The year was 1296, and in the great hall of Westminster Palace, King Edward I of England stood before a massive table bearing detailed maps of Britain. His towering six-foot-two frame earned him the nickname "Longshanks," but it was his iron will that truly defined him. As he traced his finger along the borders of Wales and Scotland, his voice cut through the assembled nobles like a blade: "By God's blood, I shall be lord of this entire island, or I shall die in the attempt." The assembled barons watched in tense silence as their king outlined his vision of a unified Britain under English rule. This was no mere royal boast—this was a declaration of war that would reshape the British Isles forever and unleash three decades of brutal, transformative conflict.
To understand the magnitude of Edward's ambition, we must first grasp the complex political landscape of late thirteenth-century Britain. This was an era when the concept of unified nation-states was still emerging from the feudal patchwork of medieval Europe. Britain existed as a collection of independent kingdoms, each fiercely protective of its sovereignty, traditions, and distinct cultural identity. England had grown wealthy and powerful under Edward's rule, but Wales remained a collection of independent principalities under native Welsh princes, while Scotland maintained its status as a completely separate kingdom with its own royal dynasty, laws, and customs.
Edward I, who reigned from 1272 to 1307, possessed both the military genius and ruthless determination necessary to attempt such an unprecedented unification. His reputation as the "Hammer of the Scots" would be earned through decades of relentless campaigning, but his methods were refined through earlier experiences. Edward had already proven his strategic brilliance during the Crusades and had successfully centralized English law and administration. He understood that medieval warfare was evolving beyond simple cavalry charges—it now required coordinated siege warfare, innovative tactics, and the ability to sustain long campaigns across difficult terrain.
The Welsh campaigns of 1282-1283 served as Edward's proving ground for his grand strategy. When Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last native Prince of Wales, refused to pay homage to the English crown, Edward responded with overwhelming force. His systematic conquest of Wales combined military innovation with psychological warfare—he built a network of massive stone castles designed not just to control territory, but to demonstrate English power and permanence. The death of Llywelyn in 1282 effectively ended Welsh independence, but the lessons Edward learned about managing conquered peoples would prove crucial for his later Scottish campaigns.
The Scottish conflicts, beginning in 1296 and continuing until 1328, proved far more challenging and ultimately unsuccessful. What began as Edward's intervention in a Scottish succession dispute evolved into a generational struggle for Scottish independence. Legendary figures like William Wallace and Robert the Bruce emerged to challenge English dominance, employing innovative tactics that would influence European warfare for centuries to come.
These epic campaigns, with their clash of cultures, innovative military tactics, and larger-than-life personalities, provide the perfect foundation for historical miniature wargaming. The dramatic tension between English heavy cavalry and Welsh longbowmen, or Scottish schiltrons and English combined arms, creates compelling tactical scenarios that bring medieval warfare to vivid life on the tabletop battlefield.
The Welsh Campaigns
King Edward I and The English Conquest Of Wales
The Welsh resistance centered around Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last independent Prince of Wales, represented far more than simple political defiance—it embodied a fundamentally different approach to medieval warfare that would challenge English military doctrine. Llywelyn understood that his forces could never match English heavy cavalry in open battle, so he developed what we would recognize today as guerrilla warfare tactics. Welsh armies relied heavily on their intimate knowledge of mountainous terrain, utilizing fast-moving forces of spearmen, skilled archers, and light cavalry that could strike quickly and vanish into the rugged landscape before English knights could respond effectively.
This tactical reality creates fascinating scenarios on the tabletop battlefield. When recreating Welsh campaigns with WoFun miniatures, players commanding Welsh forces must embrace mobility and terrain advantages, just as Llywelyn did historically. The Welsh army composition in the starter pack reflects this tactical approach perfectly—with regiments of agile spearmen, deadly skirmish archers, and light cavalry designed for hit-and-run tactics. These units move faster than their English counterparts but cannot sustain prolonged combat against heavily armored opponents, forcing Welsh players to think strategically about when and where to engage.
Edward's revolutionary response demonstrated his understanding that traditional feudal warfare needed adaptation for the Welsh theater. His castle-building campaign was not merely about occupation—it represented a strategic network designed to control movement through Welsh valleys and mountain passes. More importantly for our tabletop understanding, Edward pioneered the systematic use of combined arms tactics, integrating heavy cavalry, infantry, and increasingly sophisticated siege equipment. His armies began incorporating larger numbers of professional soldiers rather than relying solely on feudal levies, creating more disciplined and coordinated fighting forces.
