Thoughts About One Hour Wargames Medieval

With respect to Neil Thomas's One Hour Wargame Medieval rules, as I have mentioned before, I have no experience with any other medieval rules to compare but they work well enough for me and feel different than the WW2 set, which is good enough (what can I say, I set a low bar). While I enjoy playing them, they are not without issues, owing, in large part, to the very simplicity I find so appealing.

If you can focus on anything but that curling cat hair, you are a better person than I am.

In my last outing, I was perplexed by how to handle units in the town.

What qualifies as "in town"? How many units can be in the same town? This is important as units get a significant defensive bonus (halving hits against it) from being in town.

And does the idea of knights fighting in a town have precedent? See,not only do I not have any experience with medieval wargames, I know virtually nothing about the time period outside of Hollywood depictions. I just happen to think armor is really cool.

Ignoring my ignorance of history for the moment (I know it looms large, but please, for the sake of this discussion), the questions about towns from a rules perspective still stand.

In the event, I ruled that two units could count the defensive bonus from the town, as long as half, or near half of the base was inside the borders defined for it. My rationale was that, for this scenario, the map showed a 4" x 6" town approximately.  My bases are roughly 4" square. Depth is not given in the rules (a width of 4" to 6" is suggested) but I have to imagine that most people aren't using 54mm+ figures on deep bases. I figured that at least two bases would fit for most people, so I would allow the same if the units were in base to base contact. I'm not sure this is the best rationale and I welcome suggestions.

Now with regards to that defensive bonus.

At the end of the game, a unit of men-at-arms entered the town. They have a natural bonus of taking only half damage. When they are in town, do they take half again, so that men-at-arms take 1/4 damage? I couldn't find anywhere in the rules that says these bonuses aren't cumulative and so 1/4 damage it was. I'm not convinced this is the best for game play, but lacking any reason not to do so, it worked well enough. It also means you should probably hold your town with men-at-arms, which doesn't sound wrong to me in light of my ignorance of the period and despite my failure to do so for the Redsylvanian forces.

Neither of these rules questions are show stoppers, but players will have to address them when they arise. If you play solo, as I do, you can, like I often do, make a different decision each time and no harm done (or by coincidence make the same decision each time because you forgot what you did last time), but if you're playing the game with others, it's probably for the best to decide this ahead of time, and use the Morschauser suggestion to dice between differing opinions and move on.

For a much more in depth look at the rules, here are some links I came across that address the issues with much detail and thought:

https://ecw40mmproject.blogspot.com/2017/05/whats-missing-in-one-hour-wargames-rules.html
https://darkages40and25.blogspot.com/2017/10/one-hour-wargames-medieval-rules.html

One Hour Wargames: Scenario 10 : Late Arrivals

The Prince of Redsylvania, having failed to stop the Kingdom of Mavi's advance ordered a stand against the invaders outside of the village of Sătesc. Unfortunately, ready troops were in short supply and so the Prince found himself hoping reinforcements would arrive in time to repel the the enemy.

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For the second scenario, in what is a very low key campaign, using one of the methods suggested by Neil Thomas in One Hour Wargames, I diced between scenarios 7 through 12 in the same book. A roll of the d6 resulted in 4: Scenario 10: Late Arrivals

The orders of battle were as follows:

• Kingdom of Mavi - 4 Knights, 1 Levies, 1 Men-at-Arms
• Redsylvania - 4 Knights, 1 Archers, 1 Men-at-Arms

For the sake of continuity, I changed the compass direction (treating the N as an S) given on the map and description for Scenario 10, deciding that it made more sense if the village was at the north end of the map to reflect the northward movement of the Kingdom of Mavi from the previous game.

All is quiet. Too quiet.

Redsylvania, confusingly the blue army in this scenario, deployed their archers and men-at-arms per the initial deployment rules for the scenario. The units were chosen by die roll and probably would not have been my first choice.  Also, because they had lost the previous scenario, one of the Redsylvanian units would start with 1d3 damage. This was again determined by die roll and would be their 6th unit to arrive on the table (one of the Knight units).

Finally, to prevent me from devolving into a constant changing of plans turn to turn, i decided orders were required for each side, beyond the objective of the scenario. I created three possible strategic plans for each and diced between them. These, to the extent possible, guided the movement and turn to turn tactical decisions for the units.

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The archers reconsider their career choice.

Redsylvanian men-at-arms prepare to meet the charging Mavi knights

Redsylvanian reenforcements crash into the Mavi troops!

The Mavi levies are quickly eliminated.

The same unit of Redsylvanian knights rides down a unit of Mavi knights! They would see their own defeat soon after.

The last two units of Redsylvanian knights arrive but are handily disposed of in devastating flank attacks.

Mavi men-at-arms capture Sătesc as the last of the Redsylvanian resistance dissipates.

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Figures are mostly Deetail. The oversized levies are Supreme 60mm saracens. Rules used were the Medieval rules in One Hour Wargames by Neil Thomas without modification.