it's a different kind of game than the more detailed WRG approach.

BTW, I think Gush works better for 25/28mm and DBR is better for 15mm.

Barmy Flutterz: looks like you've got a great start. Would you mind a few suggestions. First stop thinking in wargaming terms. Work out how you think combat happened in real life. The basic unit is the company or band. Pike units, shot units and crossbow units are made up of combined bands. You might relate bands to number of figures and then make up the size of these other units in terms of bands. This will give a bit of ‘feel' to your game.

Next get rid of wargaming names such as ‘blades'. At this time a blade meant a sword or knife blade. If you have units armed with halbards, two-handed swords or swords and shields say that. There is not so many different types of weapons that you need to abstract the weapons. When you abstract the weapons you remove it just that much more from the ‘feel' of the period. If you want a single name for them then I would suggest calling them double-pay men. It was the double-pay men who carried these weapons.

I would get away from words such as ‘skirmishers'. There was no units specifically raised to skirmish. Commanders took normally trained troops such as arqubusiers spread them out (often called unformed) and used them to attack over rough terrain or to skirmish. Remember ‘skirmish' is an activity not a unit. I would suggest putting together a number of bands and giving them a skirmish order or rather an ‘un-form' order. Again these little points help create the ‘feel' of the period.

This also go for the Forlorn Hope. The Forlorn Hope would be composed of x number of bands of arquebusiers (not shot) supported by smaller bands of double-pay men or pikes. This was a standard use of double-pay men. It was standard to cover the advance of the pikes with the Forlorn Hope by both sides. When pike units got to within attack position the Forlorn Hope would fall-back and let the pikes fight.

A lot of times actions happened around houses, fences, small walls, hedges, etc. Generally these were taken by arquebusiers backed up by double-pay men. Commanders would assign x numbers of bands of arquebusiers supported by x number of double-pay men to assault such positions. There were also units composed of just arquebusiers called commanded arquebusiers. These could be used to hold defensive positions or used to support cavalry. Yes, long before Gustavus shot was used to support cavalry.

By the way, no muskets. These really didn't become operational on the battlefield until the last quarter of the 16th century. They were used but in sieges.

Where ever possible, use units as they were used then, use terms that, while English, reflect terms of that time. Keep away from ‘wargame' jargon. All these things help create ‘feel'. Good luck.

13blackravens: give Renaissance Warfare a shot. I think you'll like it. It's from the SAGA group

Rich

Have you looked at Basic Impetus yet?

PDF link

Haven't tried it myself -- when they were first posted, there was an enire section missing from the rules, so I gave up on them. Apparently they've been fixed. Dadi & Piombo is pushing them pretty heavily, and hey, they're free.

BTW, here are the Italian Wars lists, also free on the website, though apparently only in Italian (you can figger it out, though):

dadiepiombo.com/vol32.html

in English at

dadiepiombo.com/vol32e.html

Anyone still have the Newbury rules laying around? Or the non-aptly named Newbury Fast Play rules? Dang, it's been a long time -- but the army lists were fantastic. They could probably be adapted to any set of rules.

I always thought that although Gush's rules were fun to play, the Army lists short-changed the Italians. But then, as I was the Milanese in Pat Mullen's legendary campaign in Burbank way back when, I'm still a little bitter.

I also have 25mm armies based on Pavia. My current inclination is to adapt 'Field of Glory', using a 40mm MU (movement unit). This has recently been discussed in at least one other thread on TMP.

Hi Henry
I still use the Newbury rules, and prefer the full blown manual and all the supplements, although I have finlly rebased from Newbury to Field of Glory my Ancient armies. I still will go with Newbury for the Italian Wars.
William

Warfare in the Age of Discovery might be what you are looking for.

Take a look at PDF link for an idea of how it plays.

Other issues of Warning Order from the Wfhgs have a review of the rules and other scenarios. All good fun. Very good for club games.

Cheers
Mark