Flashing Steel unit profiles for Italian Wars troops

Note: the full armor/partial armor rules are house rules made up for earlier games I played with FS - they are translated from 17th century half/three quarter armor rules.

I. Cavalry

Gendarme - 94pts

Gendarmes are the heaviest form of Renaissance cavalry, the mounted elite nobility of a kingdom. They prefer the comfort of a camp over going on missions, so they are rare to find in a skirmish.

Q3+ C4 (40)

Cavalry Lance (12)

Dashing (5)

Elite (4)

Full Armor - C+1 when defending against ranged attacks; ignores enemy ‘better weapon’ knock-downs.

Impetus (7)

Mounted (6)

Squire - 53pts

This is a general term for battle cavalry of lesser standing, usually in support of a gendarme or leading a troop of light cavalry.

Q4+ C3 (23)

Impetus (7)

Mounted (6)

Partial Armor - ignores enemy ‘better weapon’ knock-downs. (7)

Sword - other or Pole Arm [short spear] (10)

Jinete - 51pts

Light Spanish horse with nothing for equipment but a quick steed and lots of bravado.

Q4+ C3 (23)

Dashing (5)

Impetus (7)

Mounted (6)

Sword - other or Pole Arm [short spear] (10)

Stradiot or Mounted Crossbowman - 58pts

Mercenary light cavalry, famous for their skirmishing skills.

Q3+ C3 (30)

Mounted (6)

Sword - other or Pole Arm [short spear] (10)

Bow or Crossbow (12)

Reiter - 60pts

Cavalry of lesser standing, drilled the German Imperial way to use pistols, softening up the target before a charge.

Q4+ C3 (23)

Mounted (6)

Partial Armor - ignores enemy ‘better weapon’ knock-downs. (7)

Pistol (10)

Double Pistols (4)

Sword - other (10)

II. Infantry

Crossbowman - 48pts

Rank and file troopers favouring the crossbow instead of matchlock weapons.

Q4+ C3 (23)

Bow or Crossbow (12)

Forester (3)

Sword - other (10) [or just a dagger for a lesser point cost]

Arquebusier - 48pts

Rank and file troopers, well trained in harassing enemy close formations with their firearms.

Q4+ C3 (23)

Forester (3)

Musket Light (12)

Sword - other (10) [or just a dagger for a lesser point cost]

Elite Shooter - 70pts

A veteran soldier skilled in using his firearm.

Q3+ C4 (40)

Ranger/Light infantry (5)

Hawkeye (3)

Musket Light (12)

Sword - other (10)

Halberdier - 48pts

Generic troops armed with pole weapons - the pike being a formation weapon, these should have been discarded for shorter pieces when skirmishing.

Q4+ C3 (23)

Brawler (15)

Pole Arm (10)

Swordsman - 50pts

Armoured front ranker swordsmen favoured by the Spanish, or basically any trained soldier sent on a skirmish mission.

Q3+ C3 (30)

Maximise Weapon (3)

Partial Armor - ignores enemy ‘better weapon’ knock-downs. (7)

Sword - other (10)

Elite Swordsman or Halberdier - 67pts

A valuable veteran melee professional, usually escorting an ensign or a VIP.

Q3+ C4 (40)

Bodyguard (3)

Elite (4)

Partial Armor - ignores enemy ‘better weapon’ knock-downs. (7)

Strong (3)

Two-handed sword (counted as a Pole Arm) or Pole Arm (10)

Foot Knight - 75pts

A nobleman trained to fight on foot, with excellent gear at his disposal.

Q3+ C4 (40)

Duellist (7)

Fearless (3)

Full Armor - C+1 when defending against ranged attacks; ignores enemy ‘better weapon’ knock-downs.

Sword - Rapier (15)

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.

A Cobbled Together Italian Wars Update

In Hungarian we call a person or idea going sideways "writing a tanner's letter", which is a weird expression (it has to do with starting the cursive r letter and ending back up in the same place), but that's what I recently did with my Italian Wars strategic campaign, again.

I started thinking about making a ladder-type area control game and made this map above. Then I thought some more and realized that having multiple factions and armies on the map and keeping track of each (both in size and position) would mean a lot of administrative burden for a single campaign.

