First Contact …. Test of Resolve rules.

Test of Resolve are a set of wargame rules for the Wars of the Roses, authored by Tim Couper & David Knight and self published by the same in a 76 page, perfect bound, A4 format.

They use one column text, in a very readable font, with charts done in full colour and the odd coloured photograph / schematic map, dotted throughout.

Their system uses 32 coloured cards to drive the actions taken (note despite cards being used the game is solo friendly, perhaps more so because of it ). For game support, l bought two of their scenario books that cover the main actions from1455 - 1487. There is another scenario book for the Irish battles and minor actions.

For the period, I always turn to the Bosworth battle - it fascinates me, as much for what we don’t know about it and how scenario designers need to squeeze every bit of evidence out of the accounts and still end up with an interpretation rather than a general consensus. This system has an interesting Bosworth scenario that I will likely tackle at a future point, once I am familiar with the system, but reading it gives a clue to the scope of the rules. 

Some headline features in shorthand are; the game can use figures up to 28mm. The gaming table is typically 6x4 for 28mm and obviously smaller for the lower scales. Games are playable in a single session of 1 to less than 3 hours depending upon engagement size. The system relies upon a D12, which drives everything, including movement rates. Bespoke cards direct the player’s actions. The design makes an effort to follow the patterns of the historical tactics and outcomes, while keeping a balance with the elements of fun and replayability.

These last two elements are (I feel) essential to a set of rules for this period as in most cases, both sides had three major formations that just lined up against each other and went at it. That has all the potential of being quite tedious over time and it is not the reason why we paint these little men!  

I met the authors at the recent Phalanx Wargames Show (St. Helens) and they spent a bit of time with me, running through a turn of a demo game that they had brought with them. From that conversation and some of the opening text in the rules, I am left with the impression that while the rules were being designed from the ground up, the function of unit types, particularly archers was given prime importance within the design philosophy.

The fact that as a separate publication they have now done a 100 Years War version points to these being very period specific and it is the case that archer deployment was different between the earlier 100 Years Wars and the later Wars of the Roses (WotR).

When these rules first came out, photographs of tables to my eye, looked like the melee units were in columns and that immediately put me off, as the armies did not fight in columnar style. Anyway that assumed visual put me on a bum steer, this is NOT what the system portrays. There are two types of sub-formation, WIDE and MASS. Wide is basically like a line and is used by archers deployed to shoot. Mass, is simply mass, it is a body of melee troops that gets stuck in and packs a punch. 

The rules have bases side by side to represent ‘wide’ and behind each other for ‘mass’, the consequence being that this can look like column, the other consequence (positive) is that it reduces the width of the melee troop units, which is helpful to table space ….. and of course actually looks like a mass! 

Anyway, it is interesting that now as I understand this, to my eye, they now look like bodies of melee troops, rather than columns … also helped by the fact that my bases are 80mm wide rather than the recommended 60mm.   

Archers generally start out in the front of the battle line as expected, but their existence there can be short lived. The systems bends into the idea that archers either quickly ran out of arrows or due to the proximity of enemy melee troops, fell back into the rear. Once so placed, they adopt a new role of going into the mass formation and becoming a sort of light melee troop that supports the heavy melee troops.

I had a view that the archers once dispersed / used, would at best form into small knots and ‘snipe’ with arrows from the gaps between melee troop formations, or dash out to dispatch fallen enemy and then retire back, but more likely, just keep out of the way. I have never thought of them as ‘melee’ troops, despite being sword armed, being far too valuable to become involved in hard hand-to-hand fighting with melee types (of course I may be totally wrong and I have a lot of faith in the research of the authors), so it will be interesting, to me at least, to see how this all plays out.

At the demo, I was also surprised to see that archery was not quite as effective as I thought it might be. It seems to be a design ‘given’ that the archers did their thing, which wasn’t very impactive and then they gave way to the ‘real’ close up fighting. Again, we shall see how this works out in practice.

I just mention all of this because I am very enthusiastic about what is in the rules, but to fully embrace them as my go to set, I may have to shift some of my own (likely wrong!) pre-conceptions.

Finally, the cards - There are 16 red cards (Lancastrian) and 16 white cards (Yorkist). Solo players do not sigh, despite cards (which I usually dislike with a passion), this is a very solo friendly system and in fact the cards help deliver a better solo experience and indeed narrative.

They are fully shuffled and form a single deck. In each sub phase, the cards are drawn one at a time until the sequence of drawn cards is interrupted by a card of the other players colour. So, say the first card is red, the second card is red, the third card is red, but next on the draw deck is a white card, at that point the drawing of cards would stop. The red player (Lancastrian) would then reveal each of their three dealt cards one at a time acting upon them as they are flipped over. 

