Herbsthausen 1645 – In Deo Veritas AAR

[Sigur Squrrl]

Heyhey, I finally got an In Deo Veritas game on the table again. Since I was rather into the Palatinate phase of the Thirty Years War the past few years I (lacking foresight) kinda played all the larger battles that would have their 400th anniversary this year already.

Which is why I looked into the latter years of the war and went with Herbsthausen 1645 this time. It’s a solo game with minimal house rules and you can read the AAR here (available in English and German):

https://www.tabletopstories.net/language/en/2022/09/in-deo-veritas-battle-of-herbsthausen-1645/

 

Thanks for reading and I hope you like the article! 🙂

[Mike]

That looks very pretty.

[Sigur Squrrl]

Mike wrote:

That looks very pretty.

 

Thanks very much! 🙂 Hope it reads well too!

[hammurabi70]

Interesting AAR.

You appear to prefer  IDV over ToDR, is there a reason to concentrate on IDV for game play?  I have read your review of IDV and your comparison at the end of the AAR of the Battle of Wimpfen but you have subsequently done six games with IDV.  This would seem to suggest a clear preference.  My only concern would be measuring as my failing eyes do not encourage measuring to the millimetre, so would it convert to grids?

www.olivercromwell.org; www.battlefieldstrust.com
6mm wargames group: [email protected]; 2mm wargames group: [email protected]

[Sigur Squrrl]

hammurabi70 wrote:

Interesting AAR. You appear to prefer IDV over ToDR, is there a reason to concentrate on IDV for game play? I have read your review of IDV and your comparison at the end of the AAR of the Battle of Wimpfen but you have subsequently done six games with IDV. This would seem to suggest a clear preference. My only concern would be measuring as my failing eyes do not encourage measuring to the millimetre, so would it convert to grids?

 

Thanks for the comment, hammurabi70! Maybe my counting is off, but I think I so far played 4 games of IDV and 5 games of ToDR (plus one game of Baroque). But you’re right in the regard of my more recent games having been mostly IDV. That’s got mostly something to do with the fact that I got these rules more recently. The main reason I got them out again now is that a friend asked to play something TYW and two years ago we played ToDR already, so I thought I’d show him IDV. Before I can do that I had to re-learn the rules and test a scenario for us to play.

 

I still stand by my opinion that I can’t choose a favourite between IDV and ToDR. They do things very differently. Both give a good game and (so I believe) plausible results, they just do it differently. I’ll give ToDR a spin again next though. 🙂 It feels a bit ‘meatier’. IDV on the other hand feels a little bit more free-flowing, but doesn’t give you stuff like units supporting each other. ToDR has that in droves. On the other hand IDV has a secret orders system for each wing and card activation. Adding those to ToDR wouldn’t be a problem, but I think it would maybe make the whole creation a bit top-heavy.
I have to admit that I have a soft spot for IDV because it’s plucky. It can do more than meets the eye at first. On the other hand ToDR makes you feel smart for being familiar with the period and thinking “oh, that makes sense!” when reading the rules, and it’s got some things I haven’t seen in other rules sets.

Funny you mention grids; just last Saturday I talked to some other wargamers about the merits of grids.

If you don’t want to measure millimetres, IDV probably is more useful since that uses inches, and just inches, whereas ToDR uses a system based on base width, which usually results in measuring cm or mm (and ranges go down to 1/4 of half a unit’s frontage).  ToDR, or Baroque for that matter, use half a unit’s frontage for their basic measuring unit (BU in Baroque terms, BW in ToDR), so making that the length/width of each square might work. Units would cover two grids when set up, which isn’t much of a problem, but the problem with the smaller firing ranges (either 1/2 a BU/BW or even 1/4 BU/BW in some cases like cavalry pistols) remains.

There are some different movement and shooting ranges in IDV. You can look them up here in the IDV Quick Reference Sheet: https://www.helion.co.uk/docs/docs/in-deo-veritas-qrs-v1-1037.pdf.

Maybe 3″ squares could work for that, what do you think?

 

Have you tried the “For King and Parliament” variant of To the Strongest? That set of rules is based on being played on a grid and seems to be very popular with wargamers. I haven’t tried it so far, but it’s said to be really good. https://bigredbatshop.co.uk/products/to-the-strongest-for-king-and-parliament-rules-physical-edition

[hammurabi70]

Many thanks for a very helpful response.  I will certainly give For King and Parliament a go; however, the indications are that it does ECW but not the TYW.  Evidently fitting IDV to a grid is a self-help project!  Grid size neeeds to mesh with other period rules so that will be a challenge too.

www.olivercromwell.org; www.battlefieldstrust.com
6mm wargames group: [email protected]; 2mm wargames group: [email protected]

[Sigur Squrrl]

 

I fully understand that. I was rather happy when around 2019 several rules sets were released which cover the time period and/or the TYW specifically.

I never played it either, but maybe Tilly’s Very Bad Day is easy to convert to grids?

https://balagan.info/download-tillys-very-bad-day-fast-play-rules-for-the-30-years-war

[Author]

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