Isandlwana - Laundry Day Rules - 2nd Rinse

Some slight additions.

Added: close order and defenses to the melee and morale sections.

Unfortunately we decided that with omicron sweeping our communities that we could leave our refight of the battle until another day. It would have been nice to do it on the anniversary but not essential. Anyway, I'm not ready yet. I might have been but once that decision was made I slacked off somewhat so I am a bit behind schedule.

I have been tinkering with the rules, adding bonuses for close order and defending defenses. And also a Yes/No aspect to the Fate Table. 

Another thing I might add is an answer to where Durnford's ammunition supply ended up. Vause's troop escorted it to camp but thereafter it is not mentioned, and of course, Durnford and the men with him had no idea where it was, hence their ammunition supply problems. AFAIK no orders were issued to set up a camp from Durnford's column, though if there were then presumably it would have been on the South end beside 1/24th. As I see it, the wagons could have been left on the Western side of the Nek, or moved to where this new camp might be established, or perhaps moved up to the NNC camps. So when an NCO or Officer is sent to retrieve ammo he has a bit of a problem. From accounts of the battle the ammunition supply was not located, so I'm guessing it didn't have a big sign on it! I'm thinking a random draw of chits from a bag, with one draw per turn and only one chit being the correct location. If somebody thinks to ask Lt Vause then they get two chits.

Isandlwana - Laundry Day "Bloody Spears!" edition (Now in Tabloid!)

 

Page 1

Page 2

This is the most recent version of my "Quick-and-Deadly" Zulu War rules: Laundry Day - "Bloody Spears" edition. Note that under these rules the players are intended to take the role of Imperial Officers, while the Zulus are controlled by the referee. That said, I intend to make the British players make all the Zulu die rolls themselves; I'll just move the bases and deploy the Induna as necessary.

Zulu movement is pretty much pre-programmed by the actual events of the battle and so there is little referee input required anyway, except for the question of when to employ the "Induna Inspiration" rules. Each wing of the Impi, and also each regiment, has 1 or more Induna, who function as "Fate Points" to try and inspire the pinned down regiments to action. The Induna is placed on the table the turn before it is used. The following turn during movement, and as a regiment is being activated, the roll is made on the Fate Table to determine how successful the Induna is at inspiring the unit.

Armatura X

 

Armatura X - Front

Armatura X - Back

The latest version as of Aug 11, 2021. The final version? Who can say?!

Note: I find that by opening each page "in it's own tab" (Right Click option) I can enlarge it to make it easily readable.

I have to start thinking about Battle Magic and about doing a functional "Cheat Sheet". My goal of getting a complete set of rules onto a single sheet of paper (back & front) is almost complete. Paper size: Tabloid (11" x 17") - which might be considered "cheating" b/c it is so large but I don't care. ;-)

Lohwand: Armatura, ver 6

 

Made some changes, 

including getting the version correct!

Lohwand: Armatura, ver 5.0

 

Here is the latest iteration of my Armatura rules, version 5.0, though as you can see I need to do some more edits. (I got confused as to how many versions I had made and discarded.) Some changes to both front and back. 

For one thing, I changed the rules for Army Morale. I realised I was referencing rules that were not on the sheet, which kind of defeated the "all-the-rules-on-the-cheat-sheet" objective. It possibly fails that in other ways; I need to vet it again to be sure.

I also changed a couple of the Command Actions, and have gone through and made sure that I used the same format for abbreviations throughout.

The morale test has changed as I finally realized that it didn't need to be an opposed test, and was probably better that it wasn't. I've tried to add a mechanism to allow the Saxon Fryd to pursue fleeing (retiring) Normans out of their formation. Not sure yet if it works.

And I'm thinking that Staff Slings probably should only have a ROF of 1.

Under Armatura each unit, be it a cohort, squadron or warband, has three primary traits: Virtis, Disciplina and Labor. Virtis is its combat ability, Disciplina represents discipline and morale, and Labor is the unit's engineering skill. A unit may also be designated as having an Exceptional Leader. 

There is assumed to be an overall commander, with sub-commanders in charge of left and right wings, and any reserve. Commanders have another trait called the Tactics Rating. (I tried to find the latin translation. I thought it would be "Tactica" but it seems not to be the case. Or maybe my Google-Fu is weak!) This rating determines the number of cards in their hand. It is assumed all officers have the rating, but it is only determined when relevant. i.e. if a centurion were promoted to command a detachment.