Once done, the draw sequence happens again, of course we know the first card is white, but perhaps the next card is red, again halting the draw sequence, so the white player (Yorkist) acts on their one and only card and then the draw sequence starts again, the first card will be red and so on.

This single part of the game engine brings a lot of dynamism to that problem of two sides just lined up against each other.

Organisation - typically each side has 3 major formations which are typically called battles or wards (vanward, mainward and rearward), each of these consists of various units called companies (though I can’t help myself, wrongly probably, thinking of them as contingents).

Anyway, let’s try something out on the table before you fall asleep!

In the rule book there is a demo scenario. This is the scenario without terrain distraction that they had out at the Phalanx show and it basically involves one small ‘ward’ per side, each with 5 companies of troops. Rather than do a blow by blow account of this playing out, I will give an overview that just hits some notable aspects of the system.

These are mirror forces, both sides have 1 x Household unit, 2 x Retinue (melee) units, 2 x Archers. Importantly, between them, these units (companies) build a pot of 11 Battle Morale Points. That is the ‘battle’ or the ‘main’, whatever you prefer to call it, now has 11 morale points, each loss against one of the constituent companies will also reduce this battle pot down by 1. So as individual units takes losses, the entire battle / ward also degrades.

There are some cards such as event cards, which we don’t need, so they leave our pack now (the Bosworth scenario makes good use of events - looking forward to that). I have sleeved the cards for future protection, so the camera will be picking up some reflections.

Above - the first card played from the deck is a Yorkist card (white), but the next card in the draw pile is a Lancastrian card (red), so the Yorkists stop drawing and in this current activation have just one card - it is flipped to reveal MOVE & MELEE 1 Battle.

The Yorkist roll a D12 for movement (=10), so each of the companies can move up to 10” if they wish. Everything moves forward the full 10”. This still ensures that the archers do not move within the 9” Stand-off Distance, that bow must recognise. None of the units make contact with an enemy, so there are no melee actions to resolve.

Soon the Yorkists flip a card called MISSILE SUPPLY. Now you will either like this or you won’t. On this card, each archer company that IS within arrow range or HAS BEEN within arrow range of an enemy, tests to see whether they have run out of arrows. On a D12 a 1 - 4 is an out of missiles result and the archer unit concerned must seek safety (it is simply lifted and placed at the rear of the battle, behind the melee troops to support them).

So our Yorkist archers find themselves testing when they haven’t had a chance to actually shoot and cause harm. The narrative is that the archers have been in position for long enough, that they have actually been shooting without effect, expending all of their arrows.

My experience with other rules causes me a moment of reflection here, but as I think about what is going on within the whole system, this does fit in with that ‘overview’ of battle that the rules are trying to achieve and I am increasingly comfortable with it … it is part of letting go of over management of the battle.

Both the archer units pass their test.

The Lancastrians get a couple of ‘Fire’ cards and their bow units inflict two hits on the Yorkist archers, which I mark with small dice to show their drop in resolve (hits). Of note these two hits also take two of the Battle Morale ‘coins’ from the Yorkist pool and they drop from 11 to 9 Battle Morale Points - so the Battle itself degrades as well as its companies.

The Yorkists draw a Move & Melee card, but have no use for it, so they discard it.

The Lancastrians get an END OF TURN card, when the other end of turn card is drawn, the turn will end and the pack is reshuffled.

Above - This is a dubious thing to do at this stage of the battle, but on the Yorkists drawing a MOVE & MELEE card, I decide to move the right hand melee retinue out to the right and have it advance forwards, so that it now has the archer unit immediately to its left. The archer units is less than 2” away, so the melee company counts as NOT being isolated. The D10 gave 10” of movement. I ‘shuffled’ the unit 1 base wide sideways for 3” of movement allowance and with the remaining 7” they moved forwards.

The second END OF TURN card is turned. I note there are still 4 Lancastrian cards left in the draw deck, so this means that the Lancastrians have potentially had 4 less opportunities in this turn ….. though of course one of those cards was their MISSILE SUPPLY card, so they have at least been spared that potential fly in the ointment!

The Yorkist archer company on their right has taken 3 hits from enemy arrows. These units have a Resolve value of 3, so the unit is simply removed from play. This has a significant knock-on effect as that melee company that was advancing past them, now does not have a friend within 2” and so is isolated (a -2 modifier in melee, which is bad).

The Yorkists then get a MOVE & MELEE card and that isolated unit moves (advances) into contact with the front of an Lancastrian melee company and a melee is immediately resolved.

