Basic D&D: On Pikes

Pikes are sort of the inverse of cavalry. (Last considered here.) As we might say -- considering its most advantageous mode -- Pike attack is intrinsic to the enemy's movement. When used on defense, all of the impetus that a charging attacker might generate (preeminently: cavalry) is turned back on the attacker himself.

Quotes to Consider

The use of pikes (in the general sense of extremely long spear-like weapons) went through several long cycles of use historically -- first by the ancient Greek hoplites in their phalanx formation (where the long weapon was called the sarissa), and later by the medieval Swiss and German landsknechts (where the weapon was in fact called a "pike"). Late in the period, pikes were used in various mixed formations, such as pike & halberd, pike & crossbow, pike & shot, etc.

The general consensus seems to be that pikes did a spectacular job on defense, obviously being able to present a dense thicket of points at great distance to the enemy. In particular, the re-discovery of their use in the Middle Ages was specifically in response to the dominance of European heavy cavalry. The disadvantages seemed to be: they needed an exceptional level of drill and discipline to be used as an effective unit (to march, support, and not get tangled up on each other), they were somewhat more difficult to use in an offensive attack, they were particularly vulnerable to loss of cohesion in cases of rough terrain, and they were overall less flexible in their use than other types.

Robin Lane Fox writes this description of the Greek phalanx in his biography Alexander the Great:

Sarissas were to be held erect and on command, the first five ranks were to lower them for the charge and swish them in perfect time from left to right... On the first rapid strides forward, the main enemy fled in panic from the hill-tops, scared by the disciplined drill and the sound of the war-cry. [Alexander the Great, p. 84]

Two classic examples which highlight the weaknesses of pike are the Battles of Pydna and Cynoscephalae, in each case seeing otherwise strong Macedonian phalanx-type units lose out to Roman sword-and-shield bearing legionnaires when they met on rough or confused terrain. C.W.C Oman, in his Art of War in the Middle Ages, refers back to these battles when discussing Swiss pike vs. Spanish sword battles in the 1500's: "the old problem... was once more worked out... Then, as in an earlier age, the wielders of the shorter weapon prevailed." [p. 108]. He then quotes from Machiavelli's Art of War:

When they came to engage, the Swiss pressed so hard on their enemy with their pikes, that they soon opened their ranks; but the Spaniards, under the cover of their bucklers, nimbly rushed in upon them with their swords, and laid about them so furiously, that they made a very great slaughter of the Swiss, and gained a complete victory.

Oman then continues:

The moment a breach had been made in a Macedonian or Swiss phalanx the great length of their spears became their ruin. There was nothing to do but drop them, and in the combat which then ensued troops using the sword alone, and without defensive armor, were at a hopeless disadvantage... Machiavelli was, from his studies in Roman antiquity, the most devoted admirer of the Spanish system, which seemed to bring back the days of the ancient legion. Yet even he conceded that the pike, a weapon which he is on every occasion ready to disparage, must be retained... He could think of no other arm which could resist a charge of cavalry steadily pressed home... [Oman, Art of War in the Middle Ages, p. 110]

Rules from Chainmail

Chainmail has several special rules for pikes in its mass combat section, including this one: "All troops formed in close order, with pole arms, can only suffer frontal melee casualties from troops armed with like weapons. While a Knight armed with a lance could attack a halberd formation, he could not attack a formation of pikes." [CM p. 40: Combat Tables]

However, the man-to-man combat section is almost silent on the issue. On the first turn, troops with long weapons get the first blow, while on later turns the opposite is true. [CM p. 25] This is adjudicated through numerical weapon "classes" in the man-to-man combat tables, higher numbers indicating longer, heavier weapons (1-12, with pikes of course being the maximum).

There is also a fairly complex series of cases for possible parry options and multiple attacks based on differences in weapon class [CM p. 25-26] -- broadly familiar to AD&D players because it formed the basis for similar rules in the DMG vis-a-vis weapon speed factors [DMG p. 66]. No other comment on number of ranks attacking, or any "cooperative" benefit from anyone other than the single person in man-to-man combat, is made in any of these sources.

