Dan Mersey's 'You Command' Series

The 'You Command' Series of Rules

Dan Mersey, who wrote the titles Song of Arthur and Merlin, Lion Rampant, Dux Bellorum, and The Wargamer's Guide to the Desert War 1940-1943, along with many others, has a series of wargame rules called You Command. They are billed as "a series of light miniature wargames. When you play a 'You Command' game your goal is to defeat your opponent by out-thinking them tactically using the innovative Tactics Chart and then by out-fighting their model army on the tabletop battlefield."

Each of the titles have progressed to a "big battle" gridded wargame where the player represents the top of the command chain, the overall Commander. As such your role is to choose where and how to focus your troops and control the battle's momentum, ignoring the minutiae of unit-level tactics or the exact armament of your troops. (Put another way, a lot of tactical detail is abstracted out of the rules.) The battle is fought out on the tabletop as well as the Tactics Chart. Your focus is on winning at the highest tactical level rather than getting lost in the details of weapon types and armor saves.

Troop types are very broad and dependent upon the period you are playing. (So far they are the Dark Ages Britain, Medieval Britain, and WW II, although the WW II version and the earliest Medieval version is not played on a grid.) For Dark Ages there are four unit types: Mounted, Armored Foot, Unarmored Foot, and Skirmisher. For Medieval he expands it to Knights, Sergeants, Foot Knights, Spears, Long Spears, Warriors, Missiles, and Levy. The troop type essentially indicates two things: its starting Battle Strength; and the special rules that apply to it.

Battle Strength (BS) is the heart of the combat system. A top-tier unit starts with a BS of 5 (+1 if your Commander is attached to that unit), second-tier has a value of 3, and the lowest tier has a value of 2. The BS represents not only the number of hits a unit can take, but its offensive power. In combat the unit will roll a number of dice equal to their current BS. Thus, as units take hits their BS is reduced and they roll fewer dice when they attack. Combat is a simple roll of your attack dice, requiring a 4+ to hit (5+ if they are in cover or a Shieldwall). Note that combat is by area (square) so you add up all of your units' BS values and roll that many dice, counting hits. Your opponent then removes that many BS from their units in the area, i.e. they choose how to distribute the damage. Once a unit's BS is reduced to 0, the unit is removed from the board. (In this regard, it has a very similar mechanic to One-Hour Wargames (OHW). Unlike OHW, however, your offensive power goes down as your hits go up.)

As indicated earlier, the table is gridded with squares, but they are offset. (The author admits that you can use hexes if you want.) As you will see in my test game I used a regular square grid. Although I don't think it matters greatly, it could if there are large numbers of ranged troops involved.

The field of battle is rather small, being 5 rows by 4-5 columns. However, each square must be large enough to contain up to three of your units and three enemy units. So when I played using my homemade 12mm troops, I was using 6" squares as my troops are on 3" x 1 ½" bases. Still, this allows me to use a gameboard as small as 30" square, which is very convenient as my local gaming store's tables are 30" deep.

Terrain in an area affects the entire area, not matter how much of the area it covers. Here is how the terrain breaks down.

Woods and Villages: the defender in ranged and close combat are hit on a 5+, while the attacker is hit on a 4+.

Hills: the defender in close combat are hit on a 5+, while the attacker is hit on a 4+.

Note that the "attacker" is the side that is shooting into the area (even if they are already in that area). In close combat it is the one that initiated the close combat (and thus strikes first). These designations can change from combat to combat, depending upon who initiated the combat.

Also note that a Shieldwall (see later) overrides this attacker/defender difference. When a Shieldwall is employed, both sides hit on a 5+.

Streams, Fords, and Marshland: these areas impede movement. To move out of one of these areas each individual unit must roll a 4+ on 1D6 in order to succeed (failure means the unit stays in the area).

Deep Streams and Deep Marshes: these areas impede movement as indicated for Streams, Fords, and Marshlands above, and affect combat as per Hills.

Rivers: these areas are impassable to all units.

Bridges: count as open terrain across Streams, Deep Streams, and Rivers.

So I have covered all of the basic parts, now let's get to the most important part, command and control, or his Tactics Chart.

