Battle Report - France 1355, Part 3 of 3

Situation end of turn 9. Casualties are beginning to mount for the English side, while 3 French foot men at arms units are advancing in echelon in the center (one is partly obscured behind the hobilar unit on the hill). English shooting continues to be miserable, with a penchant for going low on ammo. French crossbow fire is outdueling the longbows. In the foreground, the English cavalry losses continue to mount, with two of the three units near losing a stand and fragmented as well.


Situation end of turn 10 (below). The calm before the storm. The English have continued to edge backwards to form a better line on the second set of hills, while the French take the opportunity to spend their orders organizing themselves for the final push to come.


Turn 11. The French onslaught. The French, having gotten organized in the prior turn, launch an all out assault all along the line, and in a display of fine dice rolling, have won every melee. The English are being pushed back, the French are following up, and the last couple of uncommited French foot units are coming up in support. With no remaining reserves to speak of, the end has come for the English. Nothing remains but for the Black Prince to order the general retreat and save what he can for another day.


I think the game served its purpose - Dave and Ryan had a good introduction to the rules, and I had the opportunity to work on some of the finer details. There were a number of things I left out for simplicity, some things I flat out did wrong, and some nuances we missed. Most were minor. The bigger ones were:

• I purposely ignored the option of going "Frenzied", which would have helped the French cavalry especially, as irregulars (French knights) can attempt to go frenzied, while trained troops (including English knights) cannot.
• We did Retreats wrong, which is an easy fix, but changed the way some melees worked out. Basically, we got the retreat part right and the pursuit part wrong, which allowed units to get away from being stuck in close combats that they were losing when they likely would not have been able to.
• In a case of bringing baggage along from another rule set, we mistakenly played that units moving more than half cannot shoot. In reality, any amount of movement incurs the same penalty (a +1 die roll modifier) but does not prevent shooting. This would have helped the English throughout the game, as adjusting their lines caused their longbowmen to lose turns of shooting when they shouldn't have.

All in all, a fun game, and has decided for me what my immediate future plans are. More on that in the next post.