Men of Iron

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Norman Conquests (Men of Iron V) by Ralph Shelton (and Richard Berg)

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Norman Conquests (Men of Iron V) by Ralph Shelton (and Richard Berg)

I am a certified, card-carrying Men of Iron obsessive so of course I was excited when I heard a new volume in the series was coming out. That excitement was dampened slightly by the knowledge that since original designer Richard Berg had passed away, he would not be continuing the series himself. Still, carrying on that legacy was an all around positive even if I had slight trepidations about what that would mean for this new entry. I am pleased to report that while it is not a perfect game, Norman Conquests is an admirable addition to the Men of Iron series. At time of writing, I have played all but two scenarios in Norman Conquests and I have thoroughly enjoyed myself. I am saving the remaining scenarios because I like to savor my Men of Iron experience. It’s not like we get a new entry every year, you know.

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A Tale of Two Crécy

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A Tale of Two Crécy

Crécy is a battle I am both fascinated by and terrified of. I have read so much about this battle, and yet I still feel like I have only the most tenuous grasp on what happened that day in Ponthieu. It is one of the most famous and best recorded medieval battles, but the abundance of sources has produced such a confusing mess of contradiction and myth that untangling it could be the work of a lifetime. Many historians have offered their opinions on what happened, but there is still significant disagreement on elements of the chronology, the array of both armies, and even the battle’s location. Still, for all the hair pulling that thinking about Crécy causes me, I can’t help but be fascinated by it and the attempt to understand what happened at what might be the Hundred Years War’s most important battle (potentially rivaled only by Poitiers a decade later, really). If the English lost Crécy it is likely that they would not have been able to afford to keep the war going, but their dramatic victory, while it yielded only moderate success in its immediate aftermath, did much to sustain the war and encouraged Edward III to continue pursuing his claim to the French throne. With that fascination in mind, I decided to play a couple of games on Crécy that I had sitting on my shelf. Below are my general thoughts on both. As a note, I’m going to try and keep this brief because my options are really to skip over this topic lightly or to lose myself to it for months, and as much fun as the latter could be I simply haven’t the time.

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Review - Men of Iron by Richard Berg

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Review - Men of Iron by Richard Berg

I have written and thought more about Richard Berg’s Men of Iron than I have any other wargame I’ve ever played. The Men of Iron tri-pack was the game that brought me fully into wargaming. It was my first hex and counter game. While not my most played game if individual plays are measured, in terms of hours invested it almost certainly is. I have a relationship with this game series is what I’m saying. When I first bought that tri-pack I didn’t have any plans to write a review of the games therein. I’ve documented many of my individual plays of certain battles and that was my plan to continue going forward – not writing up literally every play but certainly every scenario that I thought I had something to say about. However, as I play more Men of Iron, I keep thinking about what I love about the system and what frustrates me about it, and I’m increasingly tempted towards making my own version of Men of Iron. That has nudged my thoughts more in the direction of what I think is the appeal of the system and what its failings are, and at a certain point that’s basically just a review so I thought I’d put that down on a page, and once I’ve done that I might as well share them with the world.

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Arquebus: Fornovo 1495 by Richard Berg

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Arquebus: Fornovo 1495 by Richard Berg

It’s been a while since I played Men of Iron and I’d been been hankering to try some more Arquebus so I took a break from playing a small mountain of American Civil War hex and counter games for a brief holiday in sixteenth-century Italy. I decided to try the Fornovo scenario for the very boring reason that it was the first battle in the play book and I’m glad I did because this is probably one of the most interesting Men of Iron scenarios I have ever played. It reminded me of everything I really like about Men of Iron, as well as some of the elements of the system that I don’t think work so well. Those wrinkles weren’t enough to stop me from enjoying Fornovo a lot and putting it high on my list of scenarios I want to try again.

