Why are 20 Blokes Fighting?

[Hupp n at em]

At one point I was planning to do a medieval skirmish project with this basic approach, centered on the Teutonic Knights in and around northeastern Europe. One of the "warbands"/leagues would be agents of the Teutonic Order (knights and retainers, and maybe a few priestly/scholastic types) pursuing the more delicate interests of the order, and the other warbands/leagues would represent similar groupings from the various other political, "national", cultural or ethnic factions with whom the order had dealings, both Germanic and Eastern European.

I might just revive that project, now I think about it

From what I read for my Crusades class in college (myself and another student were responsible for researching the Teutonic order), their occupation of Livonia and the Baltics would be ripe for these sort of small games.  It really sounded like the Wild West, or the Normans in Wales: hostile country, numerous castles/forts necessary to actually control any land, which of course was the deep dark woods of the Baltics.  Ample opportunity for supply train/tax collecting/ambush scenarios I would think. 

[Momotaro]

Pikes, Muskets and Flouncy Shirts

The English Civil War (specifically the first one) had relatively few big battles, and many much smaller engagements that took place at a local level.  Squire against squire, village against village, father against son.  Local militia bands were called Clubmen, and they defended their villages against all-comers, not just other locals but also the armies as they swept through the area looking for food, recruits and the enemy.

You can play a straight fight, or a small campaign through the war, but many kinds of scenario lend themselves to a game like this.  Deliver the McGuffin (a letter, a prisoner), foraging (or driving off the foragers), stealing gunpowder or other supplies, sabotaging cannon, assassination of a local personality, an escape, a pursuit in the aftermath of a bigger battle.

Search for the account of a lady called Brilliana Harley, who held Brampton Bryan Castle with a token force against a hostile locale while her husband was off fighting.  If you're in Britain, your own local libraries and museums should have information on events from the Civil War.

Local bands may be armed poorly, or you may have a force of more experienced troopers.  At this scale, we're talking about horse and infantry with musket all the way down to locals armed with farm implements and harsh language.  Pikes, if they were used at all in small skirmishes, were often cut down to demi-pike for e.g. sieges.  The quality of equipment is usually poor - musketmen preferred to use their gun as a club rather than trust the cheap swords they were issued with, and gunpowder supplies were of low quality and irregular throughout the first Civil War.

[Momotaro]

And another one!

Pikes, Muskets and Flouncy Shirts

The Border Reivers  Quite a famous one, and perfectly suited for anything from a small raid up to a significant battle.  Basically, the borderlands between the kingdoms of Scotland and England were a lawless place up until the Stuart unification of the two countries.  Much of the land is upland "moss" - trackless, uninhabited peat bog that makes raiding at once hard to track and hard to co-ordinate.  The great local families squabbled with each other both on their own side and across the border.  To make matters worse, the families were often closely tied to one another in a complex web of marriage and feuds, and they resented outside interference.  Areas like Redesdale (between Jedburgh and Newcastle) and Liddesdale (from Hawick to Carlisle) were virtual no-go areas for long periods.

The border "March Wardens" were set up to police the borders by the two countries, three on each side.  They were sometimes from local families (in which case they were as likely to take part in a raid as stop one), or outside political appointees (some worked and fought hard and effectively, others were simply overwhelmed by the complexity and violence).

The basics are simple - cattle raids across the border by lightly armed and armoured men, riding small but sure-footed border ponies and armed with sword, bow, lance and pistol.  Armour could be as rich as a breast/backplate and morion helmet, but many wore the cheaper (and lighter and quieter) "jak o' plaite", a brigandine made of slivers of metal or horn sewn into a padded jacket.  Don't be fooled, they were more than simple thugs (although that too).  In Elizabethan times (the height of the Reiver "romance"), the English Border Light Horse were amongst the finest "pricker" horsemen in Europe.  Eyewitness accounts tell of riders spearing fish with their lances from horseback.

Legal practice was to assemble a posse to follow the thieves "hot trod", denoted by a horseman with a burning sod of peat on his lance.  It was not uncommon for the attackers to leave an ambush in place for the posse - experienced local constables knew to expect trouble if the attackers went back the way they had arrived.  Any thief caught could expect to be hanged, so these skirmishes were lethal affairs.

In reality, the romance is somewhat tarnished - anything of any value was worth taking, raiders often murdered and settled feuds without scruple, and one record tells of a widow who had her linen stolen!  "Blackmail" was the Border version of the protection racket.

Defences developed over time - the stout Border Peel (or Pele) Tower is most famous.  I believe Warbases makes one, although it's a good basic modelling project.  Many people lived in simple stone-and-sod huts with their livestock, simply because they expected to have to flee into the night at a moment's notice and return to nothing.  Stronger settlements developed "bastle houses" - fortified stone farmhouses with small windows and overlapping fields of fire across the village.  Doors were reinforced and accessed on the upper levels, and even the roof tiles were locked in place with pieces of sheep bone to stop them being prised off.  Examples of bastles and peels can still be found across the Borders, from still-inhabited homes to the many ruins open to the sky.

Scenarios - the simple raid, pursuit under the threat of ambush, extraction of a herd of livestock under pursuit (could be an interesting extended set of scenarios for both raider and defender).  Would be perfect for a small scenario with a handful of troops (foot and mounted) on each side.  Some raiders took over a Pele tower for the campaign season (in one case rushing the servants while the master was out raiding someone else in another, threatening the owners with a stolen cannon).  Great feuds developed, sometimes erupting into open warfare between gangs in the hundreds or even thousands, and could be an interesting campaign.

