Field of Glory Renaissance

     My Christmas gift to myself was Field of Glory Renaissance, a set of wargame rules for miniatures by Slitherine and Osprey Publishing. The book itself is a professionally laid out hardback, over 200 pages of glossy paper and with lots of photos; this is one of the rare cases where I feel a wargaming book was priced too low. I was a bit worried because one of the authors had also been involved in De Bellis Antiquitas, and that has a famously difficult writing style; however, the writing in this book is pretty clear, and there are plenty of diagrams. I used to play DBA and its sisters De Bellis Multitudinas and Hordes of the Things and they're deservedly popular. The nice thing about DBA was that once you understood it, you could fit everything you needed to play it on a page or two. There are a few things about them that bother me, though, including the rigid formations, the difficulty in having the rear ranks come forward to fill gaps, and the lack of a countercharge ability. I suspect the FoG R quick reference sheet will be longer than DBA's, but I believe it will be more realistic in the areas where DBA fails.

     The book comes with four army lists: French and Imperial from the Italian Wars of the mid 16^th Century, and Royalist and New Model Army from the English Civil War. These are fairly simple armies; I expect the army books would add plenty of extra options, allies, and such. The appendix lists point costs for units, qualities and capabilities; it's not very clear how you put the factors together for the final cost, but the Slitherine forum has a downloadable spreadsheet.

     I haven't played a game with it yet, but I'll do that soon and provide an AAR.