Baroque!

The last few months have been enjoyably spent learning Baroque! It's the Renaissance / Pike & Shotte versio of Impetus but is a bit simpler (so faster to play)  and makes for a very enjoyable large game. I was introduced to it by a fellow SLW club member who - as a lockdown project - had built 6mm 1600s era Ottomans and Poles (see pics below), and that set the ball rolling.

Turks v Poles 6mm big battle

Close up - Impetus & Baroque rules use large stands so its easy to construct a complete 6mm battalion on a 15mm scale stand

 

 

Now, as any fule knoes, a 1500's era Renaissance army is just a late Medieval army with some extra (even more gaudily) dressed pikemen and arquebusiers, plus some Reiters with boar-spears and Millers (fully armoured cavalry replacing lances with pistols). I had already converted my Medieval Venetian army to the high Renaissance using this evil trick (plus in 15mm you can't see whether the old school Stradiotti, Elmeti, Leggiera et al are packing pistols between their thighs, so they transform from Medieval to Renaissance without a hitch).

I also have a Medieval Ottoman army,  so for an opponent to Venice I painted up some Janissaries and Balkan bandits with arquebusses. Painting loads more later cavalry also was not necessary - I read that (i) Turkish cavalry were reluctant to let go of their lances till well into the 1600s, and (ii) all those pictures of Spahis in Turbans are largely artists' pictures - when the going got tough, the Spahis put on their helmets. Instantly all my medieval muslim heavy cavalry became Renaissance cavalry (its rude to look between a Turk's thighs to see if those bulges are pistols or not...). 

Below - The Renaissance Turk module being built to attach to my Medieval Muslim Menagerie - Janissaries and Balkan bandits, plus I painted a unit of turban wearing troopers to be easily identified as the Sultan's own Qapukulu guard. Baroque also likes generals to be easily identifiable so the subgenerrls have impressively large flags and the magnificent Sultan has a magnificent flag, base and kettle drummer

 

These "Very Late Medieval" armies are timed to be around mid 1500's AD (i.e. when crossbows are still around, the knights are still in all their plate and finery etc, and billmen still had a job) as we all wanted to field all our Medieval toys. The Baroque rules start at c 1550 AD, and Impetus stops at c 1520 AD, so it was a question of which rules to use for c 1550 Renaissance games. The only solution was to field the same armies in Impetus and Baroque to see which we liked most. First up were my Venetians vs my johnny-built- lately Ottomans.

The Serene Republic and the Sublime Porte scrapping over some Greek island. Turks on the left. Big cavalry battle (bottom of pic, close), Venetian pike moving against the Janissaries cowering in the woods (centre) and out of pic (top) the Stradiots and Akinjis fought with dash and elan to outflank each other.

 

 

Comparing the two rulesets for this "between the wargames rules" period: Impetus handles the earlier weapons much better - if you want to use all the bows, crossbows, infantry pole-arms etc and want all teh detailed differences then use Impetus, as Baroque largely downgrades and abstracts these older weapons. But if you want a faster, less detailed game and use those arquebusses (usually unloved) like a boss, use Baroque.   

A note about bases - Impetus and Baroque use big bases whereas many other rulesets use smaller stands. In 15mm scale the Impetus base is 8 cm frontage, but the Baroque one is 12 cm. That 12 cm is (I think) so players who had existing Pike and Shot armes (typically based in 4cm frontage stands) could easily play Baroque without rebasing. Stands of shot each side of their pike stands is teh standard way of and fielding a pike and shot battalion. 

But in 1550 AD the Pike units still mainly have shot directly in front of the pike, so you can field shot at 8 cm frontage and then pile the pike ranks behind to get that deeep depth. Besides, the bulk of all our 1500's Renaissance armies' troops are drawn from our later Medieval ones, built for 8cm Impetus frontage - and no one was going to to rebase them all!

For what its worth, in both test games the Turks came out the winners, in pretty hard fought encounters - mainly because the Italian plated and plumed knights and "light" cavalry (aka more knights in full plate and plumery, just on unarmoured horses) - the best mercenaries money could buy - performed appallingly badly. The Serene Republic was somewhat fretted!

The best moment, across both games was (I think it was the Baroque game version) when the Turkish Zamburak unit (light guns on camels - who needs a fantasy army!), which had been hopeless in all the games so far, was charged by fierce, rapacious, moustachioed Venetian Stradiots wielding lances, sabres and pistols (you get the picture - dashing film star heroes vs nerdy popgun peddlars) . Clearly the gunners' route to paradise happening in real time. But the gunners finally found their mettle and discharged canisters full of dice pips, blowing the Stradiots off the table - they were probably more surprised than anyone!

But you could see how Turkey loses its "edge" in the Baroque era, as (cheap) infantry with shot starts to fear non-shock bow armed cavalry far less. Also, pike + shot fromations, even this early era version with arquebus, is a step up from the medieval equivalent (you can see why the Turks started to use a lot of battlefield obstructions and artillery in their centres) 

Close up - the real business end of a Renaissance Venetian army - mercenary Pike and Shot in ludicrous clothes and codpieces. Plated & plumed knights are still noble but more marginal. The times they are a changing....

Next up, another of our club members had readied his Hungarians for some Baroque action. Post Mohacs, Hungary had sort of stagnated in this era so doesn't have the amount of firepower of other countries (aka less new stuff to paint to get their Renaissance army going) but they still have a lot of good cavalry.  They and the Ottomans squared up.....

Below: Ottomans to the left,(Janissaries on the hill, left centre). Those Hungarians may be old fashoned but they have a lot of big, nasty blades in the centre - and their shooting also proved to be annoyingly good - and did I mention a lot of good cavalry. This time, the Hungarian noble knights (a cut above the Venetian mercenary ones ) turned the game by crashing through the Turkish Spahis (see top left corner of pic - those are Hungarian knights in hot pursuit of fleeing Turks).

 

In conclusion, Baroque is a great fun as a ruleset, good for doing quite big games, but it's more aimed at the post bow-and-bill Renaissance armies

Other players are readying their French and Spanish armies for more 1500's Renaissance battles. My next project is to build a few bitz to push my Ottomans to c 1650 (hanging onto those lances and helmets...) to take on my French....