Winter of Discontent. Part three. For, Lords, To-morrow is a Busy Day

For, Lords, To-morrow is a Busy Day

For this test I used the same scenario, the Battle of Newark, as I used for the Tree of Battles game. This immediately highlighted a key difference between the two rulesets; ‘To-morrow is a Busy Day’ doesn’t really translate very well to scenarios. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly doable but a large proportion of the rules are dedicated to generating pick-up games. It’s a very innovative system but it is a bit quirky. Under most other rules systems the size and composition of your army will no doubt influence your deployment and tactics in the game. However, in ‘To-morrow is a Busy Day’, it is the other way around. You have a number of ‘strategy cards’ from which you select your preferred plan. The chosen card will have not only a prescribed deployment but an army composition on it. This will tell you the number and type of contingents that you have plus how they are divided into battles. After that you then dice to see the size of your individual contingents.

For this game I would have to miss out all the strategy card element and just use the same number and type of contingents as the last battle. I did however dice for the size of the contingents. There are three sizes of battles catered for, each differing only in the size of the contingents used. These are designated as Hastily Raised, Full Array and Epic Host. Typical contingent sizes, in terms of the number of bases, are 5 to 7, 8 to 11 and 11 to 16 respectively. I chose the Hastily Raised option as being more in line with the original scenario.

Another difference is in the number of leaders employed; in ‘To-morrow is a Busy Day’, the number of available leaders is randomly generated and the leaders of the battles are chosen from these. As I was only deploying 2 battles, rather than the traditional three, I only used 2/3 of the dice generated leaders, giving 3 leaders each. Fortuitously, the Yorkists diced up King Edward and the Duke of Gloucester, as per the original scenario, but this time they were joined by Norfolk. For the Lancastrians I diced up: Somerset, Clifford and Oxford. The rules place the leaders in order of seniority, so this time the 2 Lancastrian Battles would be led by Somerset and Clifford.

Now the armies were all set it was time to deploy. If playing against an opponent, deployment is carried out by each player alternately placing a battle. Battles start in bow range of the enemy, which is defined as 3 or 4 handspans! There is no indication of what you do with the leaders at this stage, so I simply attached them to contingents in their own battle.

The armies deploy

After deployment you now determine the ‘Combat Effectiveness’ of each contingent by rolling an average die. Combat Effectiveness is something of a misnomer as it doesn’t seem to affect either shooting or melee. However, it is an indication of morale; if it reaches 1 the contingent cannot advance and if it falls to zero then the contingent flees.

Its now that the rules get surprisingly vague. After a relatively detailed explanation of how to generate battles, lasting several pages, there is no real guide on how to actually play the game. There is a section headed ‘Turn Sequence’ that is noteworthy for not actually describing a turn sequence at all. All I could infer from this section is that there would be an archery duel until one side decided to attack and close combat would then follow. I’m not at all sure how you’re meant to do this; alternately by battle as in the deployment phase, simultaneously or alternate in an IGOUGO fashion? In the end I just decided the order in which each battle would take its turn by a random die roll.

So it’s on to the shooting phase. Each contingent containing missile troops has four good shots before it runs low on arrows and can shoot twice per turn. Hence, I decided to take two turns of shooting before attacking with the Yorkists. As troops start the game in bow range there is no measuring and the shooting procedure is quite straight forward. You roll a D10, add a few modifiers and then read off the result from a chart. Results are given with a colourful descriptor such as visible damage, enemy hurt badly or withering fire. In game terms this can result in the enemy losing a base or losing a point of combat effectiveness. A good shot can also give you a +1 modifier on your next shot. Conversely a bad shot can give you a negative modifier. 

The end of the archery duel

So after 2 turns of shooting the Lancastrians had come off worst with several contingents dangerously low on Combat Effectiveness (CE). By contrast some of the Yorkist contingents had actually gone up in CE. As both sides were now low on arrows it was time for the Yorkists to attack. The attacking side normally has to endure 2 shots as it closes in – one at effective range and one at point blank. However, with a -3 modifier for being low on arrows this was not likely to be effective. Moving into combat was simple as there aren’t any movement rules as such, instead you just move them into contact. 

The Yorkists attack - King Edward in reserve

 Combat is similar to shooting, i.e. a D10 plus modifiers. However, this time leaders can choose to lead from the front and add their leadership value to the total. Again combat results are given with a descriptor such as gaining upper hand, enemy pushed back or enemy faltering. The actual game effect of these various combat results is similar to archery with a range of fleeing bases, decreases in combat effectiveness or modifiers to the next round of combat.

On the Yorkist right flank the mercenaries were quite effective due to a +3 modifier for pikes at first contact plus an extra +1 for supported by handgunners. This resulted in them pushing the Lancastrians back up the hill.

On the opposite flank, the Lancastrian contingent led by Clifford was down to a CE of 1. A good attack from Norfolk saw this drop to zero and the contingent routed. Combat effectiveness is also affected by seeing adjacent friends flee so the neighbouring contingent dropped 2CE and also routed. Both victorious Yorkist contingents were forced to pursue – also leaving the field. However, they did still have the mercenary pike on the field plus King Edwards contingent in reserve.

However, I decided to leave it there as the Lancastrians only had one remaining contingent and that was down to a CE of one.

Endgame - the Lancastrians flee

In summary the battle only lasted for 3 turns and two of those were archery. With no measurement involved it was all very quick. Granted this was a very small encounter with 3 or 4 contingents aside as opposed to the more typical 10. However, I’m not convinced that more contingents would have made much difference. Perhaps I need to try a bigger game? The rules also imply that more stands in a contingent makes them more resilient however as the size doesn’t alter the combat effectiveness I don’t see how this works. Perhaps I’m missing something.

The verdict – the jury’s out on this one; more testing needed I think. However, my gut feeling is that there are some very innovative ideas but it doesn’t quite work. The lack of movement rules, in particular, would seem to prevent using them for anything other than a stylised head on fight. On the plus side I can see how these would be great for solo play where it’s really the narrative that counts. Conversely, I think they’re altogether a bit vague for playing against an opponent.