As promised here is the battle report for my first solo wargame, the battle of St. Omer. I arrived late at the venue because I was waylaid by next doors cat whilst crossing the vast expanse of my back garden and had a moment of deliberation, do I say hello and stroke it under the chin or do I kill it now and put it in the freezer in case Waitrose runs out of food? After lifting the mallet above my head I hesitated, I decided to say hello and perhaps kill it another day, it would be leaner then.
Arriving at the shed I set up the game after which I felt compelled to sit around and waste 45 minutes talking to myself about non related wargames subjects so that the game could start late as is traditionally the case. I had a very intellectual conversation about Corona virus and the virtues of the NHS but as soon as I got onto the subject of nurses and their bed side manner I thought to myself I must degrade this discussion somehow otherwise it wouldn’t seem right, so as the plane nose dived toward the ground I managed to turn the conversation to nurses uniforms, stockings, suspender belts, G Strings, nudity and “Oh matron the screens” before grabbing control of the situation and forcing myself from my comfy chair and my beer to the wargames table with some reluctance.
I’d brought some suitably styled medieval music with me. I nearly chose Clanad but that seemed a bit limp, so I chose AC/DC instead. I mean who wants “Robin the hooded man” when you can have “Ain’t no fun waiting round to be a millionaire” which is historically accurate because it’s what every medieval peasant would have said. However, after putting the first CD into my ancient coal fired, cardboard, rubber band driven CD player I had another compulsion to play air guitar and strut around like Angus Young thus delaying the game by a further 30 minutes. One heart attack and three hernias later I grabbed myself by the scruff and plonking myself down on the not so comfy wargames chair I started the game.
The rules I used were my usual Medieval set, you know the set everybody likes, but with one significant change, the move sequence. I came across an article I’d kept from many years ago hidden away on the dark recesses of the hard drive of my lap top in a folder marked “Wargames rules should there be a Corona virus outbreak”, which is really spooky. It was one from a Solo wargames website and uses a move sequence called “Frequency of Movement Deck” or FMD, which could also stand for Fred, Mike and Derek, but for the purposes of this article it’ll be short for “Frequency of Movement Deck”.
So here’s how it works. Every unit in the army gets a number of cards depending upon what type they are:
Light cavalry units get 3 cards each and are aptly named “Light cavalry”
Close order cavalry units get 2 cards each
Light infantry, Archers, and Crossbows get 2 cards each
Close order infantry get 1 card each
One set is coloured red and the other is coloured blue.
The idea is that you shuffle the cards and draw one card per move allowing a unit of the type drawn to charge, move, or shoot. Melees are simultaneous.
This gives cavalry armies a distinct advantage. In this game the Flemish had an army of 15,000 men all on foot and the French only had an army of 3,000 but with some cavalry, and as you will see below the French had the higher number of cards.
In order to keep the number of cards down you base each pack as though each side has 10 units and then modify this using the FMD factor.
The map on the next page is taken from Jonathan Sumption first book “Trial by Battle” and the gaming table is marked in red, 24” x 56” for those of you who still believe in proper imperial measurements. Now here’s the bit you’ve all been waiting for, Ground scale!! The ground scale for this game was 1” to 30 yds or a 1 mile by ½ a mile table. Now when you look at my photos of the game the roads on my gaming table won’t match those on the map below. This is because I’ve found evidence that the map Mr Sumptiuon used was the one before the St. Omer borough council diverted the left hand road shortly after the battle to avoid a colony of lesser spotted upside down drowning geese and my map shows the road as it was during the battle before the diversion. I think it was this actual battle that made the geese an endangered species because most of them were spit roasted after the battle. Anyway moving on...
From what I’ve read the Flemish army was ill disciplined and most of them didn’t want to be there that’s why a lot of them are D class and Robert of Artois and his subordinates are poor. According to Sumption “Robert was an old man and as a military commander he was brave but incompetent”.
I decided to go with the historic deployment and also the timings for the arrival of the French. The Omer Garrison was first on the scene and if any of you read the link to the article I sent you, you will know that after 4 hours of sitting around and with orders not to attack they took things into their own hands, burst out of the gates and headed towards the Flemish, so they were the first to appear on the table.
I started the game by pulling an FMD card and then I thought, Dice! I know I’ll use red dice for the Flemish and blue for the French, you know what’s coming don’t you. Grabbing hold of my dice jar I poured the contents onto one of my work tops and then to my horror I noticed that there were only two red dice, damn that Newman I thought waving my fist into the air, white dice it is then.
Okay its Picture time.
Meanwhile on the Flemish right flank the Count of Armagnac turns up and with Robert of Artois looking helplessly on he punches his way through a unit of Flemish spearmen chasing them all the way back to the Flemish camp never to be seen again!
It was at this point that I realised that even though the French were having the better of it their army was running out of steam. The Count of Armagnac was away looting, the Duke of Burgundy had at long last met his match in the face of the English and their damned Longbow and had perished as a consequence, and the St. Omer garrison was no more having turned itself into dog meat. The Flemish army had to take a 30% army morale test which they passed with flying colours so that made things even harder for the French.
However, considering that the French were facing 36 Flemish units against their 10 they did pretty well having routed 11 enemy units. For a solo game the Fred, Mike and Derek (FMD) movement system worked really well allowing me to move the units in quick succession and at the same time restricting any God like ability to react to every situation.
If I do the game at the club I will probably use the Rupert PIP (Paul, Ian, Philip) system which again restricts players in their ability to react to everything.
This week I might do Bovines 1214 again but use the historical set up or perhaps play test Bovines 1340, another 100 years war what if battle. The next page shows the battlefield at the end if the game.
