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Review - Braveheart: Solitaire by Worthington Publishing

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Review - Braveheart: Solitaire by Worthington Publishing

I’ll tell you right now that I do not like Braveheart, and I haven’t liked it for some time. It’s not just that it’s egregiously historically inaccurate, even looking past that I don’t like it on its own merits. Like why did they put in that romance between William Wallace and Isabella – wasn’t the whole reason this rebellion kicked off due in part to the tragic death of Wallace’s wife? Kind of harsh to fridge your wife and then in only a few years you’re off shagging French princesses – who while not the literal child that she would have been historically does seem a little young for Mel Gibson. Sorry, I got distracted there by my loathing for ‘classic’ film Braveheart – I’m supposed to be talking about the new book game from Worthington Publishing! I’ll try to stay focused; I promised my family that I wouldn’t rant about Braveheart anymore.

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King Arthur: The Making of a Legend by Nicholas J. Higham (Yale University Press, 2018).

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King Arthur: The Making of a Legend by Nicholas J. Higham (Yale University Press, 2018).

We can often feel a strong desire for mythical and legendary figures to be based on some kind of historical reality – while we know that obviously not every aspect of the story can be true it would be so much nicer if a good story was at least be worthy of the dubious“Based on a True Story” tag used for so many Hollywood movies. In his book King Arthur: The Making of a Legend, Nicholas Higham systematically tears apart the myth of the historical Arthur piece by piece. It is impressive in its thoroughness and remarkably readable despite its complexity. This is not a book that sets out to convince academics, who are largely already on the same page as Higham, but rather one for general Dark Ages enthusiasts. As Higham notes, while it is all well and good for the idea of the historic Arthur to be largely ignored within academia, it still holds significant sway in popular imagination and histories and so he took it upon himself to show why there can be no historic Arthur. Higham is making good on the notion that instead of secluding themselves from the myths of public imagination, historians must be out in the trenches fighting them.

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Columbia Games’ Card-Driven Block Wargames – An Almost Comprehensive Review

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Columbia Games’ Card-Driven Block Wargames – An Almost Comprehensive Review

Columbia has been famous for their block wargames since the 1970s, but in recent memory none of have loomed quite as large as the series of four games card driven games starting with Hammer of the Scots in 2002, and including Crusader Rex, Julius Caesar, and Richard III. I played my first game from this line a little while ago, and you can read my first impressions here (https://www.stuartellisgorman.com/blog/first-impressions-richard-iii-by-columbia-games). In the intervening period, and with many thanks to the amazing digital implementations of these games on the website Rally the troops (https://rally-the-troops.com/), I have been able to play all four of these games and I have put my thoughts down on each of them below. Hopefully this will be interesting or enlightening, but at the very least you can tell me why I’m wrong and how your favourite is really the best one.

Before we get on to the games themselves, an overview of the features shared across these games is in order. They are all block wargames – meaning that the player’s pieces are wooden blocks with unit information only on the side which faces their controller. This creates a simple but effective fog of war where my opponent can tell how many units I have and where they are on the map but doesn’t know which specific units those are – and crucially doesn’t know their strength. Play is determined by playing action cards – there are generally two kinds of cards, those with action points and those with special events. Action points allow the movement of armies across the board while events usually allow for a limited action that breaks the game rules, such as moving units further than normally allowed or allowing units to recover strength.

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The Battle of Poitiers 1356 by David Green (Tempus Publishing, 2002)

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The Battle of Poitiers 1356 by David Green (Tempus Publishing, 2002)

While hardly unknown or obscure, I’ve generally been of the opinion that the Battle of Poitiers is unfairly overshadowed by Crécy and Agincourt. While Crécy is noteworthy for being the great early English victory that reinvigorated a too expensive war, Poitiers and its aftermath really set the foundation for what would come next in the Hundred Years War. Still, there are far fewer books dedicated to Poitiers than to either Crécy or Agincourt, which is why I was interested to see that David Green had written one. David Green wrote what is probably my favourite general history of the Hundred Years War but before that he was best known as a scholar of Edward, the Black Prince, which makes it only logical that he would have written a short history of the prince’s most famous victory. The Battle of Poitiers 1356 is an excellent overview of the battle and its most famous participant, fitting quite a lot of information into a relatively short book.