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My Top 8 Games of 2022!*

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My Top 8 Games of 2022!*

It’s the time of year for Top X lists and as a sucker for the format I couldn’t help but doing one myself. Now look, let’s get this over with straight away: I obviously haven’t played every game that came out in 2022. In fact, I’ve played barely any. I only just got really into historical wargaming this year, so I’ve had a big back log of games to experience. I’m not going to even pretend to list the best games that came out this year. Instead, this list will be my top eight games that I played for the first time in 2022. I chose eight because I’m one of those people who likes to arbitrarily pick a number between five and ten for my top X lists, no other reason. Ranking them has been painful, and if you asked me again in January I’d probably change the order, but at time of publication these are my top eight games that I played this year!

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Men of Iron: Nájera 1367

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Men of Iron: Nájera 1367

The Battle of Nájera, fought on the 3rd of April 1367, was the last great battle in the prestigious career of Edward, the Black Prince. While not his final campaign, that dubious honour belongs to the siege and sack of the city of Limoges in 1370, it was his final field battle and great victory. While the battle itself was a resounding success for Edward, the 1367 campaign and its aftermath was overall a complete disaster, which achieved little in the long term and likely lead to the Black Prince’s death and the resumption of the Hundred Years War during a period of marked French ascendancy. Because of this contrast between the success on the day and the disaster over the longer term I think the Battle of Nájera is an interesting lens through which we can explore how medieval warfare is often represented in wargaming and how that perspective can unintentionally distort our understanding of the past.

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First Impressions: Arquebus – Cerignola 1503

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First Impressions: Arquebus – Cerignola 1503

Coming right off the heels of playing my first game of Blood and Roses I arranged to play fellow member of Team Crossboys Russ Wetli in a game of Arquebus that same day. I had a hurried skim of the rulebook to try and pull-out what elements were different from previous Men of Iron titles, which was thankfully a relatively painless process even without the volume specific rules highlights I was accustomed to from the Tri-Pack. There’s a lot to be said for playing games in a system. It makes it much easier to pick up the next game in the series since you already know about 80% of the rules, but on the other hand it also becomes increasingly easy to mess up that last 20% the more games you learn! This was Russ’s first experience playing Men of Iron and I wanted to be sure I got as much right as possible, and for the most part I think I succeeded. We picked the Battle of Cerignola to play because it was by far the shortest and simplest scenario in the box and neither of us was up for an epic multi-hour clash that evening. I also ensured that he had the full Men of Iron experience by having him play the side that lost the battle historically. Nobody ever promised that Men of Iron would be fair.

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First Impressions: Blood and Roses – First Battle of St Albans 1455

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First Impressions: Blood and Roses – First Battle of St Albans 1455

I’m very interested in pretty much all things medieval warfare but I have to admit that within that category the Wars of the Roses would rank near the bottom. I am not totally uninterested in the subject, but an assortment of miserable nobles all killing each other to see who gets to be King of England isn’t my preferred topic. It has some interesting moments, and I find Edward IV to be an interesting monarch, but overall it doesn’t fill me with excitement. This meant that while Blood and Roses promised to be a very interesting entry in the Men of Iron series, I haven’t been rushing to get it to the table. However, with the whole Men of Iron series having been chosen for this month’s Club de Jeu on the Homo Ludens Discord I decided to take a plunge and try and play a battle from every (published) entry in the series, which meant finally trying Blood and Roses. I picked the First Battle of St Albans as my entry point in part because it was a small battle that plays in under an hour and in part because the idea of more urbanised combat in a Men of Iron game was really appealing. I’m glad I did because I think First St Albans (as we’ll call it from now) is a great entry point into the Men of Iron series and a fun little battle in its own right!

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Infidel – Antioch 1098

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Infidel – Antioch 1098

For my second game of Infidel, I decided I should pick something a little more straightforward than Arsuf, much as I enjoyed it, and Antioch looked like it would fit the bill. It also helped that I’ve found the Siege of Antioch fascinating since literally my first year as an undergraduate in college. It’s also a bit of a weird battle so I was curious to see how designer Richard Berg adapted the Men of Iron rules to fit the fragile alliances and unusual deployment process that defined the climactic battle of the two sieges of Antioch.

