Hello everyone! Sorry I've been so quiet for so long. Just had an email from Richard Naylor, asking me if I was ill or just busy, which prompted me to dash off this quick update.
After almost three years solid painting and what must be a couple of thousand finished figures (I'm not going to try to count them!), I'm a bit tired of painting. I need a break. I'm sure I'll come back to it - I always do - but I need a break, and to do something different. The question is what?
Right now, I'm working on some (very simple) terrain boards for the demo I'm putting on at Partizan in May. I don't have enough storage space for the conventional polystyrene boards, but thanks to Mick from Curtey's Miniatures, I'm having a god at some really thin ones - from 3mm MDF. The only 'problem' is a propensity to warp (which doesn't come as a surprise), though this can be counteracted, so my first 'experimental' board shows, by treating each side the same way, and allowing them to dry in between. The actually turn out remarkably flat. The only trouble is that you have to wait 24 hours or so for one side to dry, then turn over, 'treat' the other side, and then wait 24 hours... And so on. If anyone ever tells you that watching paint dry would be more interesting than watching cricket... Believe me when I tell you they ain't telling the truth!!!
My rules, AVGVSTVS to AVRELIAN, have reached a sort of Impasse - waiting on Rich Clarke and I to finish our (slightly awkward) on-line game. We're both busy, so progress is glacial. And then, doubtless, there'll be questions, answers, corrections, improvements, etc. All of which are probably a good thing, but I want to get on and get them out there!!!!
I've been thinking about medieval warfare, and why none of the current crop of ancient/medieval rules seem to 'work' particularly well. I think I may be reaching some tentative conclusions. Firstly, the rules we have are predicated upon the necessity for battlefield manoeuvre as the main means of gaining an advantage. Naturally people playing medieval wargames tend to play the games within the rules, with lots of manoeuvre, with the result that the games don't really resemble medieval battles very much.
I'm thinking here about 'early medieval' (i.e. what we'd have called the Dark Ages) and 'Late' medieval (i.e. Wars of the Roses etc.), rather than high medieval, or the Crusades, where things seem to have been more fluid and 'interesting' from a manoeuvre point of view - perhaps because of the nature of the enemy, and because early and late are when the foot-soldier reigned supreme, as opposed to the middle, when it seems to be largely about the mounted knight.
Manoeuvre to gain advantage was not a feature of EM warfare at all - what counted, in leadership terms, was who could win the 'toe-to-toe' struggle between the shieldwalls - so leadership/generalship had a whole different set of requirements - the ability to fight, and to inspire those around you to fight being paramount.
Late medieval warfare isn't much different - there could be a little manoeuvre, but it seems to me that often any manoeuvre that did happen was largely trying to correct an error in deployment of one of the three 'wards' or 'battles' - very rarely, one of these errors might result in a battle attacking the flank of another, but I don't think it was often deliberate. Again, largely what counts is how the leaders act once push comes to shove.