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First Impressions: Nevsky by GMT Games

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First Impressions: Nevsky by GMT Games

Cards on the table, I have played Nevsky twice as of writing this piece. Normally my First Impressions are literally that, reactions to having played the game once. I played the first scenario in Nevsky and afterward wasn’t sure what exactly to say about the experience, so after a few days I set up the second scenario and started playing. It’s not that Nevsky isn’t a fascinating game – it is, and we’ll get to that – it was just that it has taken me longer to digest it. Part of this delay is probably due to Nevsky particular design decisions, but part of it is definitely down to me and my own obsessions.

As should be apparent to anyone who has been following my posts up to now – I’m completely obsessed with the Middle Ages, and I’m also pretty obsessed with wargames. Unfortunately for me, medieval history is not the most popular topic in wargaming. While I’ve been enjoying my time with the Men of Iron series, hex and counter recreations of medieval battles isn’t really my main area of interest. I’m not really a ‘battles guy’. I’m interested in medieval battles because I’m interested in almost everything medieval, but I’m far more interested in how the battle came to be than I am in which flank did what first. Basically, I’m more interested in strategic and operational level tactics. That’s where Nevsky comes in – it helps to fill the really quite large void in operational medieval wargames. Nevsky, and the Levy and Campaign system generally, is exactly the kind of game I’ve been waiting for, and I think that’s part of what has made it so challenging to get my thoughts in order after having played it for the first time.

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The Hundred Years War by Christopher Allmand (Cambridge University Press, 1988)

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The Hundred Years War by Christopher Allmand (Cambridge University Press, 1988)

Christopher Allmand’s history of the Hundred Years War is the classic college textbook on the subject. The book is (very slightly) older than me and a venerable institution in the study of this somewhat misnamed conflict. I have to confess that up until now I had never actually read it. You see, I came to the Hundred Years War by a slightly weird route. Since my background was in studying weaponry, I didn’t read many grand sweeping political histories of the conflicts where crossbows were used, instead I jumped straight into the nitty gritty of the detail. This is something I have decided to rectify and Christopher Allmand seemed like the best place to start.

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Review: The Shores of Tripoli by Fort Circle Games   

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Review: The Shores of Tripoli by Fort Circle Games   

I first became aware of the Barbary War when I was around fourteen years old. I was in my hometown’s Barnes and Noble and saw a book that covered the career of William Eaton, focusing on his role in the Barbary War and eventual conflicts with Thomas Jefferson. It had been granted a prominent place in the bookshop since it involved TJ – our local hometown hero, of sorts, and yes, we do call him TJ – and while I didn’t buy it at the time it stuck with me. Later I convinced my parents to buy a copy of the audiobook on CD and after one failed attempt, eventually listened to it with my father on a road trip somewhere. It is perhaps not the most ringing of endorsements that I remember almost nothing from that book, not even its title. I tried looking it up, but it turns out that several books on the Barbary War were published in the mid-00’s. Still, while my first encounter with the Barbary War was not the most engaging it has sat in the back of my head all these years as one of the more interesting, and forgotten, American wars.

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We the People by Mark Herman: A Personal Retrospective

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We the People by Mark Herman: A Personal Retrospective

It seems more than a little absurd given the trajectory my life has taken, but when I was twelve years old I was really struggling to find anything to enjoy about studying history. My teacher at the time was the tragically named Ms. Aufil, and while she wasn’t quite awful, she certainly wasn’t inspiring, and I was having a hard time studying Virginia colonial history for what must have been the fifth time. A quirk of the Charlottesville public school curriculum of the time was that we spent the first six years of school only studying the period from the settling of Jamestown to the American Civil War – otherwise known as the period in United States history when Virginia was Kind Of A Big Deal. I was nearly fourteen years old before I learned anything from the twentieth century in a classroom setting. It was during this difficult period in my childhood that Mark Herman’s seminal game We the People entered my life.