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Men of Iron – Bannockburn 1314

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Men of Iron – Bannockburn 1314

Bannockburn is an interesting battle. Many historians have argued that it was a turning point in medieval warfare, the division between the High and Late Middle Ages, but you could just as easily argue that it was a symptom of broader trends, just one event of many in a slow process of change. It’s narratively fascinating and historiographically intriguing, and that’s before we get to the nationalism. It’s not very surprising that it has an enduring legacy in popular culture and in historical writing – it’s too good a story to ignore and many historians have tried to fit it into their pet theories about how the fourteenth century forever changed medieval warfare. And lest you think I am without sin I have done this very thing in the past, even as I have since become significantly more sceptical of such arguments in recent years.

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Men of Iron – Falkirk, 1298

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Men of Iron – Falkirk, 1298

I was in a bit of a Scottish wars mood after playing the Braveheart: Solitaire book game so I decided to try out how Richard Berg modelled Falkirk in Men of Iron as an interesting counterpoint. As I somewhat hinted at in that review – I’ve got a bit of a chip on my shoulder when it comes to William Wallace. I feel he’s a bit overrated as a historical figure, basically entirely because of Braveheart – a movie I strongly dislike. Lest you think I’m a boring historian who hates fun, my favourite medieval movie is A Knight’s Tale, my hatred of Braveheart stretches beyond mere historical inaccuracy. I’ve born a slight grudge about living in a post-Braveheart world where William Wallace has overshadowed the far more interesting Robert Bruce. My opinions on this have mellowed with time – and I think it helps that Bruce seems to be getting more popular culture recognition as well (including his own movies, which I have not seen, making me part of the problem).

I was immediately interested to see that the Falkirk scenario comes with a sort of solo mode as default. With the basic rules the Scottish player basically sits in schiltron and the English player has to crack their defences. I was intrigued by only having to really think about one side and abandoned my plans to try playing this scenario with modified chit pull rules for activations. I have to confess I was a little disappointed by my experience. The scenario is timed, and while my understanding is that the timer only advances if the non-timed side passes, I moved it forward after every English turn because that felt like the only challenge to the scenario – could I defeat the Scots within 15 turns? The answer was a pretty definitive yes.

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First Impressions: Infidel – Arsuf 1191

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First Impressions: Infidel – Arsuf 1191

I was finally able to secure the big table for an evening late one night and I took the opportunity to unpack one of the really quite large maps that come with Infidel – the Men at Iron game focused on the Crusades. I’ve long been fascinated by the history of the Crusades, so I was very excited to try Infidel, but it was already getting late by the time I started setting up, so I picked my scenario in a rush. The scenario options in Infidel are intriguing – some of them are battles I expected, but there are some absences and inclusions that surprised me. Dorylaeum, Montgisard, and Arsuf all make total sense. I was very surprised to not see Hattin, Saladin’s most famous victory, and I have to confess I didn’t immediately recognise the Battle of Harran. Still, one of the fun things about playing these games is seeing what aspects of history someone else thought were the most interesting to include. I also have to say that the bibliography at the back of the scenario book was pretty impressive – multiple books by John France and not even one mention of Runciman! You love to see it.

In the end I settled on Arsuf – it had an interesting looking deployment and it’s both a battle I think is quite interesting and one I know a fair bit about. I then set about setting up the game – a bit of an involved process given the scale of the map but one that was pretty satisfying all the same. It was only after I’d laid out the armies that I noticed the note in the booklet that told me that Arsuf was quite a complicated battle with several important rules amendments and new rules involved to make the Men of Iron rules system fit the historical battle. Reading those rules and having played it now, I don’t think the new rules were as intimidating as I’d initially expected. That said, I definitely got a few rules wrong as it was both my play of Infidel, and I was playing the most complicated scenario! It was a lot to juggle!

