I was captivated when I first saw an image of The Flowers of the Forest in the Homo Ludens backer’s Discord. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before and I was desperate to try it. Sadly, while the game, originally published in 1995, was reprinted in Battles Magazine in 2013 it is very hard to come by and the cost of a secondhand copy can be very high. In a stroke of unexpected luck, however, another member of the Homo Ludens community offered to send me a copy of Battles Magazine #9, game included, for the cost of shipping - an act of extreme generosity. As soon as it arrived I set about learning it with the intention of playing it sometime in the near future, but I quickly found that I couldn’t fully grasp the rules without a proper visual reference so I ended up setting up the game on my coffee table (the map was too long for my usual table). This was a slippery slope that resulted in me inevitably just playing the game that afternoon and I’m glad I did. The Flowers of Forest is one of the most interesing gaming experiences I’ve had all year, although it did give me kind of a headache.
Initial set up - much of the deployment is player’s choice. The English start off map and will have to advance on. Non-artillery units cannot be adjacent unless in combat which creates further positioning challenges. Also apologies in advance for the weird lighting - this game map is too long and I ended up playing it on my coffee table.
The Flowers of the Forest is about the Battle of Flodden, a disastrous defeat for King James IV of Scotland during his 1513 invasion of England - one in a long line of disastrous Scottish invasions. It’s a battle that sits on the cusp of medieval and early modern - while during the gunpowder era it was primarily defined by polearms, the Scottish pikes versus the English bills. It’s an interesting battle that contains both elements of fifteenth and sixteenth century warfare and I think shows some of the complex interaction between new technology and military history - it’s not all linear progress like you would see in a Civilization game. While arguably a disastrous defeat for pike tactics, Flodden would do nothing to dissuade their mass adoption and pikes would be successful in many other battles - in no small part thanks to the fact that the Scottish failure cannot be blamed on their weapon alone. That said, playing The Flowers of the Forest you may find yourself blaming those stupid pikes and their poor CRT when confronted with English bills!
The positioning after the second turn - England brings on reinforcements but they are behind the marsh and will take some time to be relevant. Meanwhile the Scots are wheeling into position to face the advancing English army on the western flank. So far it almost looks like I know what I’m doing.
A sample image of the game’s Order Logs - a helpful way to track what orders you have given your units. It also includes the chances of each Leader having their own orders be implemented should you try and change them without using your overall commander.
My printer is still in storage so I couldn’t make a copy of the Order form - instead I did my own in a notebook. The dividing line shows the orders I gave before play began and arrows indicate when I allowed the unit to just keep following the order it already had.
It’s not the weaponry of the era that The Flowers of the Forest is interested in, although they do play a key part in the game’s balance, but rather the means by which leaders could (or could not) control their armies. While the most visually stunning element of the game must be the long counters, the most distinct feature of its design is how you move those across the map. Orders are pre-planned, you write down what you want your units to do out of a menu of Orders in advance of taking your turn. You can, if you want, write down your Orders for all 8 turns at the start of the game, but you don’t have to. If a unit doesn’t have an Order on its turn it will continue to do whatever the last Order it had was - so if it was Stand it will remain stationary or if it was Advance it will keep moving forward. If you want to change your Orders you have two options - you can send them new orders from your overall Commander or you can try and have their Leader change their orders. For the latter you have very limited options and must roll on the Leaders table, which will usually just make them stop moving but may be the change you desire or a third, possibly undesired, result.
To issue a new Order from your overall commander you calculate the total number of hexes between the Commander and the unit you want to issue a new order to. You then have to roll over that number on a d10, if you come up short there’s a Herald chit that goes on the map and will slowly make progress toward that Unit on subsequent turns. Once it arrives will update that unit’s orders (whether you want it to or not at that point).
There are a few other quirks, most notably that if you want your units to pivot on their axis (and you definitely will) then their leader has to roll successfully on their individual chart that determines whether they succeed in what was actually quite a complex maneuver. This roll is made much easier if your Commander has successfully Ordered them to Pivot. Failing the roll causes your unit to stop dead in their tracks, which could be fine but more often is the worst outcome you could imagine (at least in my limited experience). This whole system makes maneuvering your units very stressful but also absolutely fascinating. Figuring out how far in advance to program your moves at the start of the game (or every time you send new Orders from your Commander) is also kind of a head wrecker. There are optional rules in the game that make the command closer to a more traditional wargame, but I must confess I didn’t even read them because to me the frustrating and weird Order systems are the game’s most interesting feature!
Things go very wrong for the English early on - I foolishly advance my smallest unit right into the jaws of James IV of Scotland’s main force. Being flanked in this game is not good.
That’s not to say that it doesn’t have other things going for it. I’m also very enamoured with how it represents unit integrity. On the main map you have the gorgeous long counters, but actual unit structure and strength is tracked on the sides of the map. Each unit has its own section with a number of columns equal to the number of hexes it’s main counter takes up on the map. At the start of the game you arrange troops in these columns as you see fit from a pool that the scenario gives you - another great series of decisions you will inevitably come to regret several turns later. When combat happens you fight column to column based on which ends of the counters have come into contact on the main map. It’s really interesting and creates some great moments during the game. Much like the orders system I’ve never played anything quite like this and I love it.
