Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Crecy AAR
Mark Boone and I played out the Battle of Crécy using Rob Markham's The Black Prince. The English hold a ridge, their right flank anchored by an impassable river, their left resting on high ground. There's no scope for clever maneuvering; the English stand in place, French line up opposite and charge. English longbows cause casualties and morale checks, and the French line is disorganized; some squadrons keep charging, some fall back. Some French make it to the stakes; a few even make it through the stakes, scattering the archers. And then...the archers easily reform and resume shooting with full effect at the French. Apparently they hauled their barrels of arrows with them while running for their lives from the marauding heavy cavalry? We were left with three isolated French squadrons, out of about 25, still fighting, while the rest of the survivors tried to reform. There may be a way for the French to win this one but I don't see it; the combat tables as given make melee basically ineffective. Not recommended.
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4 comments:
"Not Recommended"
I believe that was what the French said after this battle too.
I wouldn't mind the French losing because they made the historical mistakes; but if they lose because the game is rigged against them, it's annoying. It's supposed to be at least somewhat historically accurate, not "Longbowmen Of Dooooooom!"
Rob Markham sounds like an English name. See a pattern? :)
Seriously, I find battles interesting, but some would be no fun as a game. Much of WW1, for instance, as well as a few other really nasty boring slaughters in history.
A good *game* requires the player to have options as to tactics and deployments and to have a chance of victory, if only in a VP sense rather than in a scenario sense.
I enjoy scenarios that you can never win (as a fight) as long as you can win them as a game (via VP rules) and as long as you have some options as to how to fight them.
I find most historical games too constraining that way - no ingenuity or inventiveness is really even desirable from players.
For instance, in Napoleon's day, the British recruited cavalry officers who were tall, handsome, decent horsemen, and could behave at polite events like mess dinners. Beyond that, good breeding and an ability to know when to shut up (when your senior or social better was speaking). In short, no junior officer was advised to show any sort of initiative or independent thought.
I much prefer the modern era where officers and NCOs are assumed to be well trained, competent, and capable of significant latitude. That lets you use more of your brain and less of a handful of dice.
I'm okay with fighting a losing battle, as long as it's historically accurate, I have some significant choices to make, and there's a reasonable chance for me to do better than the historical general. I don't think any of those applied to this game. In contrast, I had a lot of fun re-fighting Trafalgar on the Franco-Spanish side, and we won by comparison with Villeneuve.
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