NMTBH Gallia - how on earth can the French ever win?

[Captain Blood]

Right, long post coming up – apologies.
(Also containing technical complexities of the Never Mind The Billhooks rules. If the rules don't interest you, feel free to leave right now )

First, I’m a huge disciple of Mr. Callan’s marvellous rules – I even contributed some pictures to the Deluxe edition.
(Which is why I’m posting this here in the civilised cloister of LAF, rather than opening this can of worms on the excellent Billhooks Facebook page).

Having played my first game of Billhooks ‘Gallia’ last night (against fellow LAFer Brunei35), I find myself harbouring disturbingly impure doubts about the efficacy of that variant
 
For anyone that’s played it, how on earth do the HYW French stand any chance against the HYW English? Has anyone yet found a way?

I had a +25% points advantage (per the rules) - 200 French points to 150 English.
I went for a broadly historical French army composition – lots of knights (backed in blocks with light horse), crossbow companies, a company of Men-at-arms (MAA) on foot, and some skirmishers.
The English had mostly veteran archers with stakes, plus some MAA and spear companies. Some were combined into blocks, some in ‘herce’ formation (two longbow companies with a company of MAA or spearmen in the centre), and some lone longbow companies.

The first thing to note is that crossbow companies cost the same points as longbows, but have a shorter range, and can only shoot at half effect after their first volley. They have an unlimited ammunition supply, but in short, stand no chance whatsoever against longbows.

When it comes to melee, veteran longbowmen behind stakes are fairly indestructible against cavalry. Under the melee rules cavalry become disarrayed by attacking across a defended obstacle (stakes) so knights only fight at half strength. Nor do they get to re-roll their charging 1,2,3s if attacking across stakes.

In the unlikely event that the (disarrayed) knights defeat a lone company of archers behind stakes, daunt, and push them back, they’re then obliged to follow up - thereby picking up the two further disarray tokens for crossing stakes, per the movement rules (although you can never have more than two disarray tokens, so doesn't make a lot of sense… )

The longbowmen would also have got one shot off against the knights as they charged in, no doubt reducing their number. (Only one shot? They can get two shots off if they are in ‘herce’ formation and the attackers charge 9” or more – should this not apply equally to lone archers companies / archer blocks?)

Onto the ‘herce’… (It gets worse with a herce )

Knights / MAA HAVE to target enemy knights / MAA as a priority. So if French knights charge an English herce, the knights have to go for the MAA in the middle of the herce - using the 'shimmy sideways as you move forwards' trick to align with the English MAA.
So in the first round, assuming any of the 8 attacking knights have survived the 48 'free' longbow shots (all hitting on a 5+ and re-rolling any 1s, with the knights saving on 4,5,6) they are in a straight fight against the MAA (who unlike their longbowmen, can't have stakes).
 
Let's say (rather optimistically) 4 knights make it through – they’re then rolling 8 dice vs. 18 dice for the English MAA. All hitting and saving on the same stats.
Pretty terrible odds, even with the re-rolls for charging knights.
So they’re very unlikely to win the melee. And if some survive, there’s no second round, because if charging cavalry fail to break or daunt infantry, they must break off and fall back in disarray.

Of course, if the centre of the English herce is formed of spearmen rather than MAA, the French knights could attack one of the longbow companies directly instead.
But all the English spearmen in the herce also fight in the melee if one or other of their flanking longbow companies is attacked.
So, assuming once again that, say, 4 of the 8 knights made it through the 48-shot arrow storm as they charged in, because they're disarrayed by the stakes they have just 4 dice against 18, with no re-rolls.

If it was French MAA on foot attacking the herce and some of them they made it through the arrowstorm into contact with the English MAA in the centre of the herce, and it goes to a second round of melee, then if the English have a leader attached who did NOT fight (i.e. add his free hits) in the first round of melee, then he can order his two longbow flank companies to turn in (using two 45 degree wheels, so no disarray picked up) to enfold the French attackers, adding a further 12 melee dice for the longbowmen. Plus the leader’s free hits - again, terrible odds for the French. (Who are also presumably now fighting with only half a rank having been hit in one or both flanks).

What's my point? Why am I bleating about this? Because all this is an excellent recreation of what happened in history at Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt etc. But as a wargame, the French have next to no chance in any of these situations. Everything is stacked against them. So I'm wondering why anyone would ever build a French army to play that game?

(Unless, of course, you were going to be massively unhistorical and gamey, and the French either a/ sit back with a huge train of artillery and bombard the English lines, hoping their guns don’t blow up, or b/ send in wave after wave of kamikaze skirmishers to force the English to expend all their arrow storms before sending in their knights?)

My suspicion is that unless you give the French a points advantage of about 3:1, the game in this form looks simply unplayable to me.
Or has someone had a different experience / cracked how to play Billhooks Gallia with HYW French?

