1066 anniversary game

[Norm]

The Anniversary of the battle is on Monday, so I pulled Invasion 1066 by Revolution Games and played it through.

An AAR is on the blog, together with a couple of shots of my growing 12mm Kallistra miniature 1066 armies.

Link
http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2019/10/1066-hastings-anniversary-2019.html

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Broken link old chap.

[Norm]

Thanks Will, I fixed it with an identical link! a Google querk I think

[Steve J]

Very nice Norm .

[paulr]

 

[Womble67]

Very nice indeed

Take care

Andy

[petercooman]

Nice write-up!

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Great one Norm

[lowlylowlycook]

Nice!

[Techno]

Nce one, Norm.

Cheers - Phil

[d_Guy]

I enjoyed reading your report and studying your boardgame pics (let's face it, it is easier to understand what's going on with counters rather than swirling masses of unlabeled figures.  ). Your counter design is really quite effective and elegant. As far as I can tell you don't stack combat units, so another huge plus!

The game achieved something close to the historic result but the Norman archers were pretty dang effective. When I was studying the combat power of both sides (using the numbers on the counters) the two armies seem pretty well balanced but the relatively large number of archers on the Norman side is telling.
Are the archers always this effective? Also, in your experience, how often do the Anglo Saxons win?

Because of the near asymmetrical troop types, it looks like this would be a fun game to play over and over with different deployments ( you cover this in your 2014 report so I now need to re-read!)

[Norm]

Thanks all.

Bill, the Norman archers were more effective in this game than usual, as in turn two they caused three disruptions. Then chance favoured the Normans again, the attacks being effective against those disruptions. This so early on in the game was not at all typical.

What was typical was by the start of the turn 3, most of the archers had left the game for being 'out of arrows', which is a design mechanic to bring the'archer phase' of the battle to an end and to see the hand to hand phase start.

If William ever calls a Lull, which is a special turn that REPLACES a game turn, to allow him to reorganise his army, then everything pulls back and gets a crack at re-ordering with a favourable modifier and the archers in the'out of arrows' box come back, re-supplied and ready to open up a new phase in the battle. This happened historically. The downside is that it burns off a precious turn and the Norman player almost always is under pressure to just crack on and use the turn to fight 'just one more go'!

The game tries to evoke an emotional connection in the game by making the Norman task feel like a a really tough gind, but with light invariably at the end of the difficult tunnel and for the Anglo-Saxons that they continually feel under pressure and fear that their position is about to crack at any time.

When I first put the game together,  my first draft had the system as a solo game with Anglo-Saxons managed by the system, as I thought there would not be enough game for them ..... wrong, wrong, wrong! it turn out that with player involvement they get a very full game, it is just different from Norman play and from that perspective there is a different feel that reflects the different armies and the different situations of attack / defence that they find themselves in.

It is a very straight-jacketed situation with a frontal assault being the only route, yet it feels quite fresh when played as the number of variables at the local level are engaging. Sounds like I am waving my own flag - sorry :-)

[paulr]

Looks to be a flag well worth waving

[mmcv]

Great read, cheers

[T13A]

Great game and report Norm.

Hastings is one of those battles in history that for some unfathomable reason I seem to have an emotional attachment to. Just can't get it out of my head that 'we wuz robbed'!  If only Harold had had a bit more patience......

Cheers Paul