Above - both sides roll a D12 (red Lancastrian). Neither side has any losses so far. The Yorkists roll 10, -2 for being isolated, +1 for initial shock gives a final result of 9. The Lancastrians do not have any modifiers so their score remains 5. The difference is taken, so the Lancastrians lose by 4.

In the results, a unit that loses by 2 to 5 must take one loss and take a Resolve Test to see whether they ‘Turn Tail’. They are marked with 1 loss and pass their Resolve Test. Note the Lancastrian Battle Morale also drops by one (a green coin is removed).

This result means another round of melee must be immediately played between these two units ….. and then another, at which point they get a draw result, so for now that melee ends and units stay in place. It will re-start the next time either side gets a melee card.

The Yorkists get their biggest run of cards to date …. Five! (See this as potentially gaining the initiative) The cards are all face down. The first is flipped to reveal a MOVE & MELEE card.

Over the next few actions, the Yorkists are able to get all three of their melee companies up over on the centre right, this has the potential to punch hard, the Lancastrians have been caught out, their own melee troops by contrast are still in their relative starting spots!

A crisis point has developed. The Yorkists only have 3 Battle Morale Points in their pool, so while they have a good assault going, they are brittle. The 2nd END CARD is drawn and only 8 cards have been drawn!

I am expecting the Yorkist melee company facing the Lancastrian archers to burst through them ….. but instead, the Yorkist suffer a loss (passing their Resolve Test) and then fighting on to another melee round, they roll a 2 and the archers roll 11, that is a big swing and the melee retinue taking 3 more losses, removing them from play - yes, the defending archers took out the attacking melee troops, so things cannot be taken for granted in this system.

[edit 1 - a reader (thank you) has advised that the contacted archers should have taken an involuntary Withdrawal Test. I have just done that now (rolled 7) so they would have withdrawn towards the safety of the rear of their nearest friendly melee company]

Also this takes the Yorkist Battle Morale Pool below zero. They must test to see if the whole battle is removed from play (dispersed) ….. they pass.

At this stage the Yorkists are clearly on the ropes with only 2 units left. I suppose one could call the game, but I wanted to see how it played out.

The Yorkists luckily gained some movement opportunities and bit by bit they withdrew, putting a bigger space between themselves and their pursuers, eventually leaving the table. The result is still a complete Lancastrian victory, but in a campaign setting, having some survivors would matter and there was a fun element to playing the escape out.

Conclusions (if you are still reading this :-) ).

I really enjoyed that. Having regard for this being a first game after reading a new innovative set of rules, it went well. Internally the rulebook is quite well signposted (but misses an index) and once you start replaying the same process over and over, then even in a short game like this, by the end of play much of the core system is embedded to memory.

I will now do a full re-read of the rules to better appreciate them and no doubt pick up on some additional nuances and see some playing mistakes pop out!

Did it deliver Wars of the Roses? I felt it did. I like the rule about isolation, it encourages Battles to stay grouped. This reflects the warfare of the period, but perhaps (and naturally) less so for the small scale affairs that I run at my Piggy Longton Imaginations games, sort of big skirmish - we shall see.

New systems pretty much need playing several times before coming to any real conclusions, so next up I will try a few of the smallest scenarios, but at this stage my liking is high. 

I felt that there was a slight emphasis by the designers that archers were more about an opening sequence, that their impact wasn’t that notable and the inevitable course of action was to get to the hand-to-hand bit of fighting with melee troops and so things are geared up to that route. Even the firepower of bows seems a little tame, but that might be good, in that they don’t become too decisive.

All of this is probably right and it may be other rules that I have played that over emphasises archery. I recall an argument that since both sides had plenty of archers that they tended to cancel each other out rather than being decisive for one side and that may be a sentiment that underpins these rules. 

Surprisingly, after my first game, 3 of the 4 archer companies were still in ‘wide’ formation and able to shoot. I have always seen archers as having a worth that excepted them from a melee role. I shall dig out a couple of my Towton books and do a bit of re-evaluation of the archer (I suspect the rule authors will have it about right)!

[edit 2 - as per earlier edit, the left Lancastrian archer company should have gone into involuntary withdrawal when the enemy melee company made contact].

The D12 does bring swings as evidenced in that last bit of melee between archers and Household, with the respective rolls of 11 and 2! There is no rhyme nor reason why one side or the other should spectacularly out-roll the other side, though there are modifiers to  reflect advantages, plus on the results table final results fall into a wider grouping such as lose by 2-5 or lose by 6-9, so the granularity of the final result is softened somewhat by that spread. It is though another area where dynamism of system keeps the game interesting and fluid and it is another area of the rules that I think works.