First off, the Tactics Chart is period specific. This one is for Age of Penda (Dark Ages Britain), but most are very similar. The 'secret sauce' tends to be in the Special Tactic boxes.

The game has a pretty simple turn sequence. One player has the initiative and is designated as the first player. The first phase is the Tactics Phase. Each player is given two to five tokens based on their Commander's competence. Starting with the first player each place one of their tokens on one of the squares above. You may not choose a square already containing a token, thus there are a limited number of actions you might be allowed. Once both players have placed all of their tokens, the game moves to the Actions Phase.

During the Actions Phase, starting with the first player, they pick up one of their tokens from the Tactics Chart and take the action indicated on that square. Players continue to alternate until all tokens are removed. A player cannot pass by not taking a token, but they can choose not to perform the designated action.

The last phase is the End Phase. This is where you determine if the scenario's victory conditions have been met, and if not, if the initiative changed hands.

The Tactics Phase

Here are the basics for each Tactic.

Seize the Initiative: Because the player with initiative selects tactics first, and plays their action first, having the initiative can be very important when the action gets hot. Is it worth spending one of your tactics token to ensure you get the initiative next turn?

Shoot: this allows you to target one area with ranged combat. Shooting distance is up to one square so every firing unit adjacent to the selected area can fire on it. If the target area contains friendly units, however, only the missile units in that area may fire.

Rally: all friendly units in the designated area may recover Battle Strength. Roll a D6 for each unit and reference a table to see whether you recover 0-2 BS.

Battle: all friendly units in the designated area may attack the enemy in the same area. Once they roll and damage is assessed, the enemy units get to battle back if they were not eliminated.

Move: all friendly units in the designated area may move one area. Units do not all have to move to the same area.

Special Tactic: this is a catch-all for allowing the game designer to add period flavor and specific tactics where he wants to limit the usage. A good example is "Shieldwall", which means that all combat in the designated area requires a 5+ to hit. Another is a "Charge", which is a combination of a Move and Battle in one action. (Moving into an area with the enemy does not automatically trigger close combat. You must play a Battle tactic to initiate close combat.)

Because you are limited to only placing one token in any given square, claiming a tactic also denies it from your opponent. Sometimes you will find yourself claiming a tactic that you cannot use at the moment, but might use in reaction to your opponent's actions, or simply you don't want them to take that action. Good examples are "Rally" and "Seize the Initiative", which only have one box each.

The Actions Phase

As with the Tactics Phase the Action Phase starts with the first player using one of the tactics tokens. Once that action is fully resolved the second player uses one of the tactics tokens. This continues until all tactics tokens have been used.

These rules do not use the usual rules for activation. A unit can take as many actions as the player has tokens, if he chooses. The player could, for example, select the "Move" tactic four times and then during this phase use that action on the area containing the unit, effectively allowing it to move four squares that turn.

Most actions complete immediately, i.e. you fully resolve it before moving on to the next action. However some actions last through to the end of the turn, like "Shieldwall". There are very few of the latter, however.

Summary

Comparing these rules to something like OHW you can see a lot of differences, despite both combat systems being relatively simple. OHW versus You Command.

• Activate all units versus only a limited number of units.
• One action per unit (move or shoot) versus potentially multiple actions per unit to no actions.
• Close combat occurs automatically when a unit moves or is already in contact with an enemy unit versus being a separate action which can occur more than once per turn.
• Unit loses no offensive combat power as it takes hits versus direct correlation between damage and offensive power of a unit.
• I would say one uses freeform movement and the other a grid, but I have long converted OHW (and some players) to a grid!
• Fixed sized army versus points-based army.
• Fixed player order versus shifting player order.
• 1D6 with modifiers for combat versus buckets of dice.
• Straight IGO-UGO versus alternating unit/area activation.

I am sure there are more, but that is a good start.

Test Game – Age of Penda

Age of Penda (AoP) is the Dark Ages Britain version of Dan Mersey's You Command series. It was published in 2021 and follows Scottorum Malleus and Scottorum Malleus IV, both Medieval Britain versions in the You Command series. (The other two in the series are Armour Storm (WW II) and Arrowstorm (Scottorum Malleus updated).)

