Medieval Wagon Convoy Scenario

 

I fished out an old Tabletop Teaser scenario for our most recent game.  Called "Wagon Train" it is a convoy of vital supplies to a fort or town; with one side trying to stop the wagon train and the other side trying to protect the wagons. We hadn't had the medieval figures out of their boxes for many months so I set this scenario in the Italian Wars with a Milanese wagon train being intercepted by a French force.

The starting positions. 

I had decided to concentrate on the day to day mercenary and utilitarian troop type for this game rather than the battlefield elites (knights and good quality pikeblocks.) The Milanese had a choice of two directions to come onto the table or to split their force. They decided to go for all arriving at  "B".

The Milanese led the convoy with their only unit of Knights (somewhat unenthusiastic Condotta kinights...) Their main issue was starting the game in march column as a formation change card proved very elusive. The column very quickly ground to a halt whilst the knights desperately tried to change into a battle formation. The "Deploy" card was difficult to turn when they kept getting measly amounts of  initiative and being forced to discard useful cards. (This was partly a poorly remembered part of the rules for initiative - my fault there!)

Frustrated by his situation, the Milanese general sent his Condotta knights galloping down the road with the intention of alerting the town garrison and triggering assistance from that direction. This bold move was however what the French crossbows had been stationed in the woods to counter. Their volley of bolts ripped into the passing column emptying many saddles.

To really make their day, the knights next found themselves being charged by a scabby squadron of sergeants, who fancied their chances against the depleted and surprised knights. Predictably the Italians crossed swords for a few moments before breaking and heading for the safety of the town. It was very much a Phyrric victory for the sergeants as their charge and partial pursuit took them well within range of the cannons on the town walls. They quickly found their range and stone shot was soon tearing through the victorious horsemen, prompting them to retire out of range.

Behind the wagon traffic jam some more of the guards had made their tortuous way onto the table. This was more than balanced by the entrance (random timed event) of a unit of Swiss mercenaries from the north edge of the table. The mercenary pikemen were quite keen but unarmoured which could be fatal in the crossbow rich setting they found themselves in.

 

The depleted French sergeants cantered back along the road to see what more mischief they could get into. The Milanese were pushing marching columns of foot past the wagons to give them some cover but the need for speed was leaving them vulnerable in their columns of route formation.

The Milanese militia were not too shabby (or they might have been hangunners, either way they didn't get to use their missile weapons!) In hand to hand they were almost the equal of the Sergeants. However even in their depleted state the French horsemen were able to beat a unit in march column.

More bad news for the Milanese was another unit of good quality mercenary crossbows marching to the sound of the guns. In a fit of enthusiasm the French general also flung forward his Italian levies, which may not have been a realistic threat in a stand up fight but added to the pressure on the stymied relief column. In an attempt to turn the momentum the rallied Condotta knights and some mounted crossbows from the town garrison sallied out to worry the French about their exposed position.

The heroic sergeants finally pushed their luck too far as they sauntered past the set up Milanese crossbows. The unit was pincushioned and the sad remnants left the field. This did though open the way for the Swiss to charge into the wagon convoy before any of the covering Milanese units could interpose themselves. The Swiss duly chopped heir way through the wagons, not even bothering to capture any of the contents for their starving French colleagues!  With the convoy destroyed there was no more point to any heroics and the Milanese retired to leave the town garrison to their fate.

The main learning points for me for scenario design  was that it does not take many units present on the tabletop to give the players plenty of challenges and a lot to think about. (Maybe with a full army of 15-20 units the loss of one is a more slight psychological impact than when you have just a handful...) It also showed up that there is no foolproof initiative system (we used a card based one so that the balance between red and blue would even out but I did slightly misinterpret the rule for discarding action cards and it hit the Milanese side at the worst possible time in the game (mea culpa.) Despite being outnumbered the entire game the French side took their chances and used the freedom of movement to maximum effect.