TINKERING WITH BLOOD AND HORSE DROPPINGS

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Firelock Games 'Blood and.....' skirmish rules system (Blood and Plunder, Blood and Steel, Blood and Valor, and the upcoming Blood and Crowns), however, despite the name this ruleset is not from that stable. No, rather 'Blood and Horse Droppings' a big battle game for The Hundred Years War plus the Wars of the Roses, by Robert Jones.

The author is both a medieval historian and a wargamer, so I was keen to see his take on period warfare.

The rules are free and can be downloaded from here: Blood and Horse Droppings — Historian in Harness - probably best not to google blood and horse droppings, unless you're of a veterinary bent!

The introduction to the rules lay out the author's take on the period, most of which I totally agree with, so the rules tick a lot of boxes for me.

Unlike most rules of the period,  the basic unit is the 'company', which consists of mixed archers, billmen and men-at-arms. No separate units of single troop types here. (A shout out to my favourite WOTR rules here, Bloody Barons, that have the same mechanic).

So this gave me an opportunity to get my 10mm WOTR collection on the table.  All companies have the same footprint with a recommended ratio of 3:2 for frontage to depth. So six of my Bloody Barons bases in two ranks are perfect.

My Bloody Barons units are 8 bases, so this leaves me plenty of spare bases to create even more units. Hence, very large battles are a possibility, although, the suggested army lists use a standard 12 units per side.

Warwick's company with archers to the fore.

Warwick and Percy have at it.

For my test games I stuck with 12 units per side but randomised the armies a bit by using the noble cards from the board game Kingmaker. The leaders, for each side, are determined by the ranks of the respective cards - so Dukes outrank Earls, which in turn outrank untitled nobles. I also used the corresponding game counter to identify the units.

I also took the Noble's characteristics from the Perfect Captain's 'A Crown of Paper' rules, which I attached to the appropriate cards.

Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire's company.

Another benefit of the cards was that I could use them a depository for hit markers and other game related paraphernalia, hence reducing table clutter.  It worked really well for a 'pickup' game but I would probably use a rosta for scenario games.

Courtenay's company showing 6 remaining hit points (red dice), two 'Shock'
(casualty markers), and two Fate Coins (counters).

The Battle Commences.

Lancastrians defend the hamlet of Dunny on the Wold.

The Yorkists struggle through the hedgerows.

So after a couple of club games and a similar number of solo games, what's the verdict?

In short, we're impressed with the rules. They're not perfect by any means, but easy to tinker with to get the sort of game we prefer. And you can't fault the price.

Things we like.

1) The mechanics are very simple and, after a couple of rounds, we didn't even need a play sheet. 

2) No casualty removal.

3) A clever and innovative combat system. Each side chooses one of six tactical stances that are printed on cards. The outcome of a round of melee is decided by the combination of the attacker's and defender's chosen tactical stance (card).

The Attacker has chosen to 'Thrust Home', whilst the Defender has chosen 'Gather to the
Standards'. This determines that the Defender will attempt a rally before the melee, and 
the Attacker will follow up any fall back and fight another round of melee.

Things we didn't like:

 

1) The rules use a system of  'Black Flags'. 'These are caused by melee, shooting, or attempting to perform complex or risky Actions (for example withdrawing in the face of the enemy, or crossing terrain).' 

This is essentially similar to the 'Shock' mechanism used in most TooFatLardies rules or 'Fatigue' in Blood and Plunder. Nothing wrong with that; it is in fact a mechanism that I like very much. In fact we changed the name 'Black Flags' to 'Shock' to resonate better with other games that we play. Rather our problem was that, as units rout on receiving their third 'Black Flag', units were just too fragile. We saw units rout after one or two rounds of shooting on multiple occasions. Now there is no doubt that archery was important but my impression was that most battles were decided by hand to hand combat. Although, I'm talking of the WOTR here and maybe it's fine for the 100YW? Maybe this is a misconception and I just need to do more reading but it's a shame that the nice combat mechanism is underused because everything is decided by archery.

We changed this in the last game, so that units only rout if they gain more 'Shock' than remaining hit points.

This worked much better, but I'm not convinced that we couldn't tone things down even more. Maybe a limited arrow supply mechanism?

2) The rules use a system of bespoke dice. This just feels like a bit of a gimmick and D6 work just as well. We changed it to a 1 or 2 has no effect, 3 is a possible bonus, 4 is a Fate Coin, 5 denotes a Shock point and 6 is a casualty.

3) Armies are divided into 'Wards' (Vanward, Mainward and Rearward) but the mechanism for keeping Wards together didn't really work for us. We swapped it for a command radius. Commanders are rated as Amateur (D6), Practised (D8) or Old Soldier (D10). Hence, we gave command radii of 6, 8 or 10 inches, depending on the commanders rating.

Units that are out of command, either as a result of being out of the command radius or the ward commander being killed, use the company's rating for all tests and cannot use or gain Fate Coins.

That's about it really. We made a few minor house rules to clarify a few areas where the rules are a bit vague but nothing too drastic.

So all in all, we were generally impressed and will, no doubt, be playing them again.