For my second game of Infidel, I decided I should pick something a little more straightforward than Arsuf, much as I enjoyed it, and Antioch looked like it would fit the bill. It also helped that I’ve found the Siege of Antioch fascinating since literally my first year as an undergraduate in college. It’s also a bit of a weird battle so I was curious to see how designer Richard Berg adapted the Men of Iron rules to fit the fragile alliances and unusual deployment process that defined the climactic battle of the two sieges of Antioch.
Opening deployment for Antioch - the Crusaders march single file from the city while a handful of leaderless Turksih light archers are nearby the harass them (or to die, depending on your dice).
Antioch was a major city in the Holy Land and the site of several important moments in the development of early Christianity. It was also, along with Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Rome, the seat of one of the four Christian patriarchs. When the Crusaders arrived outside its walls in 1097 it also presented a daunting challenge for an exhausted army with only limited siege equipment. The Crusaders laid siege to it for months, enduring a harsh winter outside its walls, before finally taking it in June 1098 thanks to a traitor within the city letting in a small force of Crusaders who opened the gates to everyone else. Only a few days after they took the city Kerbogha, the Atabeg of Mosul, arrived outside the city with possibly the largest army the First Crusade faced and after an initial failed attempt to take it by force set about laying siege to the city. Having just endured months of siege warfare there was little within Antioch’s walls to sustain the crusaders, so the Crusaders decided to ride out and meet the Turkish army in the field, risking everything in one possibly final display of glory. Miraculously, they won. Despite having the larger army and presumably being more rested and with better morale, Kerbogha’s army crumbled in the face of the crusader’s charge.
I’m interested in many aspects of historical wargaming but one topic I am particularly drawn to is siege warfare. Sieges, which are often defined by their length, their grinding attrition, and highly asymmetric decisions don’t seem as natural a fit for gamifying as battles do. However, these factors also offer excellent opportunities for creating unusual and memorable gaming experiences. I bring this up because Antioch is perhaps more famous for being a siege than for the battle that ended it, although that battle is an important part of its history. The scenario in Infidel does not attempt to tackle the siege itself, instead focusing entirely upon the final battle, but the battle map includes some lovely nods to the preceding siege - including a section of Crusader Camp tiles representing the position that they had held mere days before when they were stuck outside the walls trying desperately to get into the city they were now trying to defend.
First contact is made with..underwhelming results for the Christians. Kerbogha’s army begins to appear in the distance.
The thing I love most about Antioch the scenario is how it captures one of the weirdest elements of the battle. At Antioch the crusaders had to march their entire army out from just one gate and form it into battle lines before charging Kerbogha’s army. For some reason Kerbogha allowed them to do this instead of attacking them when they were only partially deployed. It is not exactly known why he allowed this – hubris is the most common suggestion, but any number of factors could have decided it. Richard Berg has gone for the best solution from a gameplay perspective which is that both players need to deploy most of their armies from reinforcements – very few troops exist on the map at the start. The Crusader player is given a lot more flexibility in terms of when they want to deploy new troops but they must deploy their Battles in a fixed order and through a narrow corridor that must be clear for a new Battle to advance through it.
Most of the Crusaders have now advanced out from Antioch and the main host of Kerbogha’s army has appeared. Several Crusader troops are facing South because there is the potential for a force of Muslims to come from that direction and few things are worse in Men of Iron than being attacked from behind.
In contrast, the Muslim player has a huge space to deploy Battles from and can choose the order but cannot move forward to attack the Crusaders until at least three of their Battles have entered the field. They also must make rolls against Kerbogha’s leadership to check if the new troosp can even enter play. This means they must focus on bringing new Battles in until a critical mass of their army is ready, which also gives the Crusaders time to plan a strategy, and potentially deal with the troop of leaderless light cavalry that begin on the map. This is a great way to capture some of the tempo of Antioch without too many rules or making it boring. One thing that was missing from my game was that I defaulted to the Crusaders taking the defensive and resisting Muslim charges whereas my understanding of the battle is that they took the offensive – but this could just be my Men of Iron training taking over and maybe next time I should try a more offensive posture for the Crusaders.
Having cleared most of the initial light cavalry expedition, the Crusaders attempt to form a defensive position in preparation for the inevitable Muslim attack. It’s possible that I should have been a bit more aggressive here, especially with the Crusaders rather sparse numbers of archers.
While the exact reasons for the Crusader’s victory at Antioch are widely discussed and debated, most scholarship currently places central emphasis on the fragile nature of Kerbogha’s alliances. While Kerbogha was able to amass an enormous army to march against the Crusaders, many of the Muslim leaders and their followers that composed the core of the army were less than keen on Kerbogha. There seems to have been a substantial element that were happier to see Kerbogha get knocked down a peg or two than they were reclaiming a city they had no stake in from an enemy they saw very little to fear from. The argument is that essentially once the initial Crusader charge was more effective than expected many Muslim commanders decided to pack up and go home, and once that exodus began there was no stopping it, leaving Kerbogha with just the troops who were totally loyal to him – his advantage in numbers absolutely erased and his army’s morale shattered.
The Muslim charge is devastating. Initial harassing arrows from the light cavalry clears a path for a charge by the cavalry which punches a hole through Hugh of Vermandois’ Battle.