James IV decisively sees off his opposition and advances on the flanks of the English wester forces. Meanwhile, English reinforcements enter from the East and things are not looking good for that Scottish flank if we’re honest. This is the kind of thing that happens if you read the reinforcements table as you play. We have also wracked up our first leader casualties - combat is lethal for all involved in this system.
How can you not be excited when reading this?
Speaking of things to love, I think this game won my heart when I was reading the manual and I discovered that the scenarios are based on the interpretations of two classic histories of the battle: Oman and Mackenzie. I love to see historiography represented explicitly in the game’s representation of the battle and even if these aren’t exactly the cutting edge of interpretations of Flodden it is absolutely something I wish more games did! I ended up playing the Mackenzie interpretation, largely because it is by far the simpler of the two. It removes all the cavalry and Scottish highlanders (technically they are still present, but Mackenzie argued they were equipped in a manner indistinguishable from the other pikemen) and drastically reduces the scale of the conflict. This made for an easier learning experience in a game that was a challenge to get my head around. I am very interested in trying the Oman version with those added unit types, it looks like it could really change the experience! I for one am very excited to do something cool with my cavalry and then immediately regret it as they get in the way of all my other troops somehow.
It’s not that The Flowers of the Forest is particularly complex. It’s not simple but the rulebook is short and clearly written. In theory it’s no more complicated than something like Men of Iron. However, it is so unlike anything I’ve played before that I felt like I had to unlearn several lessons I’d picked up in my early explorations of Hex and Counter gaming and learn multiple new gaming concepts, not just rules. I definitely got rules wrong in my initial play but that’s pretty normal for wargaming and the game is short enough that I don’t feel bad about just pushing through and finishing despite my errors - I can always set it up and play it again.
The one fault I would have with its complexity is that the manual, while well laid out for learning the game, could really use an index or other means of quickly referencing some of the more niche rules. There are also a few areas that could have used a bit more clarity, particularly around rules it exempts from the manual and just puts on the Player Aid. Most of these are pretty intuitive but with a game that deviates from what I’m used to in so many places it’s nice to have the assurance that these rules work as I expect!
The Scottish position crumbles in the face of the English bills. James IV marches on like a juggernaut, crushing the English western position beneath his boots - but will it be enough?
It is also worth having a moment to consider balance, or the lack thereof. The Flowers of the Forest is proudly imbalanced - the Scots are almost certainly not going to win this game. The Pike Fright rules give them an advantage upon the initial clash of arms, but once the melee ensues the English bills are far more effective and will absolutely ruin the Scot’s day unless they can achieve a flanking attack (which is a challenge with the difficulty in maneuvering your units). The designer’s advice is that you should just play the game twice, once with each side, and determine a winner based on who loses better with the Scots (he doesn’t put it that explicitly, but that’s the vibe). The fact that the game is relatively short (for a wargame, each game will still probably take you 1-2 hours, longer if you’re learning it) makes this far more feasible than some other games I’ve played. You could probably play two games of The Flowers of the Forest in the time it would take you to play the longer scenarios in Men of Iron.
I played my first game solitaire and as a solitaire experience The Flowers of the Forest is both amazing and completely horrific. The bad side of it is that as I’ve mentioned this game carries a pretty significant mental load and when you’re playing solitaire you bear all of that. Coming up with an Orders plan for one side is exhausting enough, doing it for both is brain annihilating. You also lose some of the secret information around not knowing your opponent’s deployment of troops across their units before you set up your own or the lack of certainty around what orders your opponent has picked.
The final game state - James IV decisively wins the western flank but is outnumbered in terms or surviving units. Technically there were two turns to go, but I decided to spare myself two turns of mismanaged manoeuvring. The English are declared technically victorious, but I doubt anyone is going to be particularly happy with how today went.
That said, it also has a lot to offer as a solitaire game. I was recently replaying Great Heathen Army by Amabel Holland and while it’s a game I really enjoy, I don’t like it as much as a solitaire experience compared with Men of Iron. I think part of this is that one of the things I really like in a solitaire game is feeling like I’m not entirely in control. In Men of Iron I usually only feel like I’m 70% in control at any given time, while in Great Heathen Army I feel like I’m totally in control the whole time. If I’m fully in control then I’m more aware that I’m playing myself rather than playing against the game.
The hand drawn counters are also gorgeous and my limited photography fails to really do them justice!
The Flowers of the Forest regularly has the sensation of feeling like I’ve completely lost control of the game and it’s just running on its own while I desperately try and patch mistakes some idiot (me) made several turns ago. Because you could in theory plan out most of the game before it even begins it has amazing potential as a solitaire experience where you make a plan and then see how things unfold. Although be warned, if you are anything like me the experience may leave you with one hell of a headache.
Sadly there doesn’t seem to be any digital implementation of The Flowers of the Forest that I could find and the game is tragically out of print, but I am very much looking forward to playing it again and would love to play it against a human opponent. It’s just so good. If somehow you can get your hands on a copy, or if it has been sitting on your shelf of shame since 2013, you should definitely play it. I guarantee that you will have a memorable time!