Waelstowe – solo wargaming in the Dark Ages

After decades of wargaming, it dawned on me how much time movement of figures takes.

I also became fed up with the impact that precise positioning makes; in particular the way that this affects the types of battlefields that I wargamed on, but also how the battlefield looked after a few turns – the position of figures and units just didn’t ‘look right’.

So I started to ‘experiment’ with gridded battlefields.  But it had to ‘look right’.  Then it dawned on me that clump foliage, rocks, single trees etc. could be used to create an aesthetically pleasing gridded battlefield.

Waelstowe is a rules lite game I’ve been creating and modifying for a while now.  It is card driven, with the cards showing which Hero activates (is the Focus of the Story) and what actions he can do.  In the case of Non Player Armies, it has an ordered list of actions, and the human player (me?) works his way down the list choosing which are the most appropriate.

The game is chiefly about Heroes and the whole idea of keeping it rules-lite is to basically use the game as the ‘engine’ for creating stories – the cards and rules throw up the skeleton of a play, which I flesh out.  To help me get in the spirit of things, I invariably have some very early Gregorian chant playing in the background and some ale in my hand.

And that’s were it all went wrong for the Anglians. Wifrith’s men baulked at attacking this mad Welsh knight, so Wifrith himself rushed in, twice. Wilfrith lost contact with his Kinsmen and found himself alone against Hyffaid. Hyffaid, although injured by Wilfrith, managed to fell Wilfrith. At this point a large number of the Anglians ran off and the Welsh secured an unlikely victory.

It was also the end of Edmund the Elder, he’d lost his claim to Anglia.  So I decided to start with another main Hero.

Edmund then gets into a series of wars with the resurgent Welsh, lead by Hyffaid of Dyfed. God forsakes the Anglians and Edmund is captured and has to accepts Hyffaid as his overlord, losing claim to all but Anglia. Edmund rebels and drives out those Anglians that had thrown in their lot with the Welsh. Hyffaid responds quickly and corners Edmund at a small market town on the River Stour

I was the Antagonist (defender if you will) in a solo game against the south Welsh of Hyffaid. I’d lost a couple of solo games already against the Welsh, so I thought even harder about this one. I spotted the way the terrain had been set up and saw my opportunity. If I moved Edwin behind the woods, the Welsh were bound to advanced towards me and their formations break up as they entered the woods. Thus weakened I could send Wilfrith, Edmund’s right hand man to smash the disorganised Welsh.

Alfred the younger was slain in battle and Wessex descended into chaos. Edmund of Anglia, who has sheltered with the kings of Wessex fled to his homeland. Here he gather the demoralised Anglian nobles who had endured years of misrule. After driving out those who opposed him, Edmund gathered an army to drive Halfdane out of East Mercia.