On Number of Ranks Attacking

For the function of pikes, the number of ranks that can reach the enemy and attack seems like a fairly important (perhaps all-important) issue. However, sources such as Chainmail, Original D&D, or the AD&D PHB/DMG do not mention it at any point. OD&D Sup-I says of pikes in a footnote, "these weapons are not usable in dungeons as a general rule due to length" [Sup-I, p. 15], and leaves it at that; likewise, the AD&D DMG says, "Such a weapon [pike] is not usable in dungeon settings, or anywhere else without masses of other pikes to support it." [DMG, p. 66]. In Gygax's Swords & Spells mass combat rules, two ranks of pike attacks are possible [S&S, p. 17]; in Doug Niles' Battlesystem, three attacking ranks are allowed [BS1 p. 14, BS2 p. 40]. Again, the longer weapon always gets first strike opportunity, but no other mechanical benefits.

Compare this to historical sources which state that as many as four or five rows of pikes would have their points ahead of the front line, for use against the enemy. For example, see the Fox quote above regarding Alexander's forces. Or again, Machiavelli:

Although I have told you that six ranks were employed in the Phalanxes of Macedonia at one time, none the less, you have to know that a Swiss Battalion, if it were composed of ten thousand ranks could not employ but four, or at most five, because the pikes are nine arm lengths long and an arm length and a half is occupied by the hands... [Art of War, p. 71]

On the Shock of Mass Pikes

A recurring point among many sources is that a properly-formed pike square is practically unreachable by a foe without an equivalent weapon or some type of special advantage. For example, here's one description of the battle of Pydna:

Paullus [the Roman commander] claimed later that the sight of the phalanx filled him with alarm and amazement. The Romans tried to beat down the enemy pikes or hack off their points, but with little success. Unable to get under the thick bristle of spikes, the Romans used a planned retreat over the rough ground. [Wikipedia: Battle of Pydna]

However, probably the biggest weakness of classic OD&D or AD&D man-to-man combat rules is that they are all explicitly written to be just that: adjudicating one man fighting one other man, exchanging blows each round. Although the man with longer reach is given first blow in the first round, there is no allowance for any of the other, supporting men around him to assist in any way. Also: Even in the case of a "hit" there's no rule to prevent continued forward motion by the attacker and delivery of his attack.

Moreover, even if we assume that a man charging at a pike square runs past 3-5 pike tips (and associated interrupting strikes), the chance for a normal man to hit in D&D is so low, it likely won't keep away an attacker for very long. Consider OD&D 1st level fighters, with the attacker in chain & shield (AC4); the chance for one pike-defender to hit him is only 30% (6 in 20). If the attacker runs past 3 such pike-tips, there's still a 1-in-3 chance that he moves in totally unscathed (0.70^3 = 0.34%)! And if the first charger doesn't manage to make contact, then clearly one of the next few attackers will quickly be among the pikes. That just doesn't seem right.

On 3E Reach

3E D&D makes another design decision that at first blush seems reasonable: To generalize the idea of "reach" advantage, such that anyone who can strike at a distance -- whether pike-armed men or giant monsters -- will function the same mechanically [PHB p. 122].

However, upon further reflection, the two situations are really not comparable. For the pike, the defensive benefit is that it is fixed, pointing straight ahead and still; the enemy can thrust himself on it at any time and the tip will be there to intercept him. But for a large creature like a club-armed giant, blocking an attacker must require a properly-timed swing, presumably in a great swooping arc, and one would think it unlikely that it would be timed quite right against a charging hero.

But since 3E allows both types of defender to get a "free attack" against any approaching attacker, we arrive at a situation where giants -- usually pictured as lumbering and slow (in several senses) -- have the lightning reflexes of a master duelist, always able to snap off a riposte against fighting men running to the attack. This was, in my opinion, a greatly malformed rule -- as was giving giants several attacks per round based on Hit Dice.

