26: Hex and History: Modelling the Middle Ages in Tabletop Wargaming

Stuart Ellis-Gorman, @DrCrossbows, Trinity College Dublin

Board wargames can provide insight into how the historiography of the Middle Ages has been adapted for an audience of history enthusiasts and can offer unique insight into representation of the Middle Ages in modern society outside of the well tread grounds of movies and television. Historical wargames designers put a lot of research into their games, but they are still limited by what materials they can access, and even when they can access academic materials current scholarship may not answer the questions they are asking. This can force game designers to turn to older scholarship that does address the types of questions they’re asking. Historians like Oman and Burne are often readily available and provide the type of information that one might not find in a more up to date work of military history. This scholarship can then in turn affect the kinds of questions that designers ask when developing new designs, which can create something of a feedback loop.

Take for example Richard Berg’s classic Men of Iron series of games, which uses hex grids and cardboard counters recreate famous medieval battles. Classic hex and counter games like this are the most popular type of medieval wargame. The predominance of hex and counter games subtly pushes forward a narrative that medieval warfare was dominated by the pitched battle. The focus on famous victories like Hastings or Agincourt further cements these events in the popular imagination as the epitome of medieval warfare. Even outside of hex and counter games we can see a battle-centric approach in design. Take for example Columbia’s series of block wargames. This includes games like Hammer of the Scots, Crusader Rex, and Richard III – covering centuries of medieval warfare. In all three, however, pitched battles are common and central to the gameplay experience. Only one of them, Crusader Rex, even includes rules for sieges.

Fig. 26.1: Men of Iron: Agincourt, GMT Games

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Sieges are emphasised in some games – Warriors of God, a strategic game of the Hundred Years War – gives sieges similar prominence to battles. However, it is also a light game with a table that randomly determines the death of leaders during the war – a mechanic that often produces ahistorical results and could almost be called absurdist. It is certainly not a game taking itself too seriously, even its rulebook is light-hearted and comedic at times. Warriors of God is also a Japanese design, and thus rooted in a different historiographical tradition. Medieval wargaming has traditionally not tackled the issues of logistics or politics that dominated in the period.

A more recent development that has shaken the scene up is the release of the game Nevsky: Teutons and Rus in Collision, 1240-1242 which places medieval logistics at the forefront of the play experience – making battles and sieges primarily issues of provender rather than pure military strength. Players in Nevsky must maintain provender to sustain their armies, acquire sufficient transport to move that provender while on the march, and balance their long-term strategy against the limited time that their lords are willing to serve them in battle. Its sequel, Almoravid: Reconquista and Riposte in Spain, 10851086, even adapts the systems of 11th century Taifa politics, adding a central political element to the game. These are the first two games in the new Levy and Campaign series and there are at least eight more in development. The surge in popularity in this series, particularly among designers, gives some insight into a greater desire for more sophisticated and varied depictions of medieval warfare in the hobby wargaming scene.

Fig. 26.2 Almoravid: Reconquista and Riposte in Spain, 1085-1086, GMT Games

Medieval wargaming has long been dominated by a historiography rooted in the works of A.H. Burne and his kind – the study of Great Battles and Famous Victories at the cost of the sieges, raids, and political manoeuvring that are crucial to understanding medieval conflict. There is a promising sign of change, or at least more alternatives, in the form of series like Levy and Campaign but there is still a lot of room for games to tackle the complexity medieval politics and diplomacy and to integrate wargaming with more elements of medieval culture and history. 69