Italian Wars: Furioso

 When I decided at the beginning of the year that my final project was not going to be the Seven Years War and I was happy with what I had, I turned to one of those periods we all have but never get around to, one of mine was The Italian Wars. A large display at FIASCO on the battle of Fornovo by Ken Reilly, the Yarkshire Gamer, and the fact I was drawing the maps for Helion's series on the wars from Volume 2 decided me, my last hurrah would be Renaissance warfare. I won't stop adding bits and pieces to what I have or tarting up my terrain but this is my last big period and I expect it to be quite a size by the time it is finished.

Unusually for me I jumped in without a clue about the rules I would use, Pike and Shotte is used, with amendments, by many for the big battles associated with the period, this is not a 20 figures a side played on a two foot board in half an hour wargaming, this is real, old fashioned wargaming, and therefore another plus for me. There are quite a few Ancient/Medieval rules out there which can be tweaked but at the end of the day the Italian Wars start with medieval armies and end with the beginnings of modern warfare where gunpowder weapons begin to reign supreme, also the tactics and organisations, the experiments along the way are unique to the period and do not deserve just to be bolted on to a set of rules dealing with Romans or Crusaders.

I have an online edition of Pike and Shotte and several kind people have sent me their amendments and ideas on how to give them an Italian Wars feel and they are in reserve. Nonetheless I settled on Furioso from Alternative Armies, a surprisingly cheap, black and white publication bereft of eye candy and the eye watering price associated nowadays with such publications.

Furioso was written for the period and is full of Renaissance flavour pertaining to the Wars. There is a basing convention, I found it best to double up my pike bases as they looked better and it helped with moving. The core of the rules is the Initiative roll, each unit gets to roll a die and add or minus initiative points, elite Gendarmes add 2, which makes them hard to control while unenthusiastic troops like Italian Militia have a minus number, making them quite reluctant to do what you want them to do. The units with the highest initiative scores move first, with each side taking it in turn and completing shooting and or combat before the players move to the next unit. How this would work with really large battles I am unsure, perhaps an initiative score for each command, we will see.

I like the combat system, the first phase is to see how many casualties you can deal out, veterans and elite units like the Swiss and Gendarmes have an edge over most troops, you then have a chance to save these casualties before moving to the third phase. This is how the unit feels about what has just happened and even although you took more casualties your morale can help you withstand this and turn the tables on your opponent. Each army has a number of Army Morale Points and as these are lost their will to continue fighting lowers until they break.

I mentioned the flavour of the rules above and this can be found in several sections, Hazzards where Mercenaries can strike, troops will desert or the army can suffer fatigue from a long march, Pre-Battle Events with Papal blessings, assassinations or unknown ground can help or hinder the army. You do not have to bring these into play and I have been on the wrong side of every Pre-Battle Event so far. The last section of the rule book has army lists for all the main protaganists and wars from 1494 to 1551 it also gives you unit cards for deployment and character cards for generals.

Having played four games now Julian and I have not changed much but have dropped the requirement to move the full initiative move whether you wanted to or not, we are also looking at the high instance of being disordered when moving in bad terrain especially if you are lackluster troops and we are not entirely happy with formation changes. It is still too early to have a knee jerk reaction to these and we will see how more games play out. Steve Danes the author is willing to answer any questions you put on the Alternative Armies Facebook page, even after the rules first came out in 2017.

The rules also have a supplement, this has historical scenarios and rules for introducing mercenary captains and solo play. It also allows you to bring in Da Vinci's tanks and flying machines along with all sorts of other inventions to wander off to a place where I would not be comfortable, but that's me.

I have almost completed my French army and it has taken me since March, Julian got the Warlord Games Landsknecht starter army and boxes of cavalry and has done a great job on them, he plans to choose an army for next year and incorporate what he has into it. I myself will be moving on to an Imperial army but I want to get some research under my belt first.

I did some online retail therapy yesterday re The Italian Wars, I want a camp so got a couple of large resin tents from a company in Slovakia, I aim to populate the camp with some characters from Warlord Games, Landsknechts arming for battle and a little bunch playing cards or dice on a drum plus a few civilians. I was going to get some carts but I have some Dark Age types which will do the job. This only leaves fieldworks, the gun emplacements are easy to buy but I might try and build my own palisades.