Cursing in Ancient Wargames

 My attention happily has been drawn to Stephen Thomas and Vincent Tsao's adaptation of Twilight of the Sun King (late 17th Century) for warfare in post Roman Britain (5th to 11th Centuries), named 'Twilight of the Britons'.  I am delighted to have found this and will consider how it may affect the development of my own ancient battle rules after I have had time to digest it fully.  That said, I was immediately struck by its use of curses and am moved to comment on this aspect of wargaming.

The curses are not those of the war-gamer when the dice take on a mind of their own and do not roll as directed, colourful though these may be, adding something of the emotional depth that soldiers will have experienced in battle but which are so hard to reconstruct within the constraints of game rules.  No, these curses are the professional weapon of Druids, Pagan Priests, Magicians or Christian Monks and Saints who feature in the Army lists under these rules.

I agree very much with the authors' contention that warriors of the time were much influenced by perceptions of the favour or disfavour of the gods or of God.  My rules require players to obtain omens before battle, like ancient generals, and the results can have impact on the conduct of troops in the battle.  I was given pause for thought, however, by the way Twilight of the Britons approaches the matter.  Rather than being used as channels of communicating the views of the heavens upon the battle about to be received, the assorted clerics are counted as being armed with invisible javelins that have the same effect as the physical ones.  In other words, they cause harm to the enemy rather than giving courage to their own men.

This is certainly innovative but seems to reek more of Dungeons and Dragons or that weird film about Arthur which sees Merlin intervening in battle with highly mobile trebuchets than to the realms of historical wargaming.  While there are stories of religious figures hurling curses upon the enemy, it seems far less likely that these affected the enemy than encouraged their own men.  Religious symbols and their bearers were rallying points not ray-guns.  

I think the authors have missed a trick.  One of the features of the Twilight morale system is the support that is given to a unit in combat by friendly troops to their rear.  Twilight of the Britons uses this in making a deduction from units that do not have such support.  It would be a simple step to say that a contingent of clerics counts as a supporting unit rather than giving them offensive properties.  Simple, and more in keeping with what the evidence and reasonable analysis suggests was the effect of such participants on the field of combat.

Apart from questioning whether a Romano-British army would ever have marched into battle with Druids in train, given the attention that the Romans gave to stamping out the Druids, I do fully support having clerics of appropriate persuasion in armies, provided that their influence is on morale when acting like clerics and on offensive combat only when we know that they took up the sword (or mace).  There are quite a few references in early medieval sources to religious leaders heading the defence of towns and there are the infamous battling Bishops of 1066 and all that, but I tend to think this is better dealt with be treating them like other leaders - or a Hero in Twilight of the Britons terms - than endowing them with magic weapons.