Warfare in the Age of Discovery

We chose this set because Age of Reason is one of our favorite rules sets and figured that this would be good since it's from the same authors. We were right! The rules allow for the wild swings of fortune that were prevalent in Renaissance battles and the army lists cover the entire period.

WARGAMING THE RENAISSANCE

Besides the Samurai period, this is perhaps the most colorful and unusual period that we game. You have mounted knights, light cavalry, arquebus armed troops, crossbows, Spanish tercios, and of course the Swiss pike units. Since we liked Warfare in the Age of Reason so much, we figured that a set of renaissance rules by the same authors should be pretty good, and we were right. Warfare in the Age of Discovery captures the true essence of renaissance era warfare, namely the chaotic and unpredictable nature of the battlefields of that time.

AOD uses a scale of 1:25 with cavalry units of 6-8 figures and infantry units ranging from 6 figure halberd units to 128 figure Spanish tercios! Each side is divided up into three "battles", or forces, and movement is random for each side every turn. Trying to maneuver units who aren't trained in any formations, plus not knowing what the artillery will do, and the unpredictable combat results table makes this a frustrating, but challenging game. So far, no two games have even closely resembled the others as you never know exactly what your troops will do once the firing starts. You quickly find yourself in the role of a renaissance general, where one minute you think the battle is won and looking at total defeat the next.

There is a wide range of army lists available, from the early Spanish in 1490 to the Thirty Years War. The authors continue to add new and exotic army lists to their site which will let you even play out the Eastern Renaissance battles. While you can find quite a few figures available in almost evey scale, refernce material is another matter altogether. There are several scenario types and it would be fairly easy to build a campaign for any one of the multiple periods represented in the rules. Our forces are currently designed to play any of the Italian Wars from 1495-1550 and include Swiss, Germans, Italians, Spanish, and a wide range of artillery and light troops. We will be moving on soon to building armies for the French Wars of Religion.

15mm figures by Mirliton, Essex, Gladiator, and Minifigs.

Currently, we have French and Imperialist armies, with units of Germans, Swiss, Italians, and Spanish.