I was finally able to secure the big table for an evening late one night and I took the opportunity to unpack one of the really quite large maps that come with Infidel – the Men at Iron game focused on the Crusades. I’ve long been fascinated by the history of the Crusades, so I was very excited to try Infidel, but it was already getting late by the time I started setting up, so I picked my scenario in a rush. The scenario options in Infidel are intriguing – some of them are battles I expected, but there are some absences and inclusions that surprised me. Dorylaeum, Montgisard, and Arsuf all make total sense. I was very surprised to not see Hattin, Saladin’s most famous victory, and I have to confess I didn’t immediately recognise the Battle of Harran. Still, one of the fun things about playing these games is seeing what aspects of history someone else thought were the most interesting to include. I also have to say that the bibliography at the back of the scenario book was pretty impressive – multiple books by John France and not even one mention of Runciman! You love to see it.
The Crusader army enters the plains of Arsuf to find Saladin’s army arrayed for battle. Apologies in advance, the lighting in this room was not very conducive to good photography so there will be some glare, and some weird angles as I try and avoid too much glare!
In the end I settled on Arsuf – it had an interesting looking deployment and it’s both a battle I think is quite interesting and one I know a fair bit about. I then set about setting up the game – a bit of an involved process given the scale of the map but one that was pretty satisfying all the same. It was only after I’d laid out the armies that I noticed the note in the booklet that told me that Arsuf was quite a complicated battle with several important rules amendments and new rules involved to make the Men of Iron rules system fit the historical battle. Reading those rules and having played it now, I don’t think the new rules were as intimidating as I’d initially expected. That said, I definitely got a few rules wrong as it was both my play of Infidel, and I was playing the most complicated scenario! It was a lot to juggle!
The horse archers have closed in to harry the Crusader army with missile fire, one crusader is Retired but the rest have held their formation so far. In the distance another section of Saladin’s army has moved forward to try and cut them off further down the road.
Arsuf was for a long time seen as the zenith of Richard I’s tactical brilliance – a sophisticated fighting march that successfully navigated enemy terrain and saw off an attack by Saladin himself. Soon after the victory at the Siege of Acre, Richard I (and Guy de Lusignan, former King of Jerusalem, who is often overlooked) set off with a much-reduced army on the long march south along the coast towards the city of Jaffa. Jaffa was the nearest major port to Jerusalem, so any attempt to retake the Holy City had to start there. The Crusader army moved extremely slowly while most of its supplies were on ships sailing down the coast in parallel. This is because a fighting march is an extremely slow way to move – the entire army had to be combat ready the whole time and there could be no spreading out of the line, everyone had to move at the same speed. A gap in the formation could be deadly as Ayyubid cavalry were harassing them pretty much the whole way. Steve Tibble, who wrote an excellent study on Crusader tactics, noted that the crossbow was particularly important as it allowed the Crusaders to force the mobile horse archers of the Turkish and Ayyubid armies from effectively harassing them. For this reason, a significant proportion of the army would have had missile weapons. The fighting was constant as Richard and the rest of the army made their way down the coast, but on the plains right before the ruined city of Arsuf Saladin’s main army attacked and the largest engagement of the march took place.
The crusaders break formation early to charge into Saladin’s horse archers. Several knights get a little over-eager in their attack.
There has been much debate as to whether Richard intended to fight Saladin outside Arsuf. The strongest evidence suggests that he did not. Instead, he wanted to march through the Ayyubid attack and set up a defensive camp around Arsuf – from there he could drive off any attacks as necessary. However, the rear guard of Hospitallers – the military orders often took positions at the front and back of the column since they were better disciplined to keep the necessary pace – grew tired of constant harassment and charged into the Muslim lines. Once one part of his army had committed, Richard and the other commanders had to join in, or everyone would be annihilated. In the chaos of the battle Richard successfully drove off Saladin’s army and was able to carry on to Jaffa which he quickly captured as its walls had been pulled down a few years previous.
I should probably briefly address the elephant in the room - I’ve labelled this post a First Impressions, but I’ve already played Men of Iron three times, so how can it be a First Impression? I know it’s a little arbitrary, but Infidel was originally its own game in the Men of Iron series and it offers some significant deviations from the original Men of Iron in rules and, more importantly, in the style of battles it models. It’s all fairly arbitrary, but even though I got the first three Men of Iron games in one big box I still decided to treat each one as its own game - so while this may be my fourth game with the Men of Iron system it is my first with Infidel specifically.
Saladin calls his cavalry back, restoring order to their formation and leaving the Crusader line somewhat overextended. Saladin’s heavy cavalry also begins to move forward to engage.
To capture the distinct elements of the fighting march, the scenario for Arsuf required some fairly significant modifications to the standard rules of the Men of Iron system. The two most relevant are that the Crusaders can activate their whole army at once, but only to March 3 hexes without taking any missile shots. The second was that the main Battle that Richard commanded could be partially activated – foot soldiers or knights – by the Hospitallers or Templars when their (tiny) Battles activated. The same applied to the Battle of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which has no leader. I think these changes work really well – it makes it possible to keep the whole Christian army moving forward like they would have historically and makes for some interesting and dynamic play decisions. I was playing this scenario quite late at night, though, and the extra complexity – including the other new rules around how the Retired status affected Crusaders and various rules about formation and retreats – were not immediately welcome sights to my already tired eyes.
