Never-Mind-the-Billhooks-Deluxe-Version-1.1.pdf

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EVER MI
n
D
THE BILLHOOK S
ELUX
Wargaming late medieval
small battles and
big skirmishes
by Andy CAllan
Book
Contents
Introduction .......................................................................................................................
Albion: The Wars of the Roses ............................................................................................
Core Rules ..........................................................................................................................
3
4
6
Theatres and Conflicts
Gallia: The Hundred Years’ War ...................................................................................... 40
Bohemia: The Hussite Wars ............................................................................................. 60
Helvetia: The Swiss-Burgundian Wars .............................................................................. 74
Italia: The Italian Wars ...................................................................................................... 87
Northumbria: The Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers ............................................................. 100
Lusitania: Warfare in Portugal .......................................................................................... 111
Hibernia: Warfare in Ireland ............................................................................................. 120
Hobby
Painting ........................................................................................................................... 131
Modelling ........................................................................................................................ 142
Kitbashing ....................................................................................................................... 156
Cards, Tokens, and Quick Reference Sheets ......................................................................... 161
Credits
Written by Andy Callan
Edited by Dan Faulconbridge
Copy Editing by Neil Smith
Cover art by Neil Roberts
Photography and Design by Wargames Illustrated
Published by Wargames Illustrated Ltd.
Printed in Albion
Join the Never Mind the Billhooks
community on
Copyright © A. Callan 2022
First published November 2022
This publication features metal and plastic 28mm
miniatures from a variety of manufacturers, including:
1st Corps, Antediluvian Miniatures, Artizan Designs,
Colonel Bills, Crusader Miniatures, Foundry, Giants in
Miniature, Perry Miniatures, The Assault Group, Timeline
Miniatures and Wargames Atlantic. We would like to
thank 1st Corps (Bohemia), Artizan Designs (Italia),
Perry Miniatures (Gallia), Steve Wood (Albion and
Hibernia), and Tim Gordon (Northumbria) for lending
painted figures from their collections to be photographed.
Special thanks to Steve Wood, without whom none
of this would have got beyond NG13, to Pete Harris
and Giles Shapley for spreading the word, to the
‘International Brigade’ of Contributors who have now
taken ‘Billux Dillux’ beyond the shores of Albion, and
to Richard Lloyd for his inspirational modelling work.
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Introduction
By Dan Faulconbridge
ever Mind the Billhooks was originally conceived as a set of rules for wargaming the smaller
battles of the Wars of the Roses (WotR) - the dynastic conflict between the houses of York and
Lancaster in late 15th Century England. The WotR remains the core period for which the game
has been designed and continues to be played. However, the popularity of ‘Billhooks’ meant that
it was only a matter of time before players would begin to look at using the rules for other historical
conflicts of the late medieval period.
So, in light of popular demand to expand the game beyond its Wars of the Roses core, Billhooks Deluxe
extends the rules coverage into seven new theatres and conflicts.
They each have their own section in this rulebook, providing:
1. Background to the period/conflict
2. Changes and alternatives to the core Billhooks rules
3. Additional Special Rules
4. Scenarios
The rules in the new theatres and conflicts sections of the book have been developed by the original
author Andy Callan and a team of fellow Billhooks players and enthusiasts. They are not intended to
‘cross-pollinate’. For example, a game between a Hibernian army and one from Italia will not work
well, nor is it intended to do so.
At the back of this book you will find sheets of Playing Cards and Tokens, along with Quick Reference
Sheets for use in all the different Billhooks theatres.
If you are new to Billhooks or a Wars of the Roses gaming purist, you should first turn to the ‘Ten
Point Summary’ on page 7 and then get to know the Core Rules. However, if you care to look beyond
the WotR and take your gaming into other late medieval periods, you will find much to enjoy in the
wargaming opportunities offered by Gallia, Helvetia, Italia, and the other theatres and conflicts covered
in this book. You might also use the troop statistics and Special Rules in those chapters as a tool kit to
expand the game even further afield.
Billhooks Deluxe concludes with a comprehensive Modelling, Painting, and Kitbashing section
provided by Richard Lloyd, aka Captain Blood. You will find his guides, tricks, and tips invaluable for
extending your Billhooking beyond the gaming table and onto the hobby desk.
Without further ado, let’s turn over the page and begin our journey into the world of Billhooks Deluxe,
beginning with an introduction to the rules’ core period, The Wars of the Roses..
Never Mind the Billhooks was first published in August 2020 as a free rules
supplement with Wargames Illustrated magazine. This pre-release version
of the rules was the springboard for what has become Billhooks Deluxe.
Billhooks continues to be well supported in the pages of Wargames Illustrated
on a regular basis with articles featuring optional rules, periods, and modelling
guides expanding the Billhooks gaming experience beyond the rulebook. You
will also find a dedicated ‘Never Mind the Billhooks’ page in the ‘Gaming’
section of the Wargames Illustrated website.
There is also a lively Facebook Group where Billhookers exchange hobby
projects, debate rules, and describe their Never Mind the Billhooks games.
NEV
THE B
ER MIND
ILLHO
OKS
Never
Wargam
Small Bat ing Big Skirmis
hes and
tles in th
e Wars o
f the Ro
By And
ses
y Calla
n
Mind the
Billhooks
Dan edit.i
ndd 1
04/08/2020
20:55
3
Albion
“The Wars of the Roses were unfortunate in their
historians”,
according to Sir Charles Oman, writing
nearly a century ago. The contemporary sources are
partisan or contentious at best, or more often simply
fragmentary or non-existent. Despite some recent
advances in battlefield archaeology, this remains just
as true today. This means that anything I might say
about that history in the following paragraphs may
be open to challenge.…
Possibly because of all this uncertainty, this period
has always proved fertile ground for history buffs,
zealots, cranks, dramatists, and novelists... and
wargamers, of course, who share certain qualities
and enthusiasms with all of the above groups.