So in the end I'll still use the map in one way or another (heck, I just made it), but for the campaign logging part, I'll use... the Succession Wars rules from Maurice. 

That's right. For the 16th century Italian Wars. Sue me.

And there is a clear reason for that. It has victory points, it has army trackers, it has rules for setting up factions. It has it all. It is also a framework that can be transported back in time.

For the actual combat rules I'll just use a heavily modified version of One Hour Wargames, something which I wrote about recently. There is little hassle in setting up troops and it works. My modifications mainly affect the size of units, and including light horse and skirmishing arquebusiers as separate units.

I guess this is the final sentence everyone involved in logistics reaches back to. You don't change a system that works to a new one that doesn't work. And that is the core, also, of all campaigning.

All I have to do now is make a unified version of the modded rules and produce some KiK Block troops for my battles.

Italian Wars - Rethinking and Rebasing

I'm kind of a megalomaniac and this led me to overthink another project. We learn from our mistakes right?

So using 28mm figures my previous ideas about basing and collecting Italian Wars period figures just did not work. The units were too large and unfeasible on the tabletop. This then led me to stall and not get done with anything. I even considered switching to 6mm Baccus figures entirely and abandoning the project, because I just could not progress any further.

Then one evening it struck me that I overdid it again, and I should limit my goals and build my armies slowly, so they are playable at an earlier stage.

So I started rebasing my current figure collection for The Pikeman's Lament or other large scale skirmishes in mind, with six foot or three horse on a 75x50mm base and command as I see fit. 

First I thought about four foot or two horse on a 50x50mm base, but then I could not get six figure foot units, which are part of the PL rules.

Of course I can later expand this, especially the pike blocks, to include more than two bases or 12 pikes in total.

With that I ordered two boxes of Perry Mercenaries, to be used as Swiss pike and French/Italian shot for the same conflict. This would give me a playable force in the foreseeable future. 

The Perry figs may be a bit outdated for the later part of the wars but I'll just overlook that. I've got some Warlord heads and bits to update them a bit, also I can sculpt slashed sleeves with green stuff.

Of course it would have been better to buy some Cossack infantry and finish my - about seventy percent done - Deluge project starting armies, but sometimes you just act on a whim.

Plus I got about twice as many figures for lesser money.

Italian Wars - KiK Block Army

I wrote about using cheap wooden blocks as stand-ins for my WSS/Rákóczi Rebellion armies here.

That project is currently sidelined as I've got some more figures to paint, including SYW types, which sort of fill the need.

Now I've been thinking about finding other uses to the wooden blocks, and I came to the decision that I would glue two blocks together to make them bulkier, and use them for my Italian Wars project. It was rather easy to grab some sprites off Junior General and create various troop types, all I currently need are light cavalry and artillery. The blocks this way are wide enough to show the faction and troop type on the top, so I should be able to colour print the layout of each block in a single piece, then bend it in an U-shape and glue it on.

With these I can easily run the abstract campaign system I devised here on this blog, so I can play a few battles without amassing the 900+ 28mm figures planned for my big Italian Wars project.

Once the Baccus 6mm Italian Wars range gets going, I should be able to purchase some proper figs as well. Or if I win the lottery, I can buy all the Warlord, TAG etc. renaissance figures I need.

Italian Wars rehash

I think my previous campaign idea got off on the wrong footing, and that caused it to stall. I'd rather use a political/narrative method this time instead of a strictly area-based one.

Perhaps each faction could have a central zone and a few border zones, but campaign-wise there should be less emphasis on the battles than the positioning of armies, maintaning fickle alliances and scheming.

So here's my draft for the new campaign idea:

The Italian Wars Campaign

Some time ago I ran an "abstract" kind of campaign called the Formaggian Succession Wars, which was great fun. 

I'm planning something similar with this one, a fictional Italy with fictional factions, but mostly resembling historical Italian city-states and condottieri (and mercenaries as well).

The campaign has some core rules, but the battles are absolutely agnostic, and can be played in any way, until there is a strict conversion ratio of units to each system.

Battles could be played on the tabletop using figures or my Bottle Cap Armies rules, Roll20 or Cossacks.