Furthermore, 3E defines their interrupting attacks-of-opportunity as technically occurring when a character moves out of a threatened space -- which makes some design sense, as they didn't want a normal sword-vs-sword attack to trigger the action. However, it's greatly counter-intuitive in the case of a defensive pole-weapon, in which you'd think the dangerous stroke comes as you move into the pike-tip zone, and once you are past it you are by definition inside the shaft and unable to be hit.

Finally, the 3E system specifies by default that any defender only gets one such attack-of-opportunity per round (without some special and rarely-taken Feat), such that any follow-up attackers after the first can move in absolutely unimpeded. Again, this makes no sense in the context of a pike, simply being held straight out and forward, such that it is in the path of any onrusher who might approach.

In general, I feel like the 3E decisions on this point are, while initially clever-sounding, in every case exactly the opposite of the correct design choice.

Some Suggested Fixes

In light of the foregoing, we might look for some brand-new rules to add to the relative silence of OD&D and AD&D regarding pike formations. Can multiple ranks attack on defense (or otherwise)? Can multiple files to the side multiply this attack? Should there be a bonus to-hit, possibly from the density effect (less space for the incoming attacker to dodge to the side)? Should a non-fatal hit stop the attacker's forward progress, foiling their attack (really of minor effect, granted the low hit frequency)?

And other concerns quickly arise: Once one attacker rushes in (possibly being felled from the pikes), can other attackers follow in behind, during the same round? Do defenders get multiple interrupting attacks per round, or just one (as is explicit in 3E)? Do pikes drop victims on the ground, or hold them skewered upright (possibly blocking follow-up attackers)? Does a big pile of bodies develop, creating cover?

In my experiments, what I've found is that without some radical modifications to the base D&D rules, in most cases the result is routinely this -- a huge rush of attackers come towards the pikes, a significant number are struck down, but inevitably the attackers are in hand-to-hand combat with the pikes at the end of the very first round.

Open Questions

1. How many ranks of pikemen can strike offensively (vary by target size)?
2. How many ranks of pikemen can strike defensively (vary by target size)?
3. How many ranks of pikemen can "set" for double damage?
   
4. Do we allow an attack by pikes to "interrupt" the movement action of an opponent (even by a pikeman not individually the target of the attacker)?
5. Can pike "interrupt attack" any number of attackers during a turn, or are they limited (say, to 1 as in 3E)?
   
6. When used against charging cavalry, can the pikemen all opt to strike against the riders? (Or is it 50/50 riders/horses? Or more likely against the horses?)
7. Do pikemen get a "formation bonus" to hit defensively due to closely-packed spikes?
8. Does a strike by a pike vs. an attacker end the attacker's move?
9. Does a kill by a pike block other attackers moving through the same zone (either by piling up bodies or "skewering" upright)?
10. Do we need to establish special rules to simulate the organization/formation requirements of properly using pike?
11. Do we permit heterogeneous formations (pike & halberd, pike & crossbow, pike & shot, etc.)?
12. If a man drops the pike to use sidearm sword, can he later pick the pike back up?
13. Do pikes cancel the cavalry rider AC bonus?

(Note: This corrects the garbled draft post I made a week or so back. The first few comments are re-posts of comments made at that time.)

Super Saturday: MSH Rank Numbers

From 1984 into the 1990's, TSR produced the Marvel Super Heroes game. It's well-known for its standard list of character abilities (FASERIP), and for having ability and power ranks measured with descriptive names (Remarkable, Incredible, Amazing, etc.) that have associated numbers.

Consider those rank numbers: Overall they have a geometric look to them, with the increment between ranks generally increasing upwards. But there are places that definitely rub me the wrong way, like the long "flat spot" in the middle, where the numbers increase uniformly by 10 points per step (Good to Amazing: scores 10, 20, 30, 40, 50). So, the MSH rank numbers were not really systematically chosen; see the chart above and the table below for specifics.