The Battle of Orewin Bridge in 1282 exemplifies these tactical innovations in action. Edward's forces used coordinated infantry and cavalry attacks while simultaneously employing engineers to construct pontoon bridges, allowing rapid river crossings that outflanked Welsh defensive positions. On the tabletop, this translates into scenarios where English players must carefully coordinate their slower but more powerful units—knights provide the decisive punch, but only when properly supported by archer fire and infantry formations that can hold ground and protect flanks.
The siege of Castell y Bere in 1283 showcases another crucial tactical element that makes for compelling miniature warfare scenarios. Edward employed systematic siege techniques, using crossbowmen and engineers while his heavy cavalry prevented Welsh relief forces from breaking the siege. This creates natural tabletop scenarios where one player must conduct siege operations while defending against mobile Welsh relief columns—exactly the kind of multi-layered tactical challenge that makes historical wargaming so engaging.
The final Welsh campaign culminated in Llywelyn's death during a skirmish near Builth Wells, where his small force was overwhelmed by a larger English army that had successfully predicted his movement patterns. This engagement highlights how intelligence and strategic planning often proved more decisive than individual tactical brilliance—a lesson that translates directly to tabletop command decisions.
The outcome of Edward's Welsh campaigns established patterns that would define his later Scottish wars. Welsh subjugation succeeded because Edward combined overwhelming force with systematic territorial control, but the tactical lessons learned—particularly about the effectiveness of mobile infantry formations and the crucial importance of controlling key terrain features—would prove essential when facing the more sophisticated Scottish resistance that lay ahead. Understanding these tactical evolutions helps explain why recreating Edward's campaigns on the tabletop provides such rich strategic depth, as players must master the same combination of tactical flexibility and strategic patience that determined medieval battlefield success.
The Scottish Wars: The Evolution of Medieval Strategy
The Scottish succession crisis of 1290 created the perfect opportunity for Edward's imperial ambitions, but it also set the stage for the most sophisticated military conflicts of the medieval period. When multiple claimants vied for the Scottish throne, Edward positioned himself as overlord and arbitrator, ultimately installing John Balliol as a puppet king. However, this political maneuvering backfired spectacularly when Scottish nobles grew frustrated with English dominance and formed the alliance with France that would drag Scotland into the Hundred Years' War. The resulting conflict would prove far more challenging than Edward's Welsh campaigns because Scotland possessed the resources, population, and military sophistication to mount sustained resistance using increasingly innovative tactical approaches.
William Wallace emerged as the embodiment of Scottish tactical innovation, demonstrating that properly organized infantry could defeat the finest heavy cavalry in Europe. At Stirling Bridge in 1297, Wallace achieved what military theorists had considered impossible—a decisive infantry victory over mounted knights in open battle. His tactical genius lay in understanding terrain advantages and timing, allowing the English cavalry to commit to crossing the narrow bridge before unleashing his spearmen in coordinated formations that prevented the knights from maneuvering effectively. This battle established the template for Scottish success: disciplined infantry formations operating in terrain that negated English cavalry advantages.
Robert the Bruce elevated these tactical concepts to the strategic level, combining Wallace's infantry innovations with sophisticated political and military leadership. Bruce understood that Scotland's ultimate success required not just battlefield victories, but the systematic recapture of English-held strongholds through coordinated siege warfare. His campaigns between 1306 and 1314 demonstrated masterful strategic planning, using mobility and local support to gradually erode English territorial control while avoiding pitched battles until conditions were overwhelmingly favorable.
Bannockburn in 1314 represents the culmination of Scottish tactical evolution and provides the most compelling scenario for tabletop recreation. Bruce positioned his army to force the English into attacking across broken ground that disrupted cavalry formations, while his schiltrons—massive formations of pikemen arranged in defensive squares—created nearly impenetrable defensive positions. The battle's genius lay in Bruce's ability to dictate engagement terms, forcing Edward II's much larger army to attack prepared positions under disadvantageous conditions.
