War of the League of Aspico - The Lessons

 

I fought two battles using my mashup rules of One Hour Wargames and Maurice 'Succession Wars' for the Renaissance Italian theater. I think it is useful to conclude the small campaign with a few end notes.

Campaign

The Fransican alliance won with a landslide, decisively beating both the Alliance of Nibeuno and the Papal States. Their campaign was swift and thus brought to a quick conclusion, but luck played a major part in it.

Now the Fransicans have a foothold on this side of the Alps (see map above) - the only question is, will the bickering Italian factions unite to oust them, or do they remain with their age old custom of stabbing each other in the back instead?

What I should do next is 'recruit' a few more armies - Venetian (Contatre), Spanish, Imperial - and maybe, just maybe increase army sizes to eight units per side. Thus a new day shall dawn on the First Truly Great Italian War, maybe triggered by the succession of a weak ruler on the throne of Matedicao.

Succession Wars rules

Simply put, these work great. You basically match up fighting pairs, give point results at the end of the battle, administer the losses in the army, and you are done. Simple and elegant, with a lot of thought put into the design. I don't think I will change anything.

Battle rules

I sort of made a mistake with reducing unit hit points compared to OHWG's original. This means units get destroyed very quickly. Of course this way a battle ends faster, which is a good think for solo games; on the other hand, I would like my units to be a bit more resilient.

So I think I'll add a supplementary mechanism where each unit has a rally score to meet. Hits made against the unit during the turn are added temporarily, and when every fight is concluded, the unit will be able to rally some hits off, rolling a die for each score, and calculate permanent damage. This also means that a unit which has a potential chance to be destroyed can still be activated and remains a threat during its turn. 

If that does not work, I'll keep adding hit points until a satisfactory result is found.