In the Basic Rules, there's one additional, separate rank called "Class 1000" for cosmic-level entities. In the Advanced Rules, the table is further extended to add Shift Y (200), Shift Z (500), Class 1000, Class 3000, Class 5000, and also "Beyond" (i.e., Infinite; for the Beyonder from the Secret Wars miniseries; see here). As a thought experiment, if we wanted to "smooth out" those numbers, what could we do?

Option One: Exponential Trendline

The most standard way of resolving this would be to use a "line of best fit", in this case an exponential curve which runs closest to the data points. I used the OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet program for this, and the resulting curve is shown in the chart at the top. The curve of best fit here is f(x) = 1.19*1.52^x (where x equals the order of the rank, i.e., Sh0=1, Fb=2, Pr=3, etc.) and the resulting correlation coefficient is R^2 = 0.98 (measures fitness of curve on scale 0 to 1; i.e., this is a 98% quality match).

If we use this function to compute new rank numbers, and round off to the first 1 or 2 significant digits, then we get the following:



Pretty close, but you can see in the middle of the chart that the Remarkable rank is fully 10 points off where it ideally should be. And, as you can see in the graph at the top, the "flat spot" causes what we might call a "slingshot" effect inwards, thereby missing the values for Unearthly and Shift X.

A sub-option here would be to prioritize anchoring the curve on the endpoints, i.e., temporarily take out the "flat spot" and then interpolate what should go in that region. If we do so, then we get a trendline of f(x) = 1.08*1.51^x, and an improved correlation coefficient of 99%. The rounded numbers then come out as follows:



Option Two: Renard Numbers

In industrial design there is the concept of "preferred numbers" from a logarithmic scale, chosen to conveniently divide into powers of 10, and also to maximize the chance of finding compatible parts of different sizes. One common international standard is called "Renard Numbers", the simplest of which increases by a factor of 10 over 5 steps (and is so called "R5"; i.e., at each step multiply by the 5th root of 10, approximately 1.58, similar to the base in the exponential function above). See here for more detail.

Interestingly, when rounded off to a single significant digit, the R5 series starts off with the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4..., which is the same as the "flat spot" in the middle of the MSH rank numbers. Thus, we might consider using this series for our basis. However, in order to do so we really need to delete the "Amazing" rank (the "flat spot" really is too flat for too long), and add another rank at the low end that I'll call "Anemic" (between Feeble and Poor); then we can use the R5 numbers directly, rounded to one significant digit:



I like this kind of thing because, in theory, we can extend it indefinitely by just remembering the initial sequence of digits {1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 10}. Or, if we want to add a bit more precision to the ranks after Unearthly (as per the ISO-3 rounding standard for R5), then we can get the extended ranks of Shift X (150), Shift Y (250), Shift Z (400), Class 600, Class 1000, Class 2000, Class 3000, etc.

Conclusion

Will I use either of these modifications? No; although I'm partial to the R5-series fix, the values shown in MSH are probably "close enough" for a comic book game, and the burden of changing all the pre-published material outweighs the benefit we'd get from this. However, similar analyses can be made of other irregular quantifications in the game that fail to convert or scale well, such as: Strength lifting capacity, Endurance breath-holding duration, Intensities from heat and cold, etc. -- and by far the most broken of all, Resource rank levels. So, I think it's interesting to think about.

Addendum: Hey, I'm Unearthly! This blog just ticked over the 100-follower count in the last day or so. I really immensely appreciate all of you who take the time to read here, and your thoughtful comments, ideas, and feedback. More to come!

On Choose Your Own Adventures

Last week, Slate had an interesting retrospective on Choose Your Own Adventure books. (James Mal also pointed to this article a few days ago.) In many ways it's downright jarring how much the development of these books parallels the arc of classic D&D as a publishing and artistic concern -- as you might guess from the opening line, "Between 1978 and 1982, entertainment went interactive... Unlike Dungeons & Dragons, which required friends... you could read them on your own." Here are some points to ponder.