One of the most famous Reiver escapades is the liberation of "Kinmont Willie" Armstrong from Carlisle Castle.  His rescuers rode across the border carrying ladders, scaled the city walls, broke into the castle (probably with help) and vanished into the night with the fugitive.

The Unification of the Kingdoms was followed by a period of brutal repression - the lawless lands were now in the heart of James I's domain, and many of the bigger landowners, themselves among the worst of the thieves, gladly turned on their own people for land and honours.  During the later Civil Wars, however, many thieves, deserters and Covenanters ended up in the Border hills as "Moss Troopers" - landless, rootless brigands eking out a miserable existence on the run from death or deportation.

Dux Britanniarum could be used with little modification.

[Jagannath]

Thank you - these are really fantastic contributions.

Added.

[Rhoderic]

From what I read for my Crusades class in college (myself and another student were responsible for researching the Teutonic order), their occupation of Livonia and the Baltics would be ripe for these sort of small games.  It really sounded like the Wild West, or the Normans in Wales: hostile country, numerous castles/forts necessary to actually control any land, which of course was the deep dark woods of the Baltics.  Ample opportunity for supply train/tax collecting/ambush scenarios I would think. 

That's very encouraging to hear!

Although, I like to think that, much like in the Wild West, it wasn't all about straight-up hostile tribes all of the time. Politics, diplomacy, trade relations, alliances, inter-factional maneuverings within various groupings, and other things of that sort could lead to all sorts of intrigues of the sort that make up adventure stories. Plenty of scope for skirmish-level conflicts there, too.

[Hupp n at em]

That's very encouraging to hear!

Although, I like to think that, much like in the Wild West, it wasn't all about straight-up hostile tribes all of the time. Politics, diplomacy, trade relations, alliances, inter-factional maneuverings within various groupings, and other things of that sort could lead to all sorts of intrigues of the sort that make up adventure stories. Plenty of scope for skirmish-level conflicts there, too.

No, you are absolutely right, it wasn't all fighting all the time. Some interesting collaborationist vs. rebel Balts and games of that nature should be in the mix too. 

[beefcake]

Gold Rush claim jumpers could fit into many different categories Wild West, Colonial adventures. A group defending their patch whille others try to take it. Some group tries to steal the gold off the other groups.

[Rhoderic]

Completely OT, but reading my previous post a day later, I wonder how I'd failed to notice I'd used the word "sort" 3 times over a sequence of 11 words!

[Hupp n at em]

Completely OT, but reading my previous post a day later, I wonder how I'd failed to notice I'd used the word "sort" 3 times over a sequence of 11 words!

  It happens to all of us!

[Elbows]

Completely OT, but reading my previous post a day later, I wonder how I'd failed to notice I'd used the word "sort" 3 times over a sequence of 11 words!

That you even noticed that you did that is odd considering that is not what you set out to do when you originally wrote that.

 

[LeadAsbestos]

I hate threads like this: Now I'm going to buy some Border Reivers!
 

[Momotaro]

Two books worth reading:

The Steel Bonnets by George MacDonald Fraser

The Reivers by Alistair Moffat.  His book The Borders is also worth a read if you have a penchant for desolate hellholes...

There are tons of good books on life in Tudor/Elizabethan England, I like this one:

The Tudor Age by Jasper Ridley

The Osprey is... OK - decent without being exceptional.  Other Tudor/Elizabethan/Armada Ospreys help flesh out the period.

[shandy]

Inspiring thread… 

During the Wars of the Roses, when the Earl of Warwick visited Westminster one time, he passed through the kitchens and a scullion seems to have bumped into him with a spit. His retainers immediately rushed the scullion, who in turn was defended by his mates, so a kitchen fight broke out. The royal guard joined the fray, but was overcome by Warwick's men.

I always wanted to stage that game - building a kitchen would be great fun, and the game could involve three or four players, each with different objectives.

Also, in a very old issue of Miniatures Wargames, there was a brilliant scenario that revolved around a plot to free Napoleon from St. Helena. It provided opportunity to play for half a dozen players, with diverse factions having diverse goals… not only British and French, but also locals, an American privateer and others I ca't remember now… I'll have to look for the article.

[jon_1066]

What about this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Castle_Itter

Slightly more than 20 blokes but what other scenario could you have Reynauld, Daladier, Weygand, Gamelin, a tennis ace and Charles de Gauls sister fighting alongside 14 Americans, 12 German Whermacht, a Sherman Tank and a member of the Austrian resistance on a bicycle?

[Hobbit]

Some time ago I came up with a system to generate small scale scenarios for WW1 action. Each side would draw a random mission with it's own victory conditions. Of course, it was written on a scrap of paper that has long since disappeared.

Off the top of my head the missions included such things as; checking wire/replacing wire/repairing wire, a raid for prisoners, a raid to KO an MG position (or forward gun position), escorting an observer into no man's land, extending a forward sap, stopping the other side from extending a forward sap, hunting for a sniper in no man's land, recovering MGs from a downed aircraft or KOed AFV, or a simple fighting patrol. The basic premise was that any of the above would take place at night, would use hidden movement and include random events like some idiot sending up a star shell when no one was expecting it.

I've found that most personal memoirs are filled with little incidents that don't make it into the official or large scale histories but would make excellent skirmish games.