Men of Iron – Falkirk, 1298 — Stuart Ellis-Gorman

I was in a bit of a Scottish wars mood after playing the Braveheart: Solitaire book game so I decided to try out how Richard Berg modelled Falkirk in Men of Iron as an interesting counterpoint. As I somewhat hinted at in that review – I’ve got a bit of a chip on my shoulder when it comes to William Wallace. I feel he’s a bit overrated as a historical figure, basically entirely because of Braveheart – a movie I strongly dislike. Lest you think I’m a boring historian who hates fun, my favourite medieval movie is A Knight’s Tale, my hatred of Braveheart stretches beyond mere historical inaccuracy. I’ve born a slight grudge about living in a post-Braveheart world where William Wallace has overshadowed the far more interesting Robert Bruce. My opinions on this have mellowed with time – and I think it helps that Bruce seems to be getting more popular culture recognition as well (including his own movies, which I have not seen, making me part of the problem).

Map of Falkirk, forests at the top and a lake in the middle with three rivers - two running east west and one south. Scots at the top arrayed in 4 identical formations, a small number of English at the bottom. — The calm before the storm - Wallace has taken up his defensive position but much of the English army still has yet to arrive.

I was immediately interested to see that the Falkirk scenario comes with a sort of solo mode as default. With the basic rules the Scottish player basically sits in schiltron and the English player has to crack their defences. I was intrigued by only having to really think about one side and abandoned my plans to try playing this scenario with modified chit pull rules for activations. I have to confess I was a little disappointed by my experience. The scenario is timed, and while my understanding is that the timer only advances if the non-timed side passes, I moved it forward after every English turn because that felt like the only challenge to the scenario – could I defeat the Scots within 15 turns? The answer was a pretty definitive yes.

Map of Falkirk, now with a vast array of English counters along lower half of the map. A few have also crossed the river in the west. — A series of amazing continuation rolls brings the whole English army to the field very early. Little did I know that this would set the tone for what my dice rolls would be this game: consistently low.

Falkirk is a battle that I simultaneously find both interesting and extremely boring. The logistics of Falkirk and how it came to take place are absolutely fascinating. The army that Edward I brought with him to Falkirk numbered nearly 30,000 soldiers and was probably the largest army assembled by the English in the whole of the Middle Ages. It also represents something of a turning point in military recruitment. Edward I still primarily used traditional levies for his army but there are numerous reports describing how this system was breaking down at the time. One of the most common issues was that often levels of service had been set in the Domesday Book back in the 1080s, but in the intervening almost two centuries the fortunes of noble families had grown or shrunk dramatically. This meant that some nobles might be struggling to provide the service their ancestors had agreed to while others would be providing far less than their means would have allowed. There are also some absurd stories of levies turning up with only the explicit minimum they had to – things like turning up with a bow but just one arrow. Not all later reports of this latter kind of shenanigans should be taken at face value, but the essential point that the traditional means of levying troops was seen as no longer suitable motivated significant change in how English armies were recruited. This was a slow process and wouldn’t really be complete until the fifteenth century, but the army that Henry V brought to Agincourt has its origins in the Falkirk campaign.

Map of Falkirk. The English have moved forward. On the left several archers have crossed the river and two cavalry are next to Scots archers. On the right one cavalry is engaged with Scots archers. — The battle lines collide with more of a whimper than a roar as the English archers fail to have much impact on the Scots. The English mounted men-at-arms manage to reach the archers unscathed and proceed to also have minimal impact.

All that having been said, the battle of Falkirk itself never particularly interested me. Essentially, Wallace foolishly agreed to fight the English on open ground and while he had a made a great effort at deploying his schiltrons to blunt the English charge – Edward I had brought a much much bigger army and was more than able to overpower the Scottish forces on a battlefield where he could bring his numerical superiority to bear. It’s a fairly one-sided conflict with the English crushing Wallace beneath their boot heel. It’s not without tactical interest, but I was never particularly fascinated by the tactics of Falkirk – more confused about why Wallace, who clearly new about minimising enemy strength from his victory at Stirling Bridge, allowed this to happen.

