Northampton minds its Billhooks

Down to Delapre Abbey this afternoon, where Northamptonshire Battlefield Society member, soon to be new graduate of the University of Northampton, and wargamer, Jason, had set up a large refight of Northampton 1460 with masses of (mostly) 28mm Perry Plastics to be played with Never Mind the Billhooks.

I've seen Billhooks played, but never partaken myself, so it was handy to get a chance to give them a go whilst supporting our local battlefield venue.

The game on the table was part way through, having been commenced by some secondary school children on a visit the day before. There'd been some shooting but no hand to hand combat. The game has about 500 figures on the Yorkist side, divided into about 10 or 11 manoeuvre units. That's a lot of toys on the table, and a lot to move. Jason had chosen to follow the "Shed Wars" Northampton scenario and set up for this game. The only comment I'd make there is that in the research for the battle, Eric the Shed didn't look outside the internet and so hasn't read or used Mike Ingram's book on the battle.

Each "retinue" has an activation card and moves/acts individually. This has the curious affect of battles breaking up and moving in pieces. I can't say that I loved this as a mechanism. I can see how it works for skirmish games, but for set piece battles it looked slightly strange. I can think of a number of ways to deal with this problem, but the simplest way is to allocate commands to a battle and move it/activate all of it when one of its commanders are drawn if the player wants to keep everything together. 

Any how, I took the Yorkists, mainly because Jason has all the umpiring stuff on his side of the table. And he's a not so closet Lancastrian.

Nice 3D printed Eleanor Cross. Mine's made out of match sticks. The box has "morale chips" in it. You lose when you run out of these. 

On the left of the line Lord Fauconberg advances out of line. As you can see from the first picture for whatever reason the Yorkist right wing is ahead of the left, which isn't ideal, but I'm picking up someone else's position.

Jason's archers measure to see if I'm in range. That's a real wooden arrow shape painted red, not a graphic I've added. He's out of range as it is reduced by rain.

The Yorkist right crowds in upon Lord Grey of Ruthyn's men. We dice for them changing sides. I roll a one. Disaster! However, I then remembered I'd scored a dice re-roll card earlier on. The re-roll comes up six. Huzzah!! It'll all be over soon.

Or not, as the manoeuvre rules now become troublesome. This is a set where it is harder to turn round  than wheel 90 degrees. Plus the retinues at this end of the line aren't in the order deck yet. If the cards come out in the wrong sequence we'll have a traffic jam and chaos whilst the Lancastrians react. The decision to lead with this wing also means most of the defenders are free to move, not being pinned in position.

At the other end of the table Lord Fauconberg's men are disordered due to crossing the stream (white marker) and so have a tough fight to cross the palisade as only the front rank gets to fight.

On the right centre I take a turn (two activations) to swap my archers to behind my billmen. 

Lord Scrope's men have made it to the palisade. They're faced by an artillery piece and some raggedy
archers. Should soon push them out of the way.

On the Grey of Ruthyn wing I've turned everyone round and I'm trying to get to grips with the defenders, but it's a tight fit and I haven't had time to reform the unit that has been penalised with disorder for turning round. 

I've got these archers pinned to the front after they turn to face when I didn't break them, but I've now hit them in the flank again. But they still won't die.

A long shot from this end of the table, showing the traffic jam that is occurring and the lack of cataclysm. 

I have also broken in further down the board, but by sacrificing his archers and holding his billmen and men at arms back Jason can now attack troops disordered by crossing the ditch and palisade. This end needs to develop fairly quickly in order for the Yorkists to triumph, depending on how the morale chip thing works.

We'd played nearly two hours, with a 15 minute discussion with some people visiting the Abbey.

So what do I think about NMTB now I've finally played it?

Well I don't know what all the fuss is about. The card driven activation system makes things a bit random, and would work well in a small scale action - such as the rules were written for. But for a large battle like this, troops moving piecemeal makes little sense. The movement system is simple, and I've already indicated some of my issues with the about facing v wheeling. It's also a bit odd that it takes a whole turn for a combined bow/bill unit to swap places or pass through if moving normally, but a bow unit making an evade can do it in one. Moving archers to the rear is a pretty basic thing for a 15th century English army, so I can't see why it would be harder than evading (unless the evade move caused the supporting troops to become disordered, which it doesn't).

Combat is basic attack dice to hit on 4-6 or 5-6 or 6 depending upon circumstances, then a saving roll based on armour or defences. So pretty much like Neil Thomas and many other rules from the 1960s onwards. There's some fancy bits around the edges, like commanders adding an automatic two hits, and the attackers re-rolling ones, but nothing too radical. Fighting takes place on contact, and in subsequent moves continuing melees are resolved at a random point in the unit card activation sequence.

Morale rules are simple, rolling 2D6, and looking to roll higher than 4 (i.e. 1 in 6 chance), or if you have casualties, higher than the number you've lost. The maths behind this are simple and it works well enough.

As a set of rules to enable you to get toys on the table they work fine. They look like fun for the sort of small actions they were written for (Andy Callan cites Nibley Green in the rule book) and they make sense to me in that context, but for battles this size, no, not my thing. However, lots of people love them, so who am I to quibble? I just don't think they're saying a whole lot about Wars of the Roses warfare. The evidence we have is that once the Earl of March's troops had been helped into the camp by Ruthyn's men it was all over bar the summary executions and looting. The traffic jam that we got didn't do the game any favours. I also said to Jason that in my view, Ruthyn's betrayal whilst not inevitable, was influenced by how committed the Yorkists were. In my boardgame of the battle I did for the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society (available as a pdf here) you get a modifier to the betrayal roll based on how many Yorkist battles have engaged.

However, what is important here is that Jason has set up a visually attractive wargame using easily accessible rules which can engage pretty much anyone who has half a mind to get involved.

And I had a lovely afternoon.