The Crusaders push on their attack, but many elements of the army end up out of formation as a result. Meanwhile the Ayyubid heavy cavalry get entangled in the fight, but with underwhelming results.
I did have some issues around how the rule rewarding the Crusader player for moving off the map worked. There’s a secondary win condition for Richard if he can move enough of his army off the map at Arsuf. I have two issues with this. While I said that Richard was trying to move through the main combat and not engage, that was to set up a defensive camp that could drive off enemy attacks. Moving units off the board makes his position weaker in the scenario, since he has fewer troops, but historically it would have made him stronger. He should be trying to run to a better defensive position where he’ll be more difficult to attack, not reducing his power by failing to commit to the fight. The other issue I have is that, to my mind at least, this encourages the Saladin player to put his army in between Richard and the far end of the map – this means that more often than not the Templars in the vanguard will be more likely to engage first, while historically it was the rear guard who engaged first. This is a smaller issue – games don’t need to replicate history – but I love it when games naturally nudge you towards something like the historical result without forcing your hand, and I wish the scenario had done more of that – not that I know how to fix it, mind!
Richard I gets into the thick of things for himself, while the Crusader army tries to put its formation back together in the face of the Ayyubid counter attack. However, while they effectively inflict chaos on the Crusaders, the Ayyubids have little success actually killing or retiring Crusader troops.
Overall, the wider map space at Arsuf and the abundance of mounted units on both sides made for a far more dynamic game than my previous experience with the grindier battles of Men of Iron. There was lots of positioning to factor in and once the lines got intertwined, I had knights engaging in continuous attacks all over the place and ending up out of formation, while Muslim horse archers ran all over the place. It was really interesting and lead for some great moments and interesting problems for me to pick apart.
Some of my problems with the game still persisted, though. Archery still seems way too powerful. The almost 50% chance of disordering a charging Knights seems too high, for example, although I do like how shooting at Knights runs the risk of being charged with probably very unpleasant results. I like the idea of the moving and shooting of Seljuk horse archers, but with so many on the board it was a bit repetitive to move each one, shoot, move again. It was fun the first turn I did it, but it felt like the optimal strategy was probably to play very conservative with them and that felt like it would get very boring over several turns – although arguably that would also just be replicating historical reality.
The Ayyubid attack falters as the Crusaders reform their lines - but Richard I gets a little too eager and charges deep into Ayyubid lines.
My biggest problem is nothing to do with the game, but instead my paralysis over how to optimise activations of the Ayyubid army. With the Crusader army being so small it was easy to know who to activate, but with the Ayyubid’s it was a real struggle to pick whether to keep activating the horse archers over and over again or if I should try and bring other troops in. I think my enjoyment of the game could be improved with some kind of chit-pull system for determining which Battle should be the first to activate that turn, and then letting me decide from there. The decision space is just so large it kind of overwhelms me. This would not be as much of a problem were I playing against a human opponent and thus only looking after one side, and is very much a me problem, but it was something I really noticed in this battle. It has also come to my attention that Francisco Gradaille has designed a chit pull system for the Men of Iron series, available on the Players Aid blog (https://theplayersaid.com/2020/09/24/men-of-iron-series-from-gmt-games-variant-chit-pull-system-from-francisco-gradaille/), so I may have to try that out as well.
Richard I is victorious - he drives Saladin from the field and can continue his march to Jaffa - once he gets his army back into formation that is!
Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Infidel and Arsuf. The Ayyubids were at a disadvantage in the scenario, and a double disadvantage in that Richard I’s army kind of played like what I was used to from Men of Iron but controlling the Ayyubids was brand new, so I was not good at it. I also definitely got some rules wrong, missed some things across the many units on the board, and just generally had a bit of a sloppy game. That said, this is the first scenario in this box that having played solo once I am still interested in maybe playing solo a second time. While I’ve enjoyed my previous games, after they were done, I felt like I saw all the battle had to offer with me in command of both sides. With Arsuf I can think of things I would do differently or alternative strategies that would be interesting to try – particularly if I implement a chit pull system to mix up unit activations. I don’t know when I’ll next play it – I have a lot of battles still to play and very limited access to a table big enough for the map – but I am interested in getting it to the table a second time!
Recommended Reading:
Thomas Asbridge, The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land
Steve Tibble, The Crusader Armies, 1099-1187
John France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000-1300
If you enjoyed this post, maybe consider reading some of my other writings on the Men of Iron series:
First Impressions Men of Iron: Agincourt - https://www.stuartellisgorman.com/blog/men-of-iron-agincourt-1415
Men of Iron Round 2: Courtrai - https://www.stuartellisgorman.com/blog/men-of-iron-courtrai-1302
Men of Iron pt. 3: Poitiers - https://www.stuartellisgorman.com/blog/men-of-iron-battle-of-poitiers