Collision Course – Gunpowder era

The ‘Collision Course’ variant has added an extra level of enjoyment to our ancient and medieval games, it was decided to apply this to the gunpowder era. In brief, collision course replaces the standard deployment of troops and have armies approach one another in column formation. The army, divided in three columns including the mobile baggage, scrambles to form line to meet the enemy. This has been played using ancient and medieval armies on a number of occasions to our enjoyment. Games do run longer, as forming line from columns may lack space to deploy properly or columns may take longer to appear on the field. The decision to attack an unready enemy is a double edge sword, as one may find themselves without support and unable to sustain their combats.

To test the Collision Course variant, two armies are used from an upcoming project, the Second Northern War of 1655; the Polish-Lithuanian versus the Swedes (French proxy for the Northmen).

Three columns of the Swedish army enter the field and form their lines and position their reserves in a second.

At that moment, only the Polish vanguard and main column are deployed, but they are optimistic that their lancers and pancerni will suffice to break the enemy.

In the clash between lance against pike, the ‘Swedish’ battalions held the lancers and pancerni at bay foiling subsequent attacks. With each attempt to break the enemy repulsed, any sensible commander would have broken off battle to fight another day. Fourteen turns were needed to convince the Polish commander that the day not to be his. Sweden 4 – 0.  

   

Some thoughts.

From Phil Barker, “Play is in alternate bounds. These do not represent fixed arbitrary divisions of time, but instead reflect the initiative and response by the two sides. However, dividing known battle duration by the number of discrete phases that can be identified produce consistent enough results for us to define a pair of bounds as equivalent of 15 minutes of real life”. 

In the house rules section of the Fanaticus Forum, a number of useful suggestions can be found which address the issue of time and one such was used for our Battle of Mortimer, 1054. 

To reflect the duration between ‘discrete phases’, playing cards were used to determine the period time between a pair of bounds. When the numeric total has reached a set score, the battle ceases as nightfall has taken place. In this manner, battles may resume the following day with the first encounter resulting in a skirmish or probing action. 

The card system will be integrated with the next test.