First let me state that I did not play it straight. (Bad Dale!) I did not make a gridded offset square gameboard, but simply used my 6" square grid gaming cloth. I don't believe it made a difference, but I will discuss why later.

Secondly, I did not have enough troops for a 'standard' sized game – 80 points – suggested by the author. Mine was smaller at 60 points. (There was a 20 point option I could have selected for both sides to fudge it, but that just seemed silly.) I honestly don't think this made any difference. The author indicates a game is typically 6-12 units, and both sides had the minimum count.

Thirdly, I had no missile troops. In AoP the only troops that can normally fire are Skirmishers, and I did not have any made yet. I do have 15mm DBA Dark Ages armies that I could have used, but they do not mesh well with my 12mm wooden troops, so I went without shooting. Because of this lack of shooting I don't think using a normal square grid affected play. Only shooting combat take place from area to area, so an offset grid means a unit can be attacked from six adjacent areas. Given that the enemy is likely to be coming from your front that is more realistically only from two adjacent areas. But a normal square grid means attacks can come from eight areas, or three from the front. So I can see where this difference could be significant. All future games will be on an offset grid, as the author intended.

The Scenario

Come on. Kill the enemy, of course. Per the rules an army with 6-7 units routs when it is down to two Warrior units or less, while all larger armies route when down to three Warrior units or less. (Note that only Skirmisher units are not counted as Warrior units, and neither side had Skirmishers.) So the Normans lose when two units remain and the Anglo-Saxons at three units remaining.

The Map

As it so happens, all of my randomly rolled and placed terrain ended up on the edges. The hill did come into play, however.

Turn 1

The Normans started with initiative as they had more mounted and skirmisher units than the Anglo-Saxons did (3 to 1). I placed the tactics dice as indicated in the figure below. (Normans will use white dice and the Anglo-Saxons green dice. The number of pips indicate the first, second, third, and fourth placement if you are curious, but have no significance in the game.)

As it was the first turn I did not really care if the Normans retained the initiative. However, as I was pondering the Anglo-Saxon (hereafter referred to as 'AS') placement, I thought that them seizing might allow them to control the Tactics Chart (TC), as that is when combat will likely begin. Further, by grabbing the Battle tactics, if the Normans did engage on the first turn, the AS might be able to strike first. Finally, if there were casualties, the AS could recover with the Rally tactic. Then again, if no combat occurred it would not be much of a loss as the AS intended to keep their right flank anchored to the hill.

The Normans begin with a Special Tactic called "Rush", which allows mounted and skirmisher units in one area to move two squares rather than the normal one.

The AS spend their Seize the Initiative token and calmly wait. The Normans move their Foot forward.

The AS see that the Normans still have one Special Tactic available, so they could do another "Rush" with the mounted units. They decide to burn one of the Battle tactics as they continue to wait.

The Normans do indeed "Rush" with their mounted units, moving two squares to be in the same area as the AS cavalry. Note that close combat does not automatically occur just because the units are in the same area as the enemy.

That said, the AS play Battle so that they can attack first, before any Normans can battle back. The AS have a BS of 5 and thus roll 5 dice looking for a 4+. They score 3 hits. This lowers the Normans BS from 16 to 13, so they only roll 13 dice in return, also requiring a 4+. They score 3 hits also. (Ouch!)

Note that when the Normans took the three hits they could distribute the hits amongst the three units however they wished. As I learned later, you never want to reduce a unit to 0 unless absolutely necessary as the unit is removed and cannot be rallied.

The Normans used their last move to advance the foot troops. The AS tried to Rally the cavalry, but did not succeed. The AS cavalry is badly damaged having only 2 BS remaining.

Turn 2

With the AS having the initiative, here is the tactical play. The AS want to retain the initiative, so that is their first play. The AS were also able to lock up all the Special Tactics and one of the Battle, but at the cost of not getting a Rally. They could have gotten a Rally, but as the cavalry is so outnumbered it did not seem worth it. However, they could have taken it to deny the Norman cavalry a change to recover. I am already liking the impact that a player's decisions have on play. They are meaningful and impactful to the game's results.

The AS decide to use their Battle against the Norman cavalry. It may not be much, but at least they get to strike first. They inflict one hit before the 12 dice in return obliterates them.