I need to sort out the "Well Led" and "Exceptional Leader" designations b/c I notice they are overlapping somewhat. 

Lohwand: Come Together

The Beetles - Abbey Road

Things are starting to come together with my Lohwand campaign. I'm advancing on a wide front, what with tinkering with rules (see my Armatura posts), and pondering map scale, to doing research on the Roman World. All aspects of the Roman World. Lots of reading: books, lots of books, magazines and PHD papers from Academia.org not to mention the online sources: blogs, re-enactment sites, and the like. I'm going to have to set up an "Appendix N" page to highlight the sources.

As stated before, the Tharkallan Empire is my Rome. I even called them the "baddies". Sort of an evil empire, with the goal of World Conquest. That was probably a bit harsh. Lohwand certainly has other "Baddies" and to say that the Tharkallan Empire will turn out to be the worst of the lot is a bit pre-mature. It might not end up that way at all as the campaign plays out, for it is my intention for it to play out as it will, with only as minimal direction from myself as necessary.

Comparing Tharkalla to Rome, I see I've already got things backwards, giving them Britian (i.e. Granbretton, in my campaign) before they have Greece or Egypt or Spain. (The Lormyrian League region, Stygia and the region bordering Shem on my Lohwand maps.)

Lohwand

That is fine. It's a fantasy campaign after all, not a historical one. I'm afraid they aren't going to get to Aegyptus/Stygia for a little while yet as there is an internal revolt they have to suppress first, in the provinces of Voria and Bisset.

This is not my idea completely, but rather comes 1) from the Everway card results for those provinces and 2) the arrival of the comet, which I posted about earlier. The comet has quite innocently provided an interpretation of the Everway cards that might just fit!

More later...

Later...

The Heartland Provinces

The Western Heartland

Some more mapping, this time trying to detail a bit more the Heartland Provinces of the Tharkallan Empire. Borrowing names from popular works liberally here: Michael Moorcock's "Elric", Greg Stafford's Lunar empire (Glorantha), R.E. Howard's Conan stories, Tolkien, ERB's Barsoom.

The Tharkallan Heartland Provinces I listed previously: Jharkor, Dharijor, Dharjiin and Doblian. The Western Heartland consists of Kostaddi and Karasal, recognized only after they were conquered and incorporated into the Empire. The Heartland Legions are raised in these six provinces.

The other Tharkallan provinces, like Nemedia, Voria, and Bisset, do not have the same status; the legions raised there are the equivalent of Ancient Roman Auxiliary legions. They do not serve in the province they were raised, but are posted elsewhere in the Empire. 

Map Scale

I've decided two things, or at least am pretty sure about two things: 

1) I'm going to use kilometers as the unit of measure. I had toyed with using tsan (from Tekumel) but decided it was too much monkeying about and would needlessly complicate things. (A tsan is 1.333 km);

2) I think I've settled on how "big" Lohwand is, making 50 km roughly the width of the capital 'O' (Font: Book Antigua).

I've been playing around with making scale rules to show on the maps. I just have to come up with a way to ensure they remain consistent at the various zoom levels as I highlight one region or another. I think the key is to insert the scale into the region before I zoom in to do a screen-cap, move it about to a suitable spot where it isn't too much in the way, and then do the "print screen" to put the image on the clipboard. I didn't do that for the second map shown above. I just sort of fudged the scale "by eye".

Lohwand: Armatura v4.0

  

Some slight changes and additions...

Lohwand: Armatura v3.0

Armatura v. 3.0 (Front)

Following on from my earlier post I have again revised the front of the Armatura cheat sheet to reflect the new ideas. Also, I realized I had the nomenclature all wrong for the cards, calling the "court" cards "suit" cards. Apologies if that caused some scratching of heads! 

The main changes are that now, within the colour block that a player uses for activations - i.e. red or black, one suit is considered "higher" than the other. So Hearts and Spades are "high", Diamonds and Clubs are not.

Having made the changes, I now see yet another: under "Initiative" I say that Aces are considered "high" for that purpose. It should read that they can be "high" i.e. 14 or "low" i.e. 1 as the player wishes. Also, "high" suits can be used to break ties. That is, a 7 of Hearts (high) would beat a 7 of clubs (low).

I've also tried to cover the end of Game a little better. I'm thinking about it from a campaign perspective, rather than the "Sunday afternoon" sort of game. So if a side is reduced to the point where it fails the Army Morale roll and has lost, then there may be pursuit or there may not.

