The free ruleset in Wargames Illustrated recently got me thinking why I don’t use my 15mm WoR armies very often. I had to admit that Hail Caesar doesn’t give the right historical feel to those battles. I decided to try and solve the problem, and I feel I’ve been successful. A while ago I picked up (from this forum) the suggested stats. They included having fully armoured men at arms mtd or dismounted in small units only – and not many of them. Retinue bills were classed as medium infantry but with the Stubborn (3) rule to account for the fact that they would have men at arms included to stiffen their resolve. This was a nice historically accurate touch. What was missing was a) the crucially important early arrowstorm which opened the battles, leaving the later battle to resolve itself with a melee after all the arrows ran out; and b) the risk of treachery. The second was easily solved. On a roll of a 1 on a d6 subordinate commanders are ‘suspect’ and modify any blunders by -1. If they get a modified 0 then they will attack their own side. The main issue remained with the firestorm. the solution was to combine bills and bows into one unit; the main factors being as per the bills but with a firing factor of 3 for the bows. The big amendment is this :- each unit can only fire 3 times, but when they do, they fire at double effect i.e. 6 dice. It really does make you fight historically. Try it.
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