The schiltron formation itself revolutionized medieval infantry tactics and creates fascinating tactical challenges on the tabletop battlefield. These formations, represented in the WoFun rules as special defensive blocks of pikemen, could not move once deployed but counted as having no vulnerable flanks or rear—making them nearly impossible to defeat through traditional cavalry charges. However, they remained vulnerable to sustained archer fire, creating the tactical puzzle that makes recreating these battles so strategically compelling. English players must coordinate longbow fire to create gaps in schiltron formations before committing their cavalry, while Scottish players must position their formations to maximize defensive benefits while maintaining enough mobility to respond to changing battlefield conditions.
English tactical evolution paralleled Scottish innovations, leading to the combined arms approach that would eventually dominate European battlefields. Edward I's later armies integrated dismounted men-at-arms with massed longbowmen, creating flexible formations that could both deliver devastating missile fire and provide solid defensive anchors for cavalry charges. This tactical development appears clearly in the advanced WoFun rules, where later English armies must balance heavy infantry, longbowmen, and reduced cavalry forces—reflecting the historical shift away from cavalry-dominated warfare toward more sophisticated infantry-based tactics.
When recreating these conflicts on the tabletop, players face the same strategic challenges that confronted historical commanders. Scottish forces excel in defensive scenarios and must use terrain advantages and formation discipline to offset English numerical and equipment superiority. English commanders must coordinate multiple unit types effectively, using archer fire to weaken Scottish formations before committing expensive cavalry units to decisive attacks. The resulting tactical complexity creates scenarios where successful players must master both individual unit capabilities and army-level coordination—exactly the same skills that determined medieval battlefield success.
Mastering the Art of Medieval Command
The Andy Callan's rules for “Edward I Wars” lies not just in their historical accuracy, but in how they force players to think like actual medieval commanders. Unlike modern wargames that often focus on complex statistics and detailed unit interactions, this system captures the essential challenge of medieval warfare: coordinating different types of troops with vastly different capabilities while managing the chaos and uncertainty that defined historical battlefields.
Understanding the turn sequence reveals the first layer of strategic thinking that players must master. Each turn uses a deck of playing cards to determine when different troop types can act, but the crucial insight is that the player with initiative chooses who acts first in each phase. This seemingly simple mechanism creates profound strategic decisions because it mirrors the historical reality that battlefield timing often determined victory or defeat. When the Jack appears for the first missile action, do you use your English longbowmen to soften up a Scottish schiltron, or do you hold back and let your opponent commit first, revealing their tactical intentions? This decision-making process forces players to think several moves ahead, just as historical commanders had to anticipate enemy responses while managing their own tactical options.
The army composition requirements embedded in the rules teach players about historical military realities through gameplay rather than abstract study. English armies must balance roughly equal numbers of knights, spearmen, and archers because this reflects the combined arms approach that Edward I developed through hard-won experience. When you field an English army, you quickly discover that knights alone cannot win battles—they need archer support to weaken enemy formations and spearmen to hold ground and protect flanks. This interdependence creates natural tactical lessons about medieval warfare that emerge organically through play rather than through memorizing historical facts.
Scottish army restrictions tell an equally important story about adaptation and tactical innovation. Scottish forces must field at least two-thirds spearmen because historically, Scotland lacked the feudal structure and economic resources to field large numbers of heavy cavalry. However, this apparent weakness becomes a strength when players learn to use massed spearmen in defensive formations that can stop cavalry charges cold. The schiltron formation represents this tactical evolution perfectly—once deployed, these pike formations have no vulnerable flanks or rear, making them nearly impossible to defeat through direct assault. However, they cannot move, creating the strategic tension that defined historical Scottish tactics: tremendous defensive power at the cost of tactical flexibility.
The measurement system using base widths rather than fixed distances demonstrates sophisticated game design that serves both practical and educational purposes. This scalable approach means the same tactical relationships work whether you use 18mm or 28mm miniatures, but more importantly, it forces players to think in terms of unit relationships rather than precise measurements. Medieval commanders did not measure battlefield distances in yards or meters—they thought in terms of bow range, cavalry charge distance, and formation spacing. When the rules specify that longbows have a range of ten base widths, players naturally develop an intuitive understanding of medieval battlefield geometry that mirrors historical command decisions.
