Civil War in Arden, revisited

Ross Macfarlane and I have been discussing tweaking the Rough Wooing home rules we use for 40mm Renaissance gaming. Today we took the opportunity to set up a remote game (Google Hangouts for video conferencing rather than Skype) at my house. My Renaissance collection is smaller than Ross's, so that puts an upper bound on a scenario.

I chose to recycle the civil war in Arden scenario I used for a solo game back in 2010. I hope to post a full report later this week, but, in shirt, the scenario involved two similar forces are racing for a bridge on the road to the capital, one led by the ruler, and one by the usurper, so both sides had a functional requirement to not lose the leader...

We spent about three hours actually playing the game, following a discussion period in which we decided what the rules tweaks for purposes of this test would be. Ross played the rebels, and I played the loyalists. At the end of the game, neither army had broken, and neither leader had been killed, although they had both been in the same cavalry melee at one point. The loyalists had the bridge (and therefore could withdraw the surviving troops toward the capital), but the rebels had arguably come out ahead in the casualties, having traded mercenary foot for the Duke's loyalist nobility in the form of their gendarmes.

All in all, it was an interesting game, with some rules writing and review to follow.

I should note that this game demonstrates one of my current little wargaming issues: too many things are interesting. The last three games played were all different scales, different periods, and different rules, and that doesn't begin to exhaust the possibilities.