The Timeline

According to the article, what would become the first Choose Your Own Adventure book had its inception as "the bedtime story Edward Packard told his two daughters in 1969." It was actually sold to a publishing house in 1976; transferred rights to Bantam in 1980; had an explosive "peak" of growth (hundreds of millions of copies sold), followed by a trailing off of sales; and finally cancellation in 1998. By way of comparison, note that Chainmail with its fantasy supplement was developed in the late 60's and published in 1971; D&D had its biggest spike in sales circa 1979-1982; and that a near-bankrupt TSR was bought out by WOTC in 1997.

"Researching interactive books," Demian Katz, gamebooks archivist, says, "There's pretty much the same pattern in every country. A few come out, they become explosively popular, a flood of knock-offs are released, they reach critical mass and then drop off into nothing. When I first started cataloguing them, around 1998, it was happening in the Czech Republic. That was one of the last booms."

If this trend is true in many countries at many different times, one which starkly resembles that of D&D itself, might we not wonder that such would have been the case regardless of any decisions that might have been made differently regarding the business or game design at TSR in the 1980's?

The Absence of Pre-Defined Characters

I remember one time in school being informed by an English teacher that stories could be written in either 1st-person or 3rd-person, but not 2nd-person -- which of course prompted myself and one or two friends to dedicate ourselves to writing second-person stories as much as we could. Likewise:

But they were committed to Choose Your Own Adventure and in total agreement about the series' voice: the second-person you. After all, the series was called "Choose Your Own Adventure" not "Choose a Fictional Character's Adventure." Using the second person also had another key benefit: "From the outset, we wanted Choose Your Own Adventure books to be non-gender specific," Montgomery says. "It was a conscious decision."

It's also a counterintuitive one, making the books resemble games far more than books. David Lebling, one of the fathers of computer gaming and one of the programmers behind the pioneering text-adventure series, Zork, says, "When you think about the way books work, for the most part the protagonist is a well-defined person and the book is about that well-defined person and it makes sense to say this is a man or a woman. The details are critical to the story. Second-person books, in my experience, have not been all that successful. Second-person games have been pretty successful."

Note that this is exactly the point that makes Dungeons & Dragons itself an awkward fit when attempting to expand the brand as a mark into other media (TV, movies, books, etc.); there aren't any "famous characters" at the core of the property itself. (And now that I think of it, I've heard the same criticism leveled at the way the Twilight books' female protagonist is written -- as something of a blank template onto which the reader can map their own personality and/or desires -- and corresponding weakness as a movie character. Ewww, now I feel a bit icky for having broached that subject.)

The Ubiquity of Death

Classic D&D had a high body count, many "insta-death" effects, and the expectation that destruction could result even from "good" decisions in the face of "bad" die-rolls. Meanwhile:

Many Choose Your Own Adventure fans at the time noted how fixated the books were on death. "One of the running jokes," says Christian Swinehart, a graphic designer who has spent a lot of time studying the structure of the series, "is that every choice leads to death, more or less." Packard and Montgomery were determined to make the books feel "real." Whereas most children's literature comes out of an educational tradition, which requires "good" choices to result in victory and "bad" choices to result in death, they wanted to keep the reader guessing. "My intent was to try to make it like life as much as possible," Packard says. "I didn't want it to be a random lottery but I didn't want it to be didactic so that if you always did the smart thing you always succeeded. I tried to balance it."... "There's no way we could have programmed a moral ending for every story line," Montgomery concurs. "Life isn't that way. Choose Your Own Adventure is not that way. Choose Your Own Adventure is a simulation that approximates the choices that we face in our lives."

Poul Anderson on Alignment

Poul Anderson's 1953 book Three Hearts and Three Lions conceived several of the important pieces of furniture for D&D: Paladins, Scottish-speaking dwarves, the Swanmay, and the D&D-type "True Troll". Also, it provides much of the foundation for the OD&D-style "Law and Chaos" alignment division. I thought it would be helpful to reflect on that here.

