Italian Wars - Irregular 6mm - Furioso rules

[henjed]

One of my first wargaming schemes, when I 'returned to the table' about 16-17 years ago, was to fight the Italian Wars. I wanted to see massed pike blocks, and daring gendarme charges.  Not being much of a miniature painter, I wasn't concerned about having figures that displayed in grand detail the delightful costumes and armour of the period - so I plumped for 6mm Irregular Miniatures.  I ended up buying more than was sensible from them (and an Ottoman army to boot - to refight what might have happened had Vienna fallen in 1529).

I trawled the early internet for rules ideas, flirted with Maximillian (noooo!) and also with Virtue 'gainst Fury; but couldn't find anything that seemed to suit; I was also massively discouraged by my first attempts to paint the little blighters I had bought and simultaneously intimidated by the number of them (particularly the teeny-tiny, pointy pike-persons).  So I pushed the scheme to one side.

During Covid I decided that I would finally get these now dusty figures painted. I started last September and finished them (not yet the Ottomans) at the end of last month: I was spurred on in part by some good reports (not without reasonable criticisms) of the Furioso ruleset from Alternative Armies; I mentioned it on this forum early last year and Orcs was kind enough to supply with me a QRS he had done and some summary sheets with suggested modifications (many thanks!).

Anyway, I had my first battle yesterday - a wrestle with unfamiliar rules and a period I hadn't gamed in before (in fact, I haven't gamed in anything pre-20th century since I was a teenager).  The rules do indeed needs *some* work on to get them to deliver a game that is workable and not massively frustrating; but there is a lot that is good in them, and they conjure up the rather anarchic nature of military encounters back then - with troops defying orders and charging off into the blue yonder while others just sit glumly on their backsides, while allies prevaricate about entering the fray, and deadly enemies strain across the battlefield to meet in bloody combat.

I have a very few rather poor photos I might try and post. My work iPad has a rather poor camera and the lighting is not great: but both do serve to hide the fact that the figures aren't well painted - something that I have with time come to realise doesn't matter that much, as once I get playing, and the blood is up, they look as fine as fine can be - to me and my gaming sons, at least.

Much fun was had (despite the rule-wrestling), and my son was victorious (as the Imperialists) while my French skulked off back home, heading towards the Alps in a very baroque sulk.

[henjed]

here is the landsknecht pike block that my son decided to split into two blocks of two columns:

IMG_0016 by Michael Hennessy, on Flickr

There's about 400 hundred figures in there, almost 100 per column - and I have painted altogether 16 columns of pike...

And here is some of the complicated action in the middle of the battle, with my gendarmes bizarrely caught between my Swiss pikes and my son's landsknechts....

IMG_0010 by Michael Hennessy, on Flickr

We plan a campaign over the summer: and when the cold returns I will fish out my don't-know-how-many hundred Ottoman figures and start painting them up too.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Looking good there

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Nice

[paulr]

... once I get playing, and the blood is up, they look as fine as fine can be - to me and my gaming sons, at least.

Much fun was had (despite the rule-wrestling), and my son was victorious (as the Imperialists) while my French skulked off back home, heading towards the Alps in a very baroque sulk.

A great attitude to how figures should look

Fun, the reason we have hobbies

Congratulations to your son on his victory

Those figures look good to me, the mass effect definitely works     

[henjed]

Thanks, Paul, Speedy and Kermit.

Painting is a quite the slog for me, but over the last 2-3 years I've painted more regularly and have got used to "just good enough" (3 early WW2 forces for O Group (10mm), 2 forces for 1953 Indochina CofC (20mm) and 2 more for Tunisia 1943 CofC (15mm) - as well as rebasing (and painting some extra) 10mm GWSH figures - about 3 corps worth!).

Playing (and researching and reading) is The Thing.

Mike

[Steve J]

Nice looking game there Mike . Reading and research are part and parcel of the hobby for me.

[Gwydion]

I have some 6mm (H&R) Italian wars figures myself and have been fiddling about with rules for them for some time. I've watched the Yarkshire gamer's YouTube videos on Furioso and was wondering how much I might have to chop them about to make them feel okay for me.
What sort of things did you feel needed doing to them?

(Lovely game by the way -wish I could lure my son away from video games long enough to thrash me in an analogue game)

[henjed]

Hi, Gwydion. Well, Orcs is the expert and I just adopted some of his modifications.

The biggest obvious flaw in the rules is that all units *have* to move their full move if they have a modified d6 initiative role of more than 1. This is crazy in a lot of ways, and I think was intended to create the sort of barely controlled mayhem that this period saw a lot of.  This can easily be changed to allow a choice over whether to move units at all, or their full distance, and such a change wouldn't significantly affect how the rest of the rules work. And the rules still deliver ample scope for mayhem elsewhere.

I increased ranges and movements a little to accommodate a bigger base size (they recommend 40mm base widths but that just doesn't work with Irregular strip sizes, so went for 50mm and modified distances by 25%).

There's potentially a lot of disorder in the game, and a unit disordered a second time while already disordered is destroyed, which seems a bit much to me (perhaps they should take some hits/casualties).

I like the way combat works - you give and take damage and then there are morale rolls so if you came off worse you are *likely* to suffer more as a result of bad morale rolls (effectively being pushed back and taking more hits) but not necessarily - if you are a high morale unit then your enemy who dealt more casualties to you than you did to them might actually suffer more, being more psychologically fragile or less resilient in training.

There's a lot of period flavour in there, and the system flows well for small to medium games: it may become quite cumbersome for larger games, however.

[Gwydion]

Thanks henjed, very useful to have the views of someone who has tweaked the rules (or used a tweaked version) and enjoyed them. Thanks for the prompt answer.

[fred.]

Some great looking figures, great to see some chunky pike blocks!

Furisio seems to be a ruleset with some great potential, but some strangeness to the rules too. Feels like one of those sets where you could do with seeing the author play a couple of games, so that you understand how the rules are meant to play, rather than as they are written. 

I do have the rules, and read them a while ago, but the basing for the rules was very different to what would easily work with my basing, and on top of this some mixed reports about them hasn't encouraged me to get them on the table.