80mm basing for wars of the roses?

[Norm S]

I have been testing some rules out use sabot 80mm bases and yesterday moved the project forward by making up two permanent 80mm bases, so see if the look and functions works for my table.

Blogged pics and commentary at;

http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2020/09/basing-thoughts-for-bosworth_23.html

[ian pillay]

Norm,

Fantastic brush work, they are lovely. As I was reading through I thought I would have put a dice holder on the base and hey presto you did! (Great minds and all that)

Tally-Ho! Check out my blog at…..
http://steelcitywargaming.wordpress.com/

[Norm S]

Thanks Ian, I should have put one on the x-bow unit, but the thought came too late. I threw them up on the table last night in a mini game and enjoyed handling them.

I posted this account as a result

’I suppose traditionally gamers tend to step up the size of their game, which can put rules under stress. I know I have been playing Never mind the Billhooks with larger forces than 100 points. Anyway, tonight I went the other way …. small and was pleasantly surprised at how much of a good game that it gave me. The system survived! 🙂

Basically I set up a 4’ x 3’ space and had just 30 points of Yorkists defending a hill. That only gave them, 1 x archer, 1 x bill and 1 x skirmish x-bow. The Bill was a ward, with the army commander and the archers were a ward with a leader and the skirmishers were independent.

Below, the Lancastrians on the left had a ward with 1 x archer and 1 x bill and to the centre another ward the same. On the right they had artillery for a total of 62 points. So the card deck just had two leader cards per side.

Obviously the Lancastrians did all of the manoeuvre in the initial phase, with the Yorkist x-bow putting a stop to that.

The Lancastrian artillery did quite well, playing their shot against the high ground.

The Yorkist archers and x-bow put a lot of harm on the advancing Lancastrian formations who had their archers out in front.

On the Lancastrian left, their archers ran away due to VERY effective x-bow shooting, on their right, they got up the hill and engaged the Yorkist archers.

Two things of note. Firstly, I was surprised that the hill didn’t offer a significant defensive advantage. I think perhaps making the slopes ‘bad going’ to an attacker going uphill might be preferable in the future if the feature is meant to have a defensible character.

Secondly, just for a bit of good visual, I had put a small hamlet on the Lancastrian right. As time went on, the Yorkists got a Special Events card ….. it was the Ambush card, which I have never come across before. Essentially it creates a new skirmisher unit that emerge from a building, So suddenly the Lancastrian right that were attacking up the hill, had Yorkist skirmishers in their rear – what a superb bit of narrative play.

Anyway, the Lancastrians ended up losing both archer units and that ended the game, which I found to be totally engaging and it gave me a good weekday evening game. Billhooks is looking increasingly versatile.’

 

[Author]

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