The action system creates strategic depth by limiting what each troop type can accomplish in a single turn while requiring careful coordination between different unit types. Missile troops can perform two actions per turn, choosing from moving or shooting, which reflects their battlefield flexibility but also their vulnerability when caught in close combat. Cavalry can move, charge, or rally twice per turn, but knights who charge twice become "blown" and lose their charge bonus—a rule that captures the historical reality that heavy cavalry could deliver devastating initial impact but rapidly lost effectiveness in prolonged fighting. Spearmen can perform only one action per turn, reflecting their role as steady infantry who formed the backbone of medieval armies but lacked the tactical flexibility of more specialized troops.
Combat resolution balances historical accuracy with playable mechanics by using different hit numbers for different tactical situations. Knights charging with their lances hit on a roll of three, four, five, or six, representing the devastating impact of heavy cavalry in ideal conditions. However, these same knights hit only on fours, fives, and sixes in subsequent melee rounds, showing how their effectiveness diminished once the initial charge momentum was lost. This mechanical difference teaches players the historical lesson that cavalry charges were decisive moments that required careful timing and preparation—exactly the same tactical understanding that medieval commanders needed to develop.
The formation rules create tactical puzzles that mirror historical command challenges while providing clear gameplay benefits and limitations. Schiltrons cannot move but count two ranks when fighting in any direction and ignore flank attacks, perfectly capturing both the strength and weakness of defensive pike tactics. English longbowmen in "herce" formation can mass their firepower for devastating arrow storms, but they have limited ammunition and become vulnerable once their arrows are exhausted. These mechanical trade-offs force players to make the same risk-versus-reward calculations that determined historical battlefield outcomes.
Victory conditions based on army morale and divisional cohesion rather than simple elimination create strategic depth that extends beyond individual tactical engagements. Players must balance aggressive attacks with force preservation, understanding that pyrrhic victories often lead to strategic defeat. This system naturally teaches the historical lesson that medieval warfare was ultimately about achieving political objectives rather than simply destroying enemy armies, encouraging players to think like commanders responsible for long-term campaign success rather than short-term tactical glory.
The Miniature Wargaming Experience: Where History Lives Through Strategy
The Edward I Wars represent the perfect intersection of historical drama and tactical complexity that makes for exceptional miniature wargaming experiences. This pivotal period in British history offers players something that few other medieval conflicts can match: the opportunity to command armies during one of the most transformative eras in European military evolution. When you deploy your WoFun miniatures on the tabletop battlefield, you are not simply moving pieces around a board—you are stepping into the boots of commanders who fundamentally changed how warfare was conducted, whose tactical innovations would influence military thinking for centuries to come.
WoFun's Starter Packs provide the perfect entry point into this rich historical period, offering balanced forces that capture the essential tactical characteristics of each army while remaining accessible to new players. The English starter army reflects Edward's combined arms approach with its integration of knights, archers, and spearmen, while the Scottish starter force emphasizes the infantry-heavy composition that made their defensive tactics so effective. These carefully designed army compositions teach players historical lessons through gameplay mechanics, making the learning process both engaging and memorable.
The Full Packs expand these possibilities exponentially, providing the complete range of unit types that allows players to recreate specific historical battles or design custom scenarios that explore alternative tactical approaches. With sixteen different regiment types available, from English dismounted knights to Welsh skirmish archers to the colorful "Wee Folk" camp followers, players can experience the full spectrum of medieval military diversity that made this period so tactically fascinating and historically significant.
The tactical diversity means that “The Medieval Britain Wars” scenarios never become repetitive or predictable. Each army type demands different strategic approaches and rewards different player skills. Commanding English forces teaches lessons about coordination and timing, as players must synchronize multiple unit types to achieve maximum battlefield effectiveness. Leading Scottish armies develops understanding of defensive warfare and the psychological aspects of combat, where disciplined formations must hold firm against terrifying cavalry charges. Welsh commands emphasize mobility and opportunistic tactics, requiring players to recognize and exploit fleeting battlefield advantages.
The legendary personalities involved in these conflicts add dramatic weight to every tabletop engagement. When you maneuver Robert the Bruce's schiltrons at Bannockburn, you are recreating one of history's most brilliant tactical victories achieved against overwhelming odds. William Wallace's innovative infantry tactics at Stirling Bridge represent a military revolution that players can experience directly through gameplay. Edward Longshanks himself embodies the evolution from purely feudal warfare toward more systematic military campaigns that combined political strategy with tactical innovation.