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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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The Agincourt Campaign of 1415: The Retinues of the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester by Michael P. Warner (Boydell, 2021).

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The Agincourt Campaign of 1415: The Retinues of the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester by Michael P. Warner (Boydell, 2021).

The research on the prosopography of English armies during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is easily one of the most fascinating and rewarding bodies of historical research of the last twenty years. Pioneered by scholars like Andrew Ayton, Adrian Bell, and Anne Curry, this work has now been taken up by many more researchers and expanded beyond what the three of them could have managed on their own. Michael P. Warner’s book examines the Agincourt campaign through the lens of the retinues of King Henry V’s younger brothers. This is very much a work of academic scholarship that is in conversation with a wider pool of research, not an introductory book. That said, it is also remarkably approachable for a book of this kind and while an awareness of the work of Ayton, Bell, and Curry will assist anyone who wishes to read it, having actually read everything that came before is not a requirement.

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Learning My First COIN: Pendragon from GMT Games

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Learning My First COIN: Pendragon from GMT Games

I spread Pendragon’s massive board over my tiny corner of counter space I’ve set aside for wargaming and was relieved to see that it just about fit. There was no extra space, so the deck and any extra tokens would have to live on the board, but there was space in the various sea locations to make that an acceptable compromise. Pendragon’s board is gorgeous, and the components deeply satisfying to place and push around. That said, it’s also a bit of a bear to set up – there are so many bits of wood to put down to mark the status of Britain before the Roman collapse. I left the game up over the weekend, playing turns whenever I could grab a few minutes, which was definitely better than trying to set it up and learn it all in one go. After having spent a good few hours with it over several days I can confidently say that I know how to take actions in Pendragon: The Fall of Roman Britain, whether I actually know how to play the game is another matter entirely!

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Murder During the Hundred Years' War: The Curious Case of Sir William Cantilupe by Dr. Melissa Julian-Jones (Pen and Sword, 2020)

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Murder During the Hundred Years' War: The Curious Case of Sir William Cantilupe by Dr. Melissa Julian-Jones (Pen and Sword, 2020)

At first glance, the murder of William Cantilupe by what appears to be his entire household in 1375 feels like something straight out of Agatha Christie. His body was discovered by the side of a road, but upon initial inspection the coroner determined that he had been positioned there so as to appear as if he was murdered by highwaymen – his clothes were undamaged despite him having been stabbed multiple times in the torso. An initial visit to his nearby residence found it entirely empty – his wife and staff all having relocated very soon after his last reported sighting. Suspicions and accusations abound, and eventually two servants would be executed for the crime and several others declared outlaws for failing to turn up to court. His wife was eventually acquitted of the murder – history, however, has been less kind to her. The dominant narrative of William Cantilupe’s death has long been a salacious story of an adulteress wife having an affair with the local sheriff using her position of security to off her husband and marry her lover. Dr. Melissa Julian-Jones book discusses the Christie-esque aspects of the story, but also picks apart that traditional narrative to explore alternative explanations, and in the process reveals a fascinating story of elite and common society in late fourteenth-century England.

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First Impressions: Richard III by Columbia Games

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First Impressions: Richard III by Columbia Games

I don’t remember when I first became obsessed with playing a Columbia Games block wargame, but I would guess it was some time between ten and fifteen years ago. That game was Hammer of the Scots, and I still haven’t played it. Something about it captured my imagination, but it cost at least seventy euro, I was a broke student, and I already had several underplayed two player games so I couldn’t really justify the expense. Still, the idea of playing Hammer of the Scots lingered on and every time it got a reprint or showed up in stock somewhere I would think “maybe this time”.

