I recently purchased a book titled Battles of the Medieval World. This book is awesome and should be in the library of every BattleLore player, and here's why: the book is laid out in such a fashion that it is almost like a compendium of adventures (or battles) for the BattleLore game. This book covers 20 Medieval battles, and for each battle, a brief history of the events leading up to the battle is discussed. A detailed map of the battlefield is given for each battle, including troop type and delpoyment. Information is given detailing equipment, arms, and armor. Using the maps alone would be sufficient for re-creating these Medieval battles using the BattleLore game system. I find the history and background information very useful and interesting as well. There are a couple of sea battles that obviously cannot be used with BattleLore, but all the other battles can easily be translated into a tabletop game of Battlelore using the maps and background information of each battle. I created a blank battle sheet (similar to the battle information contained in BattleLore merchandise). These are just simple sheets where I can handwrite in terrain types, troop types, and victory conditions. I re-created the battle of Tannenberg from this book. This was a battle in 1410 between the Polish/Lithuanian armies and the Teutonic Knights. The Polish/Lithuenian armies made use of mounted Tartar (Mongolian) mercenaries, and I used dwarven cattle-riders to simulate this.
Here's a list of battles covered in detail in this book:
- Hastings, 1066
- Legnano, 1176
- Hattin, 1187
- Arsuf, 1191
- Chateau Gaillard, 1203-04
- Constantinople, 1203-04
- Bouvines, 1214
- Leignitz, 1241
- Peipus, 1242
- Malta, 1283
- Bannockburn, 1314
- Sluys, 1340
- Crecy, 1346
- Najera, 1367
- Nicopolis, 1396
- Tannenberg, 1410
- Agincourt, 1415
- Vitkov, 1420
- Constantinople, 1453
- Brunkenerg, 1471
Anyway, the book is great, and I'm certain any BattleLore player would greatly benefit from a piece of literature such as this. Here's a link to the book at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Battles-Medieval-World-1000-1500/dp/0760777799