The Normans move their foot troops forward, sending one unit up on the hill to check the two AS levy units there from making a flank attack against the advancing Normans at the base of the hill.

The AS foot, see the victorious Norman cavalry rout the cavalry covering their flank, use a Special Tactic to "Form Shieldwall!". Note there are special rules that dictate whether a unit can form shieldwall, such as there being no mounted or skirmisher units in the area when it is formed. From that point until the end of the turn, all combat in this area requires a 5+ to hit. (As an aside, I got this incorrect initially, thinking that only the units in shieldwall benefit from the 5+ cover, but that is not the intent. All combat slows down when the shieldwalls go up.)

The Norman cavalry uses a Move tactic to enter the area with the shieldwall. Combat does not occur yet.

The AS use the Special Tactic "Drive Them Back". This is essentially a Battle tactic but the attacking units get 1 extra die per unit. This allows the shieldwall to inflict 4 hits while only receiving 2 in return. (Although, I am pretty sure I played it wrong, with the Normans hitting on 5+ while the AS hit on 4+. Oh well.)

The Normans used Rally first, then used their only Battle tactic to hit the shieldwall again. With only 4 BS to the two AS units, the shieldwall quickly collapses and the units rout.

Things are really looking bad for the Anglo-Saxons. That said, the Norman cavalry is fairly blown. They have slowly been whittled down by four successive combats. The next units in the AS line are the Warlord and his Huscarls, and they are fresh (11 BS).

Turn 3

The AS still have initiative but this time they want to lock out the Normans, if at all possible. They start by locking down the Special Tactics blocks while the Normans Seize the Initiative and Rally blocks. Once the  AS had taken one of the Battle blocks the Norman had to ask himself, was it really worth grabbing the last Battle? Without moving first there was no one to fight.

The AS have an advantage on the hill, so I decide to try a "Charge" (Special Tactic), which requires that you first Move at least one square, then Battle, all in one action. Note that this is two units versus one or 6 BS versus 3. But, because it is a hill, the attackers hit on a 5+ and the defenders on a 4+. So the weight of numbers did not help much; both sides inflicted one hit.

This convinced the Normans to shift their foot troops from the base of the hill to the top, in order to stop the attack in its tracks.

That freed up the AS Warlord to charge with his retinue against the exhausted Norman cavalry, hitting them for 5 while only taking 3 in return.

The Normans have had enough, so they retreat (and eventually restore some hits with a Rally).

This leaves the Battle on the hill, with the Normans still not finding their stride, despite having the numerical superiority now. That said, the two AS levy units have 1 BS apiece remaining.

This is how the battle is shaping up at the end of turn 3. The Normans have lost no units while the AS have lost three. One more unit and the AS rout. With the levy being as weak as they are, next turn is probably the last.

Turn 4

The Normans desperately need to Rally their cavalry, so that is the first selection. The AS know that if they do not get the initiative back they cannot stay in the game unless they get a Rally, so they need to Seize the Initiative. If they can survive this turn, that is …

Amazingly, the Normans strike first on the hill and … whiff!

The AS levy quickly move off the hill, forcing the Normans to chase them.

The Normans decide to Rally the cavalry first, knowing that the AS are not going to go anywhere. The levy, however, decide to go into Shieldwall, so maybe they can continue to hold on until next turn.

The Norman foot advances down the hill, marching up to the shieldwall.

The final battle occurs and the Normans rout the remnants of the levy, taking only a single hit. With two Warrior units remaining, the Anglo-Saxons army is routed.

What I Messed Up

The two areas that I messed up were shieldwalls and hill combat, both involving modifying the to hit roll in combat.

With Shieldwall all combat in that area, until the end of the turn, requires a 5+ to hit. Both sides, regardless of who initiated the shieldwall, regardless of unit type. I think the justification is that the side with the shieldwall is turtling, so not only are they harder to hit, but they have a harder time hitting. I can get behind that idea.

