A small piece of Swiss 'diplomacy'

   I managed to grab a few hours to myself this morning to get a quick game in so decided it would be a good idea to test one of the rule sets I am planning to use for my Swiss Burgundian wars project. The rules in question being:

Ancient and medieval wargaming by Neil Thomas.

 Having played and enjoyed his One hour Wargame rules i decided to pick up a copy.  The rules seem pretty simple (not One hour simple but still) which suits me as one thing that I find puts me off games these days is needlessly complex systems. They also seem to be very customizable with each unit only needing a few pieces of information to make them work ( their type, armour and morale level) along with a few simple special rules go give them flavour. So I decided to get the table set up and chuck some units together to give the rules a try.

  In the rules forces are made up of 8 units chosen from a set list, I had enough painted units for four a side. Also in the rules you win by reducing the enemy to two units, I decided that I would play until one side was completely wiped out.

A valley on the Swiss border about to get far less peaceful.

Swiss pike march onto the valley.

Swiss crossbow swing around the left to support the pike.

  A bevy of Burgundians stand in their way.

The Burgundians push their archers forward and form up the pike.

The Swiss advance. One of the Swiss special rules is that they have to advance at full speed and always engage the enemy if able.

The Swiss van take heavy damage from the Burgundian longbows and artillery.

Speaking of artillery, in the rules they roll 1d6 attacks each time they fire. However if they roll a 1 they explode and are destroyed. Guess what happened...

The Swiss crash into contact.

Crossbow continue to pour shots into the Burgundian line.

With the archers minced the pike clash.

Which goes the way you would expect!. 

Before long the writing is on the wall for anyone present that happens to not be Swiss!.

The rules play really nicely. I have to admit the Burgundians had little chance once the cannon blew up as it had caused plenty of damage before that and the rest of the force was heavily outmatched. I think once I have painted up their Gendarmes they may stand more of a chance. Combat was nice and 'crunchy', units would stand long enough for it to feel right without dragging on. Artillery is fairly random in effect having a random number of shots which feels right to me for the period as it was pretty new at the time. All in all a nice simple set with plenty of period flavour. It does exactly what a lot of bigger pricier rule systems do with a fraction of the faff. 

...'till next time...