If there isn't then it is essentially like a typical game where it just "ends"  with no more fighting. The losing side is assumed to withdraw from the field as they can with no more game-play.

If, however, there is pursuit, then the losing sides units have to attempt to withdraw from the field. The units all now have Fear as a modifier, though the better units may not be too affected still. Some units that were already fearful (i.e. militias) now become terrified as well, so that should mean they collapse in short order.

Lohwand: Aces Wild!

While re-editing my Armatura cheat sheets I am recognizing nuances I hadn't noticed before.

I am already using the D10 to represent eleven values, with the '0' representing a '10' or a '0' depending on circumstances. The "Counting Zeroes" concept.

Yesterday I realized that the Ace in a deck of cards is essentially the same, with the ability to be either the highest card or the lowest. So how can I incorporate that feature? I have some ideas.

Then, today, I recalled how a friend had good and bad events in a deck based on the two red or black suits - hearts good/diamonds bad - or whatever. So now I am thinking there is room for further variations to be added to the card activation.

Example:

One side is activating on red, the other black. If Hearts are better than Diamonds, and Spades better than Clubs what is the effect? One effect could be that if a unit is activated with a Heart or Spade it gains a +1 to the Combat Result* if it is also "Counting Zeroes". 

*There will be a Combat Result table that determines how a melee is progressing.

Another option is to allow a unit that is no longer Counting Zeroes to count them for that activation - i.e. +10% to the die rolls.

A third option is to have Exceptional Leaders, as in Fire and Fury, and provide a bonus if the Exceptional Leader is present when the card is played.

Getting back to the Aces, they could function similar, but could also be linked to the "Counting Zeroes" concept. That is, if a unit is Counting Zeroes the Ace is high card; if not, then it is low card. If high card, they might have a special Command Action similar to those I already described. If low card, the suit of the Ace might still come into play as given in the examples above.

Incorporating these ideas means re-vamping my cheat sheet! I'll have to find room somewhere as they probably should go on the front page of the sheet.  *sigh*

Lohwand: Armatura v2.0

Front

I realized pretty quick that I'd left a lot of stuff out of version 1.0 - not that it would fit on a LTR sized cheat sheet anyhow. So first thing I did was resize my sheet to tabloid, 11" x 17".

Then I set about adding in the stuff I'd left out because of space or just plumb forgotten to include. The new front of the sheet is shown above. I'm still working on the back, but already I've made a few tiny edits to the front so I expect there'll be a version 3 soon enough. :-)

One thing I noticed was a player, most likely me, could pick up a card but then pass, and as long as his opponent, also most likely me, didn't also pass, he could keep accumulating quite a hand of cards. Which sounds likely a shifty, Scipio Africanus sort of thing to do, so I've changed it so it you want to pass you have to discard a card. It still lets you get rid of the chaff but at least your hand doesn't get any bigger. 

I think there are a couple of other edits as well, but here is v2.0 before the edits.

Lohwand: Armatura v1.0

Armatura (Front)

Armatura (Back)

Here is the cheat sheet for the rules I am intending to use for my Lohwand campaign. It isn't a complete set of rules but I've tried to fit on all the essentials.

It still needs a little cleaning up, as I just took the sheet for A Band of Joyous Heroes and modified it. As I intend to use this for my large scale Lohwand campaign I have modified the move stick slightly. The older (lesser) distances still show - please ignore.

Figure scale: 54 to 60mm

Figure ratio: approx. 1:24  (This is based upon my prototype cohort organization.)

Movement and Ranges use a range stick based upon a common bamboo chopstick - see cheat sheet for illustration.

Unit Traits:

Virtis - a unit's fighting ability. Roll equal or under on a D10 to score a "hit".

Disciplina - a unit's discipline. Used for morale checks, and also determine the complexity of maneuvers permitted.

Labor - a unit's ability to perform engineering tasks: build roads and bridges, siege works, mining/counter-mining, and similar.

Zeroes: Recognizing that a D10 is typically numbered 0-9, and that this actually allows for eleven possible options. The concept of "Counting Zeroes" is explained in brief on the cheat sheet. It essentially amounts to a 10% bonus to units that can count it.

Armatura: found in the melee section, this is an ability possessed by certain units (i.e. veteran Roman legionaries) that reflects their combat training and skill, giving them a bonus. A Knight of St. John, or Spartan Hoplite might also have the trait.