With the hill (or woods or villages) the idea is that the "defender" is uphill of the attack. But because this area is abstract you need to think of it as rough ground where the one receiving the attack has a temporary advantage. So the attacker is 5+ to hit and the defender is 4+ to hit. But this lasts only through the current action. If they next action the other side does Battle, they are now the attacker and thus they are disadvantaged. It is nuanced. So the battle on the hill could have seen the levy stand their ground there and simply never perform another Battle action, i.e. attack. They would have had the benefit, but would only strike after the attacker. Again, I can get behind this abstraction.

@WargameCulture on Twitter/X mentioned that he thought the use of a non-offset square grid would have an effect on the game. As I stated earlier, I think that would only come into play with ranged combat, but I am willing to move to an offset square grid. I have already started making a dedicated 30" high by 40" wide 'You Command' gameboard to get rid of that question altogether.

Summary

As I indicated in my last blog post, Age of Penda scratched the itch I was trying for with my Saga Lite. It solved the puzzle of tying damage to offensive power, while keeping a simple combat system (bucket of dice like Saga instead of 1D6 with modifiers like OHW). Most importantly, it brought the element of pre-planning a turn that Saga is so famous for. Not only will this series of games find its way onto my tabletop, but you can probably expect an American War of Independence variant called Give Me Liberty, the Hell With Death or some such. I would love to see how a Horse & Musket game, when ranged combat is brought to the fore, rather than being a peripheral element.

The Rating

I haven't done this in a while.

Drama – do the rules create tension during play? 4 out of 5

For the most part, combat actions have a 50-50 success rate. But the asymmetry of close combat, where the attacker inflicts damage before the defender battles back leads to more tension than the standard melee where both sides strike simultaneously. One would think that this would also lead to the dreaded 'Alpha Strike' – where one side moves in from outside of combat range, then attacks before the other side can act – but the rules making movement and combat separate actions the norm tends to remove this problem. It can happen, but it is 'special'.

Drama also occurs during the planning stage, not just the action phase, as players try to outwit their opponent by developing a viable plan while in turn denying their opponent their best plan.

Uncertainty – are there enough elements that introduce uncertainty into the game?  3  4 out of 5

The primary mechanic that creates uncertainty, other than combat, is whether you will be able to carry out your plan with the units that you want to act with. When you find that your opponent has taken a tactical option you wanted, can you alter your plan, recover, or will this turn simply be a wasted turn?

The fact that the rules intentionally abstract away so many tactical elements – facing, outflanking, enfilade, etc. – it takes some of the uncertainty from combat. What uncertainty in combat that there is, is due to the randomness of the dice.

Engaging – do the rules allow the player to make meaningful decisions that lead to consequences? 5 out of 5

The meaningfulness of your actions start with the planning, where you decide do you want to achieve a plan of your own, or disrupt what you think is your opponent's plan. Do you spend one of your precious action seizing the initiative, which will not help you until next turn?

Then, having set out a selection of actions, the order that you play those actions, and in which areas, definitely can be meaningful. Should you delay your troops attack to rally first? If you do, they may form a shieldwall, blunting your chances of routing them in a single round of combat.

Unobtrusiveness – do the rules get in the way? 4 out of 5

No. The rules largely make sense. You likely will make a mistake or two in the beginning, but that is only because these rules are so different from what you probably play normally. We all 'read into' rules and how that is interpreted is largely a function of the rules we have played in the past. Once you understand what was abstracted away from the game, and justify why they rules are 'correct', it will be easier to play.

Heads Up – are the rules playable without frequent reference to a quick reference sheet? 4 out of 5

Other than a few specific wordings that I re-read during the game, the only time I referenced the rules consistently was to read the options for the Special Tactic. Once you have played enough games, you will likely not even need that. However, the one area that you may find that you keep referencing is the unit roster. Every unit has 1 to 6 Battle Strength and these get ticked off during gameplay. If you have a system for reflecting a unit's current BS without distracting you then this probably won't be an issue for you. (I used a roster with a single die reflecting the current BS of the unit, placed on the roster, not the table. The dice on the table were to show losses, only for the battle report. I would not normally use them otherwise.)

Appropriately Flavored – do the rules 'feel' like they represent the period or genre being played? 4 out of 5

Ultimately the period flavor comes from the unit types you can select and the options available behind the Special Tactic tactic. Age of Penda provides 8 different options, of which you are supposed to only choose four. Arrowstorm provides another 10 options, some of which overlap AoP. Armour Storm naturally uses a completely different Tactics Chart, given the emphasis on armored warfare.

