All my Dux in a Rose

I had an on-line chat with someone recently about what rules I use for the Wars of the Roses. In truth I don't really have a set. I have odd bits and pieces, like the "Edgcote Made Easy" game and a set for 15mm that I wrote years back and need attention. However I have had at the back of my mind for a while an idea that Dan Mersey's "Dux Bellorum" Dark Age rules might provide an interesting look at the subject.

I've played DB several times with Richard of ShedWest. The main feature of the rules is that they're designed for lines of infantry slogging it out, with the role of leaders, intervening at critical points, captured through a Leadership Point mechanism (LPs).

In outline this sounds like a Wars of the Roses battle. The "Shieldwall" classifications allows "Nobles" to be Men at Arms and "Ordinary" to be billmen. Longbowmen might be covered by the "Bows" category (not the skirmish type) and Cataphracts work for mounted knights.

Using slightly tweaked values for the retinue cavalry, I came up with a couple of armies looking like this. They have a sort of Blore Heath feel to them:

The big changes are to the Mounted Retinue from Mounted Companions. BTW I got the move wrong, and had them at 4BW in the game. The armies are half archers, which is a lot by DB standards, but about right for the WotR.

Chris & Phil turned up for the game. 32 points is the recommended army size in the rules, to play on a 60cm x 60cm playing board for 15mm. With Richard we've use 15mm figures on a double frontage of 80mm, larger armies and a bigger playing area, so this was new for all of us and had a bit of a DBA look to it.

Phil took the Yorkists, to the right, and Chris was to the left. Phil had played the rules before, but Chris hadn't. There was accordingly some explanations required. What I hadn't factored in was the Phil had Richard's version of the game lodged in his head, which isn't exactly the RAW.

Once the toys were laid out Chris decided he'd put half his cavalry in the wrong place, and started to switch them to the other end of the line.

A couple of turns or so in, and Chris has got a big cavalry sweep going on his right. Archery has proved...interesting. The arc of fire is 45 degrees. Phil has succeeded in concentrating his archers in two groups. The first round volley kills one of Chris' bill units outright. Chris is able to focus all of his archers on Phil's command base, and inflicts 6 hits (this is a bit of luck. He's rolling 12 dice and looking a 5,6 to hit). Luckily Phil had 3 LPs to block some of the hits, but even so. I think I'll need to restrict the firing arc in future. Or perhaps the effectiveness, where armies have so many bows.

Chris sends in his mounted arm. When I tot up the dice to be rolled it does not look good for Phil. Rather than be shot to pieces, Phil advances his infantry line.

But what's this? An inconclusive round of combat sees Chris withdraw his cavalry with no harm done to either side. In the centre it's less good news. Phil wins one combat but his severely weakened command base is killed, and his men at arms are at death's door. Losing his commander means no more LPs. 

Chris changes tack with his cavalry and throws one of them into the rear of Phil's centre. The other mounted unit refuses to move. Note that at this point Phil is ahead on unit kills. He only needs one more to force Chris to start taking morale checks.

Next turn the other cavalry obey orders and they join the devastating flank charge.

And that's about it. A lot of units have been broken on both sides, and Phil concedes. He's got nothing to answer the cavalry.

It wasn't an overwhelming thumbs up from the studio audience. Phil finds the LPs a bit abstract. Using what are essentially the core unit values the game is clearly unbalanced by having lots of archers and two units of "cataphracts". The cataphracts in particular are woefully under valued in points turns, so you're normally only allowed one of them normally. And I did get the move distance wrong.

My feeling is that there's some mileage here in pursuing the rule modifications. I think that it might work well with the armies in three battles of about 5 -6 units each, each with a commander base with a number of LPs. I'd need artillery rules as well, but I don't think that's too great a stretch.

This will probably be revisited.