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Men of Iron pt. 3: The Battle of Poitiers, 1356

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Men of Iron pt. 3: The Battle of Poitiers, 1356

After playing two highly defensive battles with minimal manoeuvring I acted upon the advice of a more experienced player given via Discord and picked Poitiers as my next battle. I’m glad I took that person’s advice, at Poitiers the French let me try my hand at some dynamic movements and a dramatic flanking attack – even if the English still ended up being reactionary and defensive for the most part.

Poitiers has long fascinated me. A triumphant victory for the Black Prince (I’ll just note here that he was not known by that name during his lifetime) and the capture of King Jean II of France. Jean II joined his Scottish ally King David II, who had been captured at Neville’s Cross in 1346, at the English court. The ransom for Jean II significantly enriched the English crown’s coffers and allowed them to negotiate the very favourable Treaty of Brétigny in 1360 – a treaty in which Edward III exchanged his claim to the French throne for more French territory than its own king had. If the Hundred Years War had ended there it would be remembered as an English triumph – but of course it didn’t, and all those gains would be gone within a century.

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Men of Iron Round 2: Courtrai 1302

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Men of Iron Round 2: Courtrai 1302

Having gotten a handle on the rules of Richard Berg’s Men of Iron with my fabulous French upset last week I decided to try a scenario that was on a slightly larger scale but still didn’t up complexity too much. I chose Courtrai, also known as the Battle of the Golden Spurs because of the loot that the victorious Flemings took from the dead French nobles, in part because I’ve always found it fascinating and because it once again sees a French army trying to attack a strong defensive position – historically with disastrous results. I won’t totally spoil what happened, but I will say that things did not go as well for the French this time.

I should probably talk a bit about how Men of Iron plays, because it is interesting and unlike anything I’ve played before. Instead of being divided into strict turns, the starting player as designated in the scenario chooses one Battle – a group of units with a single commander – to activate. As an aside, I love that the game uses the medieval term Battle instead of a more modern designation like company or squad. The selected Battle can then move and shoot or engage in melee combat – usually “shock” combat but mounted units can charge instead for an extra bonus. After activating that Battle the active player can pass or instead they can choose to try to activate another Battle. To successfully do so they must roll under that Battle’s commander’s Activation Rating on a d10 - most commanders have a rating of 2 or 3 so this isn’t particularly common but it happens often enough to keep things interesting. As an aside, in Men of Iron the 0 on a d10 is actually a zero and not a ten like I’m used to from D&D, something that frequently causes me to go from elation to disappointment whenever one is rolled. Each activation after the first imposes a -1 penalty to the roll, so it’s harder and harder to activate subsequent Battles.

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Men of Iron First Impressions: Agincourt 1415

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Men of Iron First Impressions: Agincourt 1415

I felt a wave of nostalgia when I first opened up my copy of the Men of Iron Tri-Pack from GMT – the new release that packages three of legendary game designer Richard Berg’s classic medieval hex and counter wargames together. It’s not that I’d played this game before, or any of the previous versions. I hadn’t even played a hex and counter wargame before, not really. My nostalgia stems instead from games I played with rather than played, and memories from my very early childhood.

You see, my father was something of a wargamer back in his day. He owned copies of classic Avalon Hill games like Gettysburg and Civil War. Some of the earliest photos of me as a child show him balancing me on one knee while he pours over a classic wargame, played solo in the basement of the house my parents were renting. As an older child my brother and I would occasionally coerce him into unpacking a game and trying teaching us how to play – as Virginians we couldn’t help but take at least a little interest in battles that took place in our home state. We never successfully played them, we were far too young and the games too long, but he gamely made an effort, and they were fun evenings even if we ended up making up at least half the rules ourselves. The closest we ever got to playing one of the classic Avalon Hill games was Civilization, a perennial favourite during the intermittent blackouts that accompanied major storms in the autumn. That game would be unpacked, the rules hastily learned, and the opening turns played before it got too dark, and we were sent to bed. We would leave it out with a plan to finish it tomorrow, but usually the power would be back, and it was far more tempting to play Super Nintendo instead. The more serious wargames never even got that far.