The Antioch scenario doesn’t exactly replicate this, and I can’t fault it for that. To capture this exact dynamic would probably be very complicated and create an unpleasant play experience for whoever was controlling Kerbogha. In a more strategic game covering the whole campaign you might try to capture the fragility of Kerbogha’s alliances in all their messiness, but for something tactical like this I don’t think it’s strictly necessary. Instead, Richard Berg has done two main things. The first is that there is a Kerbogha counter representing his overall command and it is used for determining how new Battles are brought on to the map – representing his role as overall commander and also his struggle in motivating everyone to show up (in my game he succeeded very well at his rolls, but statistically he will fail a given roll more often than succeed).
Second is that the Muslim’s have no Standard, any result of Retired is treated as Eliminated. This does a simple job of capturing how Muslim commanders quickly left the battle once things turned against them and Kerbogha’s inability to stop them. Separate to its role as a historical model, I kind of prefer this way of playing. I understand the role of Standards and the Retire result in Men of Iron, but it is definitely far from my favourite mechanic. A lot of the time when I’m Rallying a Standard it feels like I’m just postponing an inevitable defeat by several more turns rather than amassing forces for a counter charge that could change the result of the battle. I like the simplicity of not having a Retire option.
The Muslim charge was effective but left many of their cavalry Disordered. The Crusaders pivot to try stem the attack while the Muslim’s try to encircle what is left of Hugh’s Dismounted Men-at-Arms to eliminate them before they can be rescued.
One aspect of the Battle of Antioch that I cannot fault Richard Berg for not including but would love to see someone tackle is the role of the miraculous. One of the climactic moments of the second part of the siege (the part where the Crusaders were in the city with Muslims outside) was the discovery by the monk and mystic Peter Bartholomew of the Holy Lance which pierced the side of Christ while he was on the cross. The discovery of such a holy relic restored Crusader morale and they bore it as a standard when they rode out to face Kerbogha’s army. The Lance would go on to be a topic of significant controversy, splitting the Crusaders between those who recognised it as the authentic Holy Lance and those who challenged it as a fake. Peter Bartholomew would die in the wake of a trial by fire that was supposed to assert the validity of his claims, but even that would not entirely erase the debate and factionalism that had sprung up. The incident of the Holy Lance is a major moment in the First Crusade and while it has only a tangential bearing on the battle itself, I would love to see a game try to meld the more spiritual factors with the military and political.
The Holy Lance is hardly the only miracle to be reported at the battle. The eyewitness chronicler Raymond of Aguilers reported seeing saints and the spirits of deceased knights joining the Crusader charge and driving the Muslims from the field. While hardly something to be taken literally, similar to the case of the Holy Lance it would be interesting to see a game tackle the more subjective perception of battle and the cause of victory.
The Crusaders manage to reform their line but make little progress pushing the Muslims back.
This is only my second game of Infidel but so far, I think it’s both a bit more interesting and noticeably more complex than the base Men of Iron game. Many of the Men of Iron battles feature one side taking up a largely defensive position while the other attacks them in waves. These battles are not without tactical decisions for both sides and Richard Berg has done an excellent job making them feel different, but at the same time they are not exactly what I would call dynamic experiences. Both games of Infidel I played have featured a lot more maneouvering with positions being much more fluid than in base Men of Iron. This kind of thing happens in original Men of Iron but is usually a mid to late-game experience, once casualties have happened and the lines are beginning to be broken up. Infidel skips that early stage and gets right to the chaos, which I really like.
The Muslim’s punch a few more holes in the Crusader lines but at some cost - many disordered troops are looking ripe for a Crusader counterattack. Both sides have suffered heavy casualties by this stage, though, and both are at risk of fleeing the field.
That said, Infidel also brings quite a bit more complexity to the table. In terms of rules, it is not that much more complex than base Men of Iron, especially if like me you are playing with the rules from the Men of Iron Tri-Pack which brings the three included games’ rules into closer alignment. What makes Infidel more complex is the kind of units available and the greater asymmetry on offer. Muslim light archers and Christian Knights on their own don’t have many more rules than were present in Men of Iron but I found that together they add just enough to make Infidel more of a brain burner than Men of Iron is. I don’t want to suggest that Infidel is supremely complicated or anything, it’s just a bit more complex than Men of Iron original. You could definitely learn the system with Infidel, especially if the Crusades is a topic that interests you more. I am finding it more mentally challenging to play, but I am also enjoying that challenge!
In the end it is the Crusaders who flee first when we check for flight. A reversal of the rolls would see a Muslim defeat - very close battle!
In that regard Antioch was a better experience for bridging the gap between Men of Iron and Infidel than Arsuf was. Due to the nature of the history, the Christians had far fewer mounted troops by the time they were fighting outside of Antioch – mostly due to loss of horses rather than loss of knights to ride them – and that’s reflected in the scenario. You have only a handful of knights to keep track of and the Muslim forces are a mixture of foot soldiers, medium and heavy cavalry, and horse archers. This makes Antioch feel a bit more like a halfway point between Infidel and Men of Iron and that was definitely something I appreciated about it.
To sum up: overall I really enjoyed the Antioch scenario and I’m looking forward to exploring Infidel more, but first I’ve decided to finally try Blood and Roses!
The final game state - the Crusader position has crumbled a bit but there are plenty of fresh troops and the Muslim cavalry are mostly Disordered. If it had lasted one more turn it could have had a very different result!
While overall Antioch had a great balance of activating multiple Battles throughout the game, you can see in the distance that not all of Kerbogha’s forces ended up contributing (there is even one further Battle, the one that can enter from the South, that never showed up).