Recall that the story focuses on one Holger Carlson, an American-trained engineer and fighter for the underground in Denmark in WWII. In 1943 he is trapped and apparently shot by German forces, after which he wakes up in a "Carolingian" world, which he at turns theorizes may be Earth's past history, or a work of literature, or a parallel universe. As he interacts with various characters in the fantasy world, his understanding becomes clearer (Ch. 3):

Holger got the idea that a perpetual struggle went on between primeval forces of Law and Chaos. No, not forces exactly. Modes of existence? A terrestrial reflection of the spiritual conflict between heaven and hell? In any case, humans were the chief agents on earth of Law, though most of them were so only unconsciously and some, witches and warlocks and evildoers, had sold out to Chaos. A few nonhuman beings also stood for Law. Ranged against them was almost the whole Middle World, which seemed to include realms like Faerie, Trollheim, and the Giants -- an actual creation of Chaos. Wars among men, such as the long-drawn struggle between the Saracens and the Holy Empire, aided Chaos; under Law all men would live in peace and order and that liberty which only Law could give meaning. But this was so alien to the Middle Worlders that they were forever working to prevent it and to extend their own shadowy dominion.

And later (Ch. 11):

This business of Chaos versus Law, for example, turned out to be more than religious dogma. It was a practical fact of existence, here. He was reminded of the second law of thermodynamics, the tendency of the physical universe toward disorder and level entropy. Perhaps here, that tendency found a more... animistic... expression. Or, wait a minute, didn't it in his own world too? What had he been fighting when he fought the Nazis but a resurgence of archaic horrors that civilized men had once believed were safely dead?

In this universe the wild folk of the Middle World might be trying to break down a corresponding painfully established order; to restore some primeval state where anything could happen. Decent humanity would, on the other hand, always want to strengthen and extend Law, safety, predictability. Therefore Christianity, Judaism, even Mohammedanism frowned on witchcraft, that was more allied to Chaos than to orderly physical nature. Though to be sure, science had its perversions, while magic had its laws. A definite ritual was needed in either case, whether you built an airplane or a flying carpet. Gerd had mentioned something about the impersonal character of the supernatural. Yes, that was why Roland had tried to break Durendal, in his last hour at Roncesvalles: so the miraculous sword would not fall into paynim hands...

Super Saturday: MSH House Rules

Here's a post on my current house rules used when playing the Marvel Super Heroes game. This assumes use of just the original Basic set as core rules (available here). As usual, nothing major, just some "small changes": MARVEL SUPER HEROES NOTES AND HOUSE RULES

• Charging: When charging, make an Endurance check at +1CS per space moved through (maximum +3CS). Damage is equal to Endurance or Body Armor, +2 points per space moved (as per the Advanced/Revised rules).
• Dodging: When hit, a hero can declare a dodge (or use a defensive or "shielding" power). Roll an Agility check; if the color at least matches the color of the attack, then it becomes a miss. For defensive powers, an Agility check of at least green successfully activates the power. In any case, the hero loses their next normal action.
• Grappling: If held or knocked down, then only allow use of Body Control abilities and/or Touch Attacks (energy, poison, etc.) until up or escaped.
• Hack & Slash: Sharp attacks bypass Body Armor up to their material strength (e.g., Wolverine's claws, Hawkeye's pointed arrows, Nick Fury's needler gun).
• Hero HQs: Note that each of modules MH1-3 have a playing map of one of the major hero groups' HQ (respectively, the X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four).
• Initiative: Roll initiative via opposed d% rolls and thereafter cycle around the table. (Optionally, add +10 per Intuition difference for the quicker party.)
• Karma for Mega-Heroes: For very powerful heroes, reduce villain awards by as many ranks as their best ability exceeds Amazing. For example, if Thor (Unearthly; +2CS) defeats a Remarkable villain, then he gets only 10 Karma points (Good; -2CS).
• Karma for Teams: Awards are given to each hero (not divided). See "Day of the Octopus" p. 5 and other official adventures.
• Mapless Combat: We find that playing without map & figures, when possible, works very well.
• Opposed Checks: All such checks & intensities are made as per breaking things on p. 8 (Green if lower, Yellow if equal, Red if higher; impossible if more than one rank above for checks of Strength, Resources, etc.).
• Resources: Resources are adjudicated by means of FEAT rolls (as per the Advanced/Revised rules). See other documentation for price-of-goods ranks.