Both AoP and AS provide army lists, with their corresponding Special Tactic choices. At this point it would take a lot more game play to be sure that the games would have appropriate period flavor, but it seems like it would. I know that I intend to push this back to Ancients and forward to Horse & Musket, so that should indicate a belief you can build that flavor into it, around the game's core mechanics.

One final note: the author indicates that some of the core rules might change slightly to reflect period differences. For example, in AoP a unit can move out of an area that contains enemy units, whereas in AS they cannot.

Scalable – can the rules be scaled up or down – in terms of figures or number of units played – from a 'normal' game? 3 out of 5

A standard game in AoP is 80 points, with players getting four tactics tokens. You can opt to have three tokens and spend an additional 20 points on troops, or have five tokens for a cost of 20 points. In general that means that means that you are acting with potentially one area per token (although in some turns, less than that). An area can contain three units and the board is five areas wide at its widest so having more than 15 units at the start means having units start the game off-board.

The limiting factor with a standard game is more about the tokens than how many areas the table consists of. Tokens equals action, so you can have more units and more area to operate in, but you are still only going to move a certain portion of your army each turn.

That doesn't mean you can't create additional rules in order to scale the game. The simplest is to use the old medieval 'battle' system whereby the army is divided into portions with each portion having a separate commander, which in turn could have its own tokens and a Tactics Chart to share with his opposing commander. Think of it as Left Wing, Center, and Right Wing, each having a Tactics Chart and the commanders there having their own forces and tokens. That also provides a solution for team play.

Scaling the board can also happen. In the end having more squares generally means the game will take longer as it will take more moves before the two sides contact.

There are other ideas to explore, like scaling the Tactics Chart, i.e. adding more boxes. Right now I think the chart is pretty well tuned to two players with 2-5 tokens each, so I probably would not change that.

Out of the box, though, these rules have a specific scale intended and the author provides no guidance on changing that.

Lacks Fiddly Geometry – do the rules require fiddly measurements or angles? 5 out of 5

It is a square grid. There are no angles or measurements.

Tournament Tight™ Rules – are the rules clear and comprehensive, or do the players need to 'fill in the blanks'?  4  3 out of 5

Let me start by saying that my preference is towards tighter rules, where everything is spelled out clearly by the author, not looser rules where the author leaves certain mechanics up to the individual players, gentlemen's agreements, and a roll of the die where agreements cannot be found. So a high value means 'tight' and a low value means 'loose'. If you like looser rules, subtract my rating from '6' and that would probably be your rating!

Tight rules are generally required because the rules are complex or not very straightforward. Although I initially misinterpreted some rules it was because I did not fully read the rule or assumed that it was similar to something I had already played, or fit some rationale in my mind. For example, my first read of Form Shieldwall! was that it was formed one side and that side was 5+ to hit and that there no benefit for the other side. Why would the other side get shieldwall benefits just because you formed a shieldwall? Once you realize that a shieldwall creates a benefit and a penalty, it makes more sense.

Fewer and simpler rules make for tighter rules and fewer arguments. Using a grid also makes for fewer special case rules, as does abstracting away thinks like facing, flanks, formations, and so on.

Solo Suitability – do the rules have elements conducive to solo play? 3 out of 5

There are no hidden elements to the game so that alone usually grants the rules high solitaire suitability. The three decisions that need to be made are: what choices will the non-player commander choose on the Tactics Chart; what order will actions be played; and which area will benefit from the action being played. The rules in the You Command series answer none of those questions so a solo player will be forced to develop his own mechanisms to answer these question. This is pretty standard with miniatures rules, thus garnering its average rating.

Component Quality – are the components provided made with quality? 3 out of 5

I am not aware of whether these products can be purchased as books, but I purchased mine as PDFs. There is no hyperlinking of the table of contents to pages. The graphics are functional but minimal (which for me is a good thing, making it printer friendly). The layout and text is easy to read. All very standard to me.

Recommended.

UPDATE: I have changed the ratings for Uncertainty and Tournament Tight™ Rules. This is explained in my next blog post.