Starting this blog finally gave me the impetus to buy a block wargame and see if it lived up to the expectations of my imagination. Astute readers will notice that this is not a report on my experience playing Hammer of the Scots – and that’s because Richard III was significantly cheaper. I may have really wanted to crush the Scots as Edward I, but I wanted to keep that €40 more. I almost bought Hammer of the Scots anyway, since I never much cared about Richard III, but the title of the game is a little misleading. This game is not about Richard III – in fact in our game he didn’t even show up. This is a full retelling of the War of the Roses in block game form – and as such I’m much more interested in it. While I’ve never much cared for Richard III, his brother Edward IV is another matter.

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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.

When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History by Matthew Restall (HarperCollins, 2018)

When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History by Matthew Restall (HarperCollins, 2018)

I only very recently began improving my knowledge of the history of Spanish colonisation of the Caribbean and Mexico and must confess to still being quite the novice on the subject. My interest was spurred by intermittent brief references to the use of crossbows by Spanish conquistadors. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more, but I also knew that I couldn’t just dip a toe into the subject. The colonisation of Central and South America is a heavy subject and includes some of the worst genocides in human history. Even if what I was interested in was some niche facts about an old weapon, I couldn’t completely ignore that side of the history.

Matthew Restall has published many books on the Spanish in sixteenth-century America. I had previously read his Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, which is a great introduction to the subject of Spanish colonialism, and I would recommend it to anyone. That was a large part of why I was inclined to pick up When Montezuma Met Cortés, that and a Google Books search indicated that he at least mentioned crossbows a few times so I could be killing two birds with one stone.

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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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Edmund: In Search of England’s Lost King by Francis Young (I. B. Tauris, 2018).

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Edmund: In Search of England’s Lost King by Francis Young (I. B. Tauris, 2018).

The story of St. Edmund, who was King of East Anglia from around 855 until his death in 869, is a challenging one to tell. We don’t know if he was married or had any children, although later popular belief maintained that he was a virgin throughout his life – a sign of his holiness. We don’t know anything about his parents, although we do know he was a member of the Wuffing dynasty – probably its last. Basically, you could fit the entirety of our knowledge about the life of St. Edmund into a few sentences – given that fact what is this book about and why is it interesting?

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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.

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Peacemaking in the Middle Ages: Principles and Practice by Jenny Benham (Manchester University Press, 2010)

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Peacemaking in the Middle Ages: Principles and Practice by Jenny Benham (Manchester University Press, 2010)

Peacemaking in the Middle Ages is a truly phenomenal book, the kind of book that excites me as a historian and fills me with energy for my next project. The title would suggest that this is a very niche book without a wide appeal, but I think that anyone with an interest in medieval history should buy a copy and read it – it’s barely over two hundred pages and the paperback edition retails for a fairly reasonable £25 so you really don’t have an excuse!

Bear with me here, but the structure of this book is an impressive thing to behold. Jenny Benham’s writing is direct and purposeful, it never says more than it has to, and each point is well structured and supported without being didactic or boring. It is a master class in efficient and engaging writing throughout. I wish I could write a book this well. Benham is wading through some fairly dense material and writing about subjects that it would be trivial to make boring, but she avoids getting lost in the weeds and delivers her book in just the length it needs to be. It’s phenomenal.

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Blood Royal: Dynastic Politics in Medieval Europe by Robert Bartlett (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

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Blood Royal: Dynastic Politics in Medieval Europe by Robert Bartlett (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

I was fortunate enough to be in the audience for two of the lectures where Robert Bartlett presented some of the initial drafts of the work that would become Blood Royal. In particular, his discussion of the use of regnal numbering in medieval Europe, from its origins in the papacy to its later adoption by various monarchies, was one of the most interesting talks I’ve ever attended. I’d been looking forward to this book ever since it was implied at the final talk that one would be forthcoming, and while I had to wait quite a while the final product did not disappoint.