I must go down to the seas again

Or 'more DBSA antics' (and apologies are probably owed to John Masefield).  

After my initial outing with the rules proved to be a reasonable success I have been thinking about the issues I had came across.  OK there was nothing major thrown up, and I'm prepared to bet that all my points were considered by Phil Barker and decided against for the sake of keeping the rules simple, but, well you know how I like to bolt on additional chrome.  

The first point was that in the real world damage to a warship has an effect beyond making it easier to sink.  This is either a reduction in combat efficiency or a reduction in speed/manoeuvrability.  Secondly, a crippled ship simply halting feels wrong (inertia and all that) even with fairly long 15 minute game turns some headway would be maintained.  Lastly I think the Hong Kong Wargame Societies idea of having some differences between the capital ships (Cruisers and Battleships) has merit.  This should include both a reflection of different armament, weight of fire in the different shooting arcs. and some reflection of advances in range finding and gunnery technology.  All that said I don't really want to loose the essential simplicity of the rules as conceived by Mr B.

Other players have tried to address some of these issues previously so I'm going to incorporate those ideas where ever possible.  There is a bit of retro-engineering involved in some cases to attempt to understand how their changes were arrived at, but nothing too difficult.  The hardest part will be finding a way to calculate a factor to reflect weight of shot in each firing arc as that will have to be done on a ship by ship basis.  I'm thinking some sort of Excel calculator (you know how I like to play with Excel).

My initial thought is to use some combination of shell weight, rate of fire and perhaps range finder capability, although the latter is problematic.  That would create a number for weight of fire reaching target but wouldn't take into account ability to penetrate armour.  I need to have a bit of a think on this.

Through the Square Window Rules review

I promised a review of the 'Through the Square Window' rules for the Thirty Years War  I picked up at Partizan recently, so here it is.

The rules cover and the one colour illustration

Summary

I like them.  The author has a similar view on how seventeenth century warfare worked to my own.  The combat mechanisms are elegant and uncomplicated and there are straight forward rules for depicting the various combat formations that evolved as the TYW progressed.  There is also a nice section covering the various armies involved and how to depict them on the table top, not dissimilar to my blog posts on the same topic for my own rules.  There are no grids (hooray), but a lot of dice, although this speeds up combat and especially morale/reaction tests so I don't mind that.  They use the battalia/squadron as the standard combat formations which is where I like to operate for pike and shot gaming.  All dice used are D6 so there are no oddball dice to acquire.  I haven't played them yet but other than changing the base sizes and ground scale to reflect the fact that my own troops are 6mm rather than the author's 15mm chaps I don't feel any need to fiddle.  The price doesn't hurt either, my copy came in at £10 from the author and I think they are also available from Caliver for £15.  

Details

The rules come as a spiral bound A4 book with clear plastic front and back covers.  It's printed on a good quality heavy paper, almost a light cardstock, and runs to 50 pages overall.  Of those only the first 16 pages are the rules.  Once set up, unit formations and definitions are taken out of the equation there are only 11 pages of rules covering the fighting on the tabletop.  Don't be put off by the short page run for this section though as despite the larger than average font used (Looks to be around 12-14 point which is nice as my eyes are not as young as they were) there is a lot subtle game play mechanisms in those pages .  This is achieved by the use of different tactical styles and formations.

There are few illustrations and these are simple black and white diagrams covering formations and arcs of fire.  To be honest the rules don't need more.  There is a good contents page so finding things is fairly easy which is good as there is no quick reference sheet.  The author says he tried to create one but couldn't compress the information to a single sheet.

Here are some images of my 6mm troops in the relevant infantry formations.  Apologies for using non 30 Years War figures I went with what I had.

A Dutch style battalion

A Swedish equivalent looks weedy but gets a salvo bonus

Wallenstein style Imperial battalion note shot bases in front of pike

Unit basing and formations all make perfect sense and, as mentioned above, do have an impact on how each different formation fights.  Each formation has a training/morale class of well trained, trained or poor, again this impacts how a formation fights.  I will create some specific mixed pike and shot bases for the Imperial squadron shown above so that they are closer to the concept in the rules.  That is probably the only change to my basing I need to consider.  Units also have a number of strength points based on the troop types in it and the number of bases of each type.  This defines how much punishment a formation can suffer before it breaks.