Map of Falkirk - the right side has little change, but on the left the English have begun circling around the Scottish formation. — The attack on the left heats up - the Scottish archers are cleared out of their position but the English archers continue to have minimal impact on the Scots. The lone men-at-arms in the east is Retired.

Of course, Wallace would have done a lot better if Edward had rolled like I did when I was playing. I consistently couldn’t roll above a five, which meant that I was pretty reliably making continuation rolls but also meant that my archers might as well have been throwing their arrows at the Scots. This was the first time I ever became very frustrated by the luck involved in Men of Iron, and it really soured my time with Falkirk. This is certainly a matter of taste, but I’m not wild about the system of rolling a single d10 and consulting the table to see the result. I prefer more ways to mitigate my luck, or at the very least a die roll that averages out faster – like rolling multiple d6s. I know that in the aggregate the d10 will move towards the average result, but in practice I find rolling a single die – particularly one with 10 results – kind of frustrating.

Close up of just the left side of the map. The Scots are vastly outnumbered and their formation fragmented. Two scottish cavalry units sit at the top centre of the image. — After more turns than I care to admit, the English finally begin breaking apart Wallace’s schiltrons. I will confess that I completely forgot about the Scottish cavalry for basically the whole game so don’t expect any dramatic cavalry rescue!

I know you’re meant to mitigate this with good positioning and by trying to build up a long list of positive modifiers to increase the value of your roll, and thus better increase your odds of a good result. However, I just find this more frustrating – I spent all this time positioning for the optimal attack and then I rolled a 1. Sure, all my planning means that I didn’t suffer the worst result, but I just climbed my way up to “no result” on the table and feel like I wasted the last two minutes of my life. For the most part this hasn’t really spoiled my time with Men of Iron, but I had such a consistently bad run of luck while playing Falkirk that it did really begin to irritate me.

Usually this is the point where I’d complain again about how archers in Men of Iron are too powerful – and they are – but at Falkirk it bothers me less. Plate armour wasn’t yet common when Falkirk took place and Edward used his archers to break up the Scottish schiltrons, which was essential to his victory. I do wish it was slightly easier/tactically better to combine archers with melee attacks – using the archers to disorder the enemy and then attacking with your pikemen. In my experience massed archery on its own was just better without bothering to bring melee troops in unless absolutely necessary. The melee troops primary job was trying to kill the enemy archers – usually with mixed results. I still think archers should be reigned in a bit, but it bothered me less at Falkirk than it did at Poitiers, if that makes sense.

The left Scottish schiltrons are now well and truly broken while Edward I finally brings the bulk of his Battle forward on the right.

I also found myself once again activating the same Battles over and over again rather than using the full range of troops available at my command. This was exacerbated at Falkirk because the Scots all activated together – so attacking on two fronts seemed like a needless risk. It was far better to push relentlessly on one side of the Scottish formation rather than giving them more targets by trying a full encirclement. In the end I did bring Edward’s archers to bear on the right flank, but only because of a good run of continuation rolls – it was hardly a tactical priority. I think this is a shame because the game would be more interesting if I was forced to jump around more in my activations – possibly something that could be fixed with a chit pull system instead.

Map of Falkirk, the left of the map is almost exclusively English troops while on the right they have crossed the river and the Scottish have lost several more units. — The end of the battle - the late arrival of the Scottish cavalry was far too little far too late and the Scots are routed as Edward’s Battle manages to get involved in the action just in time for it to end.

Overall, I wasn’t wild about my time with Falkirk, but it was also one of the quickest battles I’ve played, and I wouldn’t quite say I had a bad time. I think Falkirk has good potential as a learning battle for the system since only one side does very much and it includes a lot of the core mechanics: schiltrons function as shield wall, the English have to bring reinforcements onto the battle, the map has rivers and some marshy terrain to navigate, and both sides have a good range of unit types. That said, with the very static Scottish side and the one-sided nature of the battle I don’t think it offers very much if you’re already familiar with the system. I suppose that’s why it’s the first battle in the book! My recommendation is that if you’re new to Men of Iron give it a shot, but if you’ve already got a few battles under your belt don’t feel bad if you skip it.