The Corlears Hook Fencibles test drove two ancient rules sets Thursday evening. Both game saw the Swiss led by Rick against the Burgundian Ordonnance of Charles the Bold (Bill). I rules meistered and Ken chose to observe both games.
The first game used Basic Impetus with the Swiss on the attack. The Swiss rolled forward, as indeed they must when their main weapon is pointy sticks.
The allied pike keil charged and Ordonnance archers and was roughly handled. Rolling crap dice will do that. The dice were waiting to be rolled for the real Swiss.
The cannon didn't get any hits but kept causing disorder and forcing the men at arms to dress their ranks.
Now the Swiss dice heated up and the Flemish dice went cold.
The second Swiss keil hit the Ordonnance pikes and laid them down in rows. Again, hot Swiss dice and cold, cold Burgundian dice.
In short order the Burgundian center was bare, with disordered keils reorganizing and looking to turn to either flank. Fortunes were different on the Swiss right.
The Swiss halberds had been having a bad day, with arrows sticking out of too many of them. Then Charles charged them in the flank.
Things were closer than it looked. Both armies were near their breakpoint.
The first Swiss keil got their hands onto the Ordonannce archers and put the game away.
We broke for dinner. We'd played 11 turns in a little over 2 hours. Then we decided to try it again with Triumph after dinner. The online army lists are a little sketchy yet but we cobbled together two forces.
Bill brought some fairly potent beer to dinner. I had trouble with some simple math early on. It may also explain Bill's deployment. He set up 5 different groups, always a problem with pip games. Of course the Swiss came on like gangbusters.
The Swiss had good dice – and good match-ups, with elite infantry vs. archers and pikes against artillery. The Burgundian left collapsed, though Charles counter-attacked.
He was alone, soon surrounded by halberds. Is that his head being waved around?
On the other flank, a squadron of men at arms charged skirmishers and chased them out of the plowed field. Another group of skirmishers took them in flank. A high Burgundian dice roll would have ridden down the skirmishers but the horse had trouble in the plowed field. They got a tie and then failed to roll well the next time. Game to the Swiss.
This game took just about an hour. We can get both fames played faster when we get up to speed. The consensus was we'll mostly play Triumph because it is simple and fast. It also suits our extensive collection of DBA size armies. For those armies where we can field larger forces, we'll play Basic Impetus from time to time. Rick and Bill were saying Triumph is mighty dicey. It's son of DBA, so yes. They also seemed to be forgetting what I had noticed during the first game. The crossbowmen wiped out two allied pike units without getting their hair mussed. The halberdiers came apart under bow fire from a single unit. The two Swiss keils murdered their opposite numbers even though they didn't have a big advantage. Basic Impetus can be pretty dicey too. It's a little more complex and takes longer to play. But those 32-figure pike blocks do look nice.
proves himself a fan of splintered oars, crashing beakheads, and drummers yelling "come'mon, you scurves! The Captain wants to go water skiing, so pull harder!"