Spanish style large Tercio

Later Spanish Small Tercio

The rules use square bases but I have not fully followed that  as I already have 6mm troops based and don't want to change them (again).  If I was starting from scratch I would definitely go with the basing as suggested.  As it is my square bases are equivalent to those in the rules and my longer bases are equivalent to two of the square bases.  There was a chat on Face Book about basing and the consensus was (including the author's) was that as long as both sides are using the same base sizes and they are not too different to the rules it will be fine (but see bit about command rules below).

Each unit has a number of actions it can take each turn although there are some restrictions on doing the same thing more than once per turn.  So for example infantry and cavalry have two actions per turn while light cavalry have three.  Infantry cannot perform the same action twice in their turn.  Cavalry (except for shooting) can carry out the same action twice.  This limits how fast foot can move compared to cavalry.  There are 14 possible actions for units to to use, although three are artillery only and one is dragoons only.

Combat is straight forward with each base in a formation allocated a number of dice for shooting and a separate number for melee.  This varies based on the troop type on the base and their training level and brings more period flavour to the rules.  The combat system  is roll the total number of dice for the bases in combat and count hits, which are usually 6's but can be 5or 6's in some situations.  Each hit removes a strength point from the enemy unit.  

Morale works in a similar fashion.  There are several trigger events which cause a morale check and once triggered some additional situations add extra dice to the roll.  Every dice with a score of 1 or 2 can create a morale effect other scores have no impact.  Scores of 2 only effect poor troops while scores of 1 effect all troops and take precedent over the less severe outcomes of rolling a two. Scores of 1 are cumulative within the one set of rolls, think of it as a unit being overwhelmed by the number of things not going their way.  Its quick and effective with minimal charts required.  The effect of failing a roll can halt an advance and then cause a unit to rout if a further dice score of one is in the same set of dice rolls.  It sounds cumbersome but is actually fast to resolve.  It's worth noting routing troops can be rallied.

Command uses a command radii to test if units are able to take new orders directly.  The rules don't ask for specific orders for each unit they simply advance to contact.  Lack of command works by forcing halts and potentially removing a unit's ability to act, which I think means they are stuck in place and can only react to enemy actions.  This is possibly the least well explained part of the rules.  As a unit simply halting and not doing anything seems odd.  I'd expect them to at least be able to shoot.  I suspect that the number of generals is the defining factor here and that command needs to be modelled down to brigade level.  The only clue I can find is in the army costs (page 16) which gives a point cost for a general and says there must be a minimum of four generals.  That would suggest a CinC and a general for each wing and the centre.  This is something where I probably need to have game under my belt to fully grasp. As a secondary point this is where changing the base sizes might cause a slight issue.  Placing troops on much larger bases then recommended would have the potential to move unit's out of command range as it would spread units out more.  There is of course an easy fix, extend the command range by the same percentage that the base sizes are increased by.

Conclusions

Are these a detailed simulation of pike and shot combat ?- No, but no set of rules can cover every detail especially in a period where there was substantial change under way.  I don't hold this against the rules.  Every writer has to make a decision on which aspects to leave out and I think the author has taken a sensible view on this.

Do they provide  differences between the different tactical styles and formations?  Yes, this is one of the strengths of these rules and clearly was at the forefront of the author's mind.  The differences will allow players to feel that an early Spanish Style Tercio has to be used in a different way to a Swedish Brigade and reward doing that.

Do they feel right?  Well I haven't played a game yet but reading through my take is that they will give a period feel to game play.  There are enough differences in troop types to allow an early TYW army to act differently to a late TYW army or a BCW Army.

Overall, I think I have found my go to set of rules for the TYW.

Oh and yes the title is a nod to both The Defenestration of Prague and BBC's old pre-school programme Playschool.  Don't you love it when the author is a similar vintage to yourself?