The imagined ‘look’ of columns for the melee troops disappears as one gets used to seeing in terms of ‘mass’ and ‘wide’ companies. To help my collection spread across some of the bigger battles, until I own more bases, I might have mass just represented by a single base (for me that would be 80mm x 60) and wide can have two bases to show that line effect (wide). The rules suggest 60mm bases and while I don’t think I really want to go there, re-basing down to 60mm could bring some benefits. I think that I will make a couple of 60’s up before I start doing anything too drastic!

Edit 3 - I am giving serious thought to rebasing the melee troops onto 80 x 80 bases and using them as single companies with a few 80 x 40 bases for when mass needs to change to wide formation (for example to man linear defences).

Many (many) years ago, I self published a rather poorly written booklet that included a set of rules to fight Bosworth. A major principle was that each of the major formations (Battles) on each side also took losses as their component contingents took hits, resulting in a grinding down of the Battle’s morale and resilience, making them less effective and more subject to retreating. Recently I have been re-visiting those rules and keeping that important element. The Test of Resolve rules do much the same thing (though better) and I think it was this that first endeared me to the rules most of all. 

In all of my games, I like things like Event Tables to bring specific history to a scenario and I like a bit of chaos that removes the players total control across the table. A commander might set ‘this unit’ on ‘that unit’ and have this unit move ‘there’ or directed to capture the bridge, but beyond that, influencing the outcome would be much less certain and perhaps a commanders view more often than not, once things got going, was simply that ‘we seem to be doing okay over there!’ This sort of thing is in the nature of these rules and the D12 is part of that.

I looked at the narrative of todays game and pretty much liked the flow and direction of play. I suddenly found the three Yorkist melee companies bunched together ready to strike the Lancastrians hard, while the Lancastrians were poorly placed to receive it. Despite playing solo, the card play meant that this game was dynamic enough that the situation suddenly crept up on me, without my all seeing eye starting to prepare the Lancastrian melee troops to better receive that attack etc ….. that sort of control had been wrested from my grip by the card directed actions.

This fell from the Yorkist turning over a Move & Melee card and getting some good movement out of it. The next card the Yorkist immediately turned was also a Move & Melee card. Collectively these two cards falling in succession allowed the Yorkists to do some decent manoeuvring whilst the Lancastrians could only watch. 

It is this very sort of thing that breaks up that problem of a 3 block army facing another 3 block army to give an interesting game and avoiding a simple head on grind.

Overall I enjoyed the initial contact with the rules and am looking forward to doing more with them ….. even the painting brush is eyeing up a new base or two. In those areas that I raise an eyebrow, I am content to believe that the author’s research and knowledge is enough that it casts some of my pre-conceptions and assumptions into doubt and I am happy to go with the rules as written.

I have a sort of mantra that designers generally have a design philosophy to model a subject they are very familiar with. Typically they will have invested hundreds of hours into a design and there will be a cohesive whole to it, which includes the maths under the bonnet working in harmony with everything else - start messing with parts of that and unseen consequences can pop up all over the place, so I prefer to use rules as written …. or just move on to the next thing, hoping that one day, someone eventually produces the perfect rules that fit in with my world view of things :-)

Complexity - Medium. The first read of the rulebook can leave you feeling things are mostly generally grasped, but not fully. Follow this up with a small knock-about game and get some of those processes embedded and the rules then sit at the easier end of medium complexity. I found it fairly easy to move around the rules to find things and the play aids are good. The process themselves are not difficult and I find the number of modifiers easy to hold in memory.

  

Size - With 28mm figures and looking at the scenario books and allowing a D12 to represent inches, a 6x4 table seems to be in the authors mind as a point to base the publication on - but there is good flexibility and all of those values can be tweaked, with smaller scales certainly bringing table size down.

 

Solitaire - I played today’s session solo and didn’t come across any hurdles to that. The player is playing card draw by card draw, with play flipping back and forth between sides  and reacting spontaneously to that, rather than sub-consciously having one side taking counter-measures against every threat (known to the all seeing player) emerging from the other. In that regard, the cards enhance solo play. We do not have buckets of dice and tons of maths, so one player can easily manage the workings of both sides.

 

Time - The rule blurb says 1 hour to under 3 hours depending upon scenario i.e. a single gaming session. My small example of play (while learning and taking notes and pictures) gives me no grounds to doubt that.

Resource Section.

My sister webspace ‘COMMANDERS’  showcases the various figure and boardgame systems that I am enjoying and gives a flavour of where current projects are up to. Link.

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html

There is a website for Test of Resolve - link

testofresolve.com