I remain completely, hopelessly addicted to the original, cunning, beautifully balanced WOTR version of Billhooks. But this variant just feels... off. (Sorry Andy, try not to hate me )

[AndyC]

Yes, that's exactly how it's designed to work in the tactical circumstances you describe. If you choose to set up a game in the same style as Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt - French frontal attacks on fully prepared English - then you are very likely indeed to end up with the same results. As indeed you should, else there would be something very wrong with the rules! So my advice would be to go for different scenarios, where things are a bit more open and fluid, like the two examples in the Gallia chapter or any of the chevauchee-related scenarios described by Simon on pp42-3 of Billhooks deluxe. 
Billhooks is designed for small battles or big skirmishes, but people will insist on also using it for big, set-piece affairs, so we felt obliged to provide rules that cover that sort of thing. But they are not the main focus. 
The lesson for a Billhooks player with a French army should be "Try frontal attacks once and you won't do it again". The historical counterparts took rather longer for the lesson to sink in...

[Wilgut Spleens]

I guess the only other way is to resort to the tactics of the later French armies dismount the knights and use a lot of Gonnes!

I think everything thing you say is correct, I would point out that crossbows do have an armour piercing element that is the bane of men at arms units everywhere!

[Iain R]

From a purely historical view, I suppose that is what would be expected if you're playing an engagement where the English commander has been allowed to deploy his forces in the preferred manner; the trick was to catch them early and not let them trot out their little one-trick pony. If the opposing commander (be they French or Scot) did this, then the English were just as susceptible to a good shoeing as any other mediaeval army (see Otterburn, Bauge, Patay, Sark, etc).

The difficulty, I suppose, comes in recreating this scenario within the bounds of a Billhooks game, with the emphasis on formal field engagements, but there's possibly something you could possibly tweek with deployments orcscenario writing to get round this?

[levied troop]

I think the French usually did have a 3:1 advantage in numbers?  Poitiers might have swung their way as they seemed to have caught the English in terrain where the archers couldn’t be fully deployed. Froissart has the French/English ratio at 6:1 - but Jean’ maths isn’t always reliable.

Agincourt of course has the French plan of the flank attack through the woods that in real life never came off and the initial error by the English in deploying their archers in disadvantageous terrain.  But in general those three battles are a hopeless cause for the French so it sounds like the rules are working ok

[Silent Invader]

From a purely historical view, I suppose that is what would be expected if you're playing an engagement where the English commander has been allowed to deploy his forces in the preferred manner; the trick was to catch them early and not let them trot out their little one-trick pony. If the opposing commander (be they French or Scot) did this, then the English were just as susceptible to a good shoeing as any other mediaeval army (see Otterburn, Bauge, Patay, Sark, etc).

The difficulty, I suppose, comes in recreating this scenario within the bounds of a Billhooks game, with the emphasis on formal field engagements, but there's possibly something you could possibly tweek with deployments orcscenario writing to get round this?

The French firing off a gun to prematurely end the English manoeuvre face might seem a bit gamey but ‘unexpected’ cannon fire is likely to have disrupted best laid plans.

[Captain Blood]

Thanks all (And thanks Andy)

Sounds like for a viable game of Billhooks Gallia using the French, one needs to play a pre-agreed scenario rather than the usual type of open 'encounter' game (which I suspect account for 95% of games of Billhooks Original).
 
Because if you play an open encounter battle against HYW English, the English player is (quite understandably) going to do what the English did, and set up using all the advantages of stakes, herce formations, and veteran longbow power. Further enhanced by the fact that longbows in 'Gallia' are considerably more powerful than in Billhooks Original. Against which, the French player has no answer. Because as you rightly say, this was the historical reality - at least until the tail end of the Hundred Years War.

I guess the heart of this conundrum is that English and Welsh armies in the WOTR were all more or less of a type, using similar formations, tactics, and troop types. Billhooks Original is a finely tuned set of rules designed to reflect that historical reality and facilitate a great, fun, and balanced wargame, which will come down to tactical choices and Lady Luck (dice, cards, etc). As a result, an 'open field' encounter between two broadly similar armies is almost always going to provide a good, enjoyable game, because it could go either way.

Alas, in Billhooks Gallia, applying the same principles inevitably gives a game which is completely imbalanced - because that was the historical reality of the famous set-piece battles of the time: Two armies using radically different troop types and tactics, in which one tactical doctrine came to utterly dominate the other. Reflecting this reality so well, makes open field / encounter battles more or less unplayable as a wargame under 'Gallia'. So scenarios are the only way to go. (That or be deliberately unhistorical and stack your French army - as far as possible - with troop types other than the mounted knights and the crossbowmen who formed the bedrock of French armies of this period).

Well, that's an answer