PDF version here.

Sunday Night Book of War

This was a game played the evening of Jan-24. One thing you may notice is that the terrain is different than in prior games; fairly late in the design process I determined that I should double the size of the terrain tiles in use, and halve the number of rolls made for terrain setup. While this keeps the overall expected terrain area the same, it has the following advantages: (1) Speeds setup time by reducing rolls & placements for each player (especially on larger tables, where we reduce rolls from 12 per side to a more reasonable 6); (2) matches commonly used terrain pieces from other games; (3) allows use of aesthetically pleasing in-scale terrain graphics; and (4) matches area of the "stream" pieces that we otherwise use. Lots of compelling reasons for that.

Start -- For setup here, we've rolled a fairly small number of terrain elements (average on this table would be 3 tiles), so the board is mostly open, with one area of woods, and one large hill (both placed by me, for the blue team). Game is played at 200 points. Red army at top has heavy infantry, horse archers, and longbows. Blue army at bottom has all pikes and longbows.



Turn 2 -- BOW action can happen really fast. On the very first move, the red horse archers rode all the way across the table, up the hill, firing at my forces (full move & fire being something only horse archers can do). On that first turn my larger pike unit was immediately routed, while I drove off the enemy longbows on the far right. On turn two, the horse archers destroyed my middle longbows, but I replied with a lucky round of fire on the horse archers, who are about to rout back north off the table ("snake eyes" morale roll visible for the horse archers).



Turn 4 -- Now things get tricky. Red has nothing but heavy infantry left, who are extremely slow, but nigh-impossible to hit (move 6" per turn; hit only on a "6" die roll). Blue has pike & longbows who are both fast but fragile (move 12"; hit on a roll of 4+). In fact, my longbows can only hope to hit the heavy infantry at short range (within 10.5"), so any shooting will put them in a dangerous proximity. The rest of the game is a series of tense feints and maneuvering for position; here, red infantry groups behind the crest of the hill, seeking cover from missile fire.



Turn 6 -- Red infantry has made a move toward my longbows, who dutifully about-face to avoid contact. My pikes, seeing an opportunity, make an aggressive charge up the hill at the rear of the heavy infantry -- they'll lose their special pike defensive bonus on the hill, but have a chance to strike against the rear on a 5 or 6. Note my roll is all 3's, and thus fails.



Turn 8 -- On close combat, my pikes do manage to kill one figure (i.e., 10 men) and rout the smallest of red's units. However, they are hit by the second unit of heavy infantry and routed, while the largest unit wheels around for further support. My pikes are hereafter run off the board.



Turn 12 -- Several more turns of maneuvering, as red infantry again regroup to the west of the hill, allowing my longbows to take the summit. Here the red infantry is at last surging up the hill, taking hits from concentrated longbow fire.



Turn 14 -- In a classic "I shot the sheriff" action, my longbows manage to drive off 2 of the heavy infantry units, but not the 3rd and final one. Here close combat has reached my longbows, and I get to enjoy my own worst-possible roll on the morale check.



Turn 17 -- After fleeing, my longbows manage to regain morale near the far edge of the table (and so does the unit of a single red infantry), so they wheel around for one final shot to win. Unfortunately, these are again all misses against the heavy armor of the red forces, who charge through the fusillade and finish off my men. Another skin-of-the-teeth victory for red!

Oops

I had a rather garbled post "On Pikes" appear today -- I'd written a very rough draft, then went on a trip for the weekend and forgot when it was scheduled -- that I just took down. Hopefully I can clean that up to what I intended and have it visible again in a few days. Those of you who wrote (extensive!) comments, I saved all of those and I'll re-post them myself with the "real" article (or remove them if you wish, based on the new context). Sorry about that!