Renaissance Wargaming

Wow - this was (and I guess still is) one of my favorite periods in history.  Historians (as with most things) quibble over when the Renaissance should be placed (I think it goes well with the dried flowers on the mantle, but I never could decorate properly).  And of course there is some concern over the Northern vs. the Southern renaissance.  However, in painfully broad terms, this refers to the time of transition from the Medieval World to the Age of Enlightenment.  Warfare is characterized by a re-ascendancy of infantry over other arms; a rapid improvement in the worth and effectiveness of firearms; and causes for fighting that coalesce around modern ideas such as nuance in religious identity and nationalism.  In other words, Tercios, Pike & Shot, Roundheads, Sakers and Demi-Sakers, and all that other fun jazz.


There is a website making available a great series of articles from Airfix magazine that were all written by the most excellent wargamer, George Gush.  For those who don't know about George Gush, he is the author of several old-school sets of rules that continue to be played quite popularly.  One of those was the WRG set on Renaissance Warfare.  From the WRG Historical Archives

"In June 1976, a set of War Games Rules for the period 1490-1660 written by George Gush was published and this was followed in April 1978 by a slim book of 41 Army Lists. In 1979, the second edition was published and followed in March 1984 by a much thicker book of Army Lists which now included 90 armies. Since George now owns the copyright, no pdf version is included here."

George Gush's most excellent rules for 1490-1660

Okay, back to the articles.  These were published in the 1970s by Airfix Magazine, and other than a short introduction to the period (Part 1), there are sections on Infantry weapons and Tactics, Artillery, and Cavalry.  Then a whole series of different national army articles.  Very nice.  here is a list of the articles.

• Part 1: Introduction
  
• Part 2: Infantry weapons and organisation
  
• Part 3: infantry missile weapons
  
• Part 4: The artillery
  
• Part 5: Cavalry weapons and organisation
  
• Part 6: Henry VIII's army
  
• Part 7: Irish army of the 16th Century
  
• Part 8: The Universal Soldier
  
• Part 9: Swiss
  
• Parts 10 & 11: The Turks
  
• Part 12: The Scots
  
• Part 13: the Polish Army
  
• Parts 14 & 15: Spanish
  
• Part 16: The French
  
• Part 17: the Imperialists
  
• Part 18: Persians and other easterners
  
• Part 19: the Dutch army
  
• Parts 20 & 21: the Swedish army
  
• Parts 22 & 23: the Muscovites
  

The website follows up with some links to other articles that Gush wrote, concerning Renaissance military concerns (from a website called My Armoury that features absolutely fabulous articles on military history as well as sword crafting).

This is mother's milk for a wargamer, and interesting for those of us with an interest in Military History in general.

Now if only Richard Borg would do Commands & Colors: Pike & Shot!

(please don't take this too seriously, it is meant as a joke - and wishful thinking)

Tags: renaissance, pike and shot, miniatures, wargaming, boardgames, military history

Blocks of War II: Wizard Kings

The second block game to get the "Gaming With Chuck" treatment, is Columbia Games' excellent fantasy wargame, Wizard Kings.

Classic Orcs/Elves matchup, right out of the box

This is a terrific design, from 2000, following on the 1998 release of Victory: The Blocks of War. In both cases, the game itself is sort of a "game kit" in that it gives you some maps (which are geomorphic), a pair of generic armies, and some rules. The games themselves are actually scenarios that use some subset of the bits that come in the box. The scenario can be as simple as "Each side chooses 100G of pieces, and come on the map from opposite sides. The last man standing wins". Not very exciting, but certainly a scenario. Now with the same pieces, a totally separate scenario can be played next time - very cool indeed (although this is true of almost all scenario based games).

The base game comes with four maps (in the first edition, maps numbered 1 through 4 - there are 8 more maps available from Columbia Games as add-ons, and there are four more numbered 13-16 in the second edition box set). An impressive variety of terrain types are represented on the maps, and all sorts of terrain configurations become available.

At the beginning of the match, players select their armies based on a Gold Piece (point) value. As with Hellenes, this is a classic Columbia style design, where the blocks take hits over time. When "purchasing" a unit for a scenario, therefore, each successive level of the unit must be bought (up to the block's maximum, usually three or four). The blocks are then placed on the board, in the cities on your side of the map if playing the basic scenario, and the game starts.

There are seven different armies available for play. This has changed between editions, but with the first edition of the game (which I own) the armies were Elves and Orcs (both came with the box set); Dwarves; Amazons; Norsemen; Undead; and Beastmen known as the Ferkin (more like Pigmen than Beastmen). Each army has a unique set of unit types, but all involve a wizard, as well as an assortment of other unit types.  In the second edition, the Ferkin are replaced with a generic Human Medieval army.  The other big differences between the two editions are in how additional armies are acquired.  In the first edition, the game came with complete Orc and Elf armies.  You could purchase the other five armies, each separately, for a couple of bucks each.  With the second edition, you get a handful of blocks in the main set for each army, and you purchase reinforcement packs which come with random new blocks and stickers, enough for some in each army.  With the second edition, you automatically get some blocks for each army whether you like it or not (who wouldn't?).  There were also Chaos Mercenary sets (which included a bunch of monster, and enough blocks to assign four to each of the seven main armies), and the Were-Creatures set, which added optional rules to use phases of the moon to enhance/limit Were Creatures, and another set of four blocks and stickers for each of the seven Races/Armies.  The third big difference between the sets are the maps - the first edition comes with maps 1-4.  The second edition comes with maps 13-16.

Multi-player game in progress

The game plays very well, and the pacing and advancement of the game are fun, if sometimes a bit slow. When playing the standard scenario, which is simple conquest of the cities belonging to your opponent, the game can devolve into a big slugathon. But when playing any of the multitude of scenarios available (or making some up) the game becomes much more interesting.

Other than Magic, which is represented by a list of spells that your wizard can cast (each army is different, which gives good variety and more "feel" to the individual armies), the tactical combat rules are similar to other block games. Each unit has an initiative rating, and a combat ability rating. The initiative is a letter which gives general order for the blocks (lettered, 'A', 'B' and 'C'). Then the combat ability is a number, below which a dice rolled for that unit will score. Unlike Hellenes, there is no card play (although on the excellent support fansite, Wizard Kings Wiki, there is a variant that used cards very similar to how they appear in Hammer of the Scots - a variant that continues to intrigue me), there is no route capability in combat. Other than scenario specific, cities do not need to be besieged.

The game is fun, interesting (if you like fantasy), ripe for scenario development, and suitable for multi-player play (which is great, if you want something more than a typical 2 player wargame). Recommended, and a great block game.

After some movement and combat, it is then time to reconstitute.  In most scenarios this means that you now have Gold Pieces (points) in order to either add to reduced levels of blocks out there, or to buy new blocks (and maybe enhance them up a few levels).

I played a couple of rounds lately with my daughter, and she had a great time.  She then helped me set up my next game of WK, and picked Orcs vs. the Undead.  An uppity Necromancer wanted to take over the land of the Goblinoid hordes.  It was a good game - the cheap easily replaced Orc Army light infantry kept coming back after a slaughter, whereas many of the units in the Undead Army are quite expensive, so even when they did return from the dead, it took a couple of turns to build up their strength.

Tags: wargames