While the conflict we now call The Wars of the
Roses extended from the First Battle of St. Albans in
1455 to Bosworth in 1485 (even then a case could
be made to extend this period back to Shrewsbury
(1403) and forward to Stoke Field (1487) - see
what I mean?), it has been calculated that active
campaigning went on for no more than a total of
around 60 weeks over those 30 years. Most of the
population simply got on with their lives while
the Mafia-like noble families and their retainers
fought a series of short turf wars to determine
who got to be top dog in the legalised protection-
racket that was the system of government at the
time. By the end of it, the warring houses of York
and Lancaster had managed to exterminate each
other so successfully that Henry Tudor, with only
the flimsiest of claims to the succession, was left as
virtually the last man standing. Even so, he and his
namesake son would pursue the last vestiges of the
Yorkist line with an obsessive vindictiveness, which
ended only with the beheading of the 67-year-old
Countess of Salisbury (daughter of the Duke of
Clarence - of ‘butt of Malmsey’ fame) in 1541.
ThE WAR S OF ThE ROSES
By Andy Callan
The battles of the period ranged from short and
relatively bloodless (Losecoat Field, 1470) to
long and brutal (Towton, 1461), but all of them
represented a distinctively English way of warfare,
which avoided elaborate manoeuvres or protracted
sieges to focus instead on trial by battle as the
supreme arbiter of political disputes.
The overwhelming majority of the combatants
were the ‘traditional’ English troop types - Archers,
Billmen, and heavily armoured Men-at-Arms.
Fighting on foot, in the style made famous in France
during the Hundred Years’ War, was standard
practice. We know of only two battles definitely
involving charges by mounted knights - Blore Heath
(1459) and Bosworth (1485) - and both proved to be
failures. Light Cavalry ‘Prickers’ played their part as
either a sort of ‘Military Police’ or in the pursuit, but
only rarely saw any use on the battlefield (certainly
at Tewkesbury and possibly at Towton). Foreign
mercenaries, such as Handgunners, Pikemen,
and Irish Kerns, put in an occasional battlefield
appearance but rarely (with the possible exception
of Bosworth) made any noticeable difference to the
outcome. Continental developments in the art of
war passed England by, and Flodden (1513) would
be fought and won by the English in the old style.
More important perhaps than weaponry and
tactics, the threat of treachery hung in the air over
many of the battles and proved decisive in several
of them, not only Bosworth - best known to us
through Shakespeare’s dramatisation. It left the
Commanders of the time anxiously looking over
their shoulders not sure who to trust, which makes
their obsession with bringing their differences to
the chancy issue of battle hard to understand from
a 21st Century perspective.
4
But these, like all historical figures, were men of
their own time and culture, and their character
and motivation is hard to judge from across the
centuries. Amongst them, we might have our own
personal favourites and for the most dubious of
reasons. For what it’s worth, my sympathies are with
Edward IV, who could be inspirational and decisive
when it really mattered but lazy and hedonistic
the rest of the time. I reckon he would make good
company on a night on the town! Unlike the pallid
Henry VI, himself the grandson of a usurper, who
no doubt would have willingly resigned the crown
if only his wife had let him.
Be that as it may, I have not let any personal
prejudices about the respective claimants to the
throne of England affect the writing of these rules.
All tabletop factions are equal, and the various types
of troops perform according to my own reading of
how things panned out on the battlefields of the day.
A typical battle would open with some indecisive
skirmishing and jockeying for position followed by
an exchange of archery barrages. Unless one side
had significantly more of them (as at Mortimer’s
Cross or Stoke Field), the opposing longbowmen
usually cancelled each other out. In any case, once
their arrow supply was used up, the decisive fighting
came down to the Melee specialists - Men-at-Arms
and Billmen - with some ‘hard pounding’ until an
incident on one part of the field led to a domino-
like morale collapse of one of the armies. Skilful
generalship could not win you the battle without
some significant assistance from Dame Fortune.
That makes Edward IV’s unbroken run of victories
all the more impressive - he certainly rode his luck
on more than one occasion.
In Billhooks, it’s just the same - you can try all the
clever tactics and fancy manoeuvres you like but it’s
all largely down to the turn of the cards and the roll
of the dice.
The more I play the game and read other players’
battle reports, the more I have come to realise that
I have created something in Billhooks that is less of
a traditional wargame and more of a mechanism
for generating tabletop battle stories. Part by design
and part by happy accident, the card-driven turn
structure and random events combine to produce
a game narrative that consistently mirrors a typical
battle of the time.
Although the game was originally designed for
smaller battles (like Nibley Green, 1470), some
players have successfully used these rules to play-
out historical re-fights of major battles on a scale
far beyond anything I originally imagined. Yet they
still produce outcomes very similar to real events.
An epic recent re-fight of Towton, for example, with
over 1,500 figures in battle-lines fifteen feet long,
went down to the very last turn, after six hours of
play, with a decisive push by Edward IV’s household
Men-at-Arms, led by the King in person, wrenching
victory from the very jaws of defeat.
But you can have just as much fun in an hour or two
with around a hundred figures a side on the dining
room table. And because so much is down to blind
chance, you don’t invest as much ‘emotional capital’
as in a more traditional wargame.
You will find yourself as much a witness to
battlefield events as a protagonist, and so, in the
words of Kipling, you can more easily:
“...meet with Triumph and Disaster,
and treat those two imposters just the same.
”
Who cares who won? Fancy another game?
5

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