Fighting in the streets

[Erpingham]

Not something often wargamed but this article on 15th century Castilian urban action might prompt some interesting skirmish ideas.

[DougM]

I liked the British army acronym for streetfighting, FISH & CHIPS - Fighting In Someone's House & Causing Havoc In People's Streets.

[Dave Knight]

Interesting - thanks for posting

[Mark G]

Doug, was that on or off duty, they referred to?

[DougM]

Doug, was that on or off duty, they referred to?

I think it was official...

[DBS]

At the risk of being a killjoy, the official acronym remains FIBUA - Fighting In Built Up Area.

However designated, proved rather fatal for, in Hannibal's supposed opinion, the second greatest general.  Problem is even a good set of rules would probably struggle to rate roof tiles as offensive weapons accurately.

[Imperial Dave]

At the risk of being a killjoy, the official acronym remains FIBUA - Fighting In Built Up Area.

However designated, proved rather fatal for, in Hannibal's supposed opinion, the second greatest general.  Problem is even a good set of rules would probably struggle to rate roof tiles as offensive weapons accurately.

lobbed by an old lady

[Duncan Head]

I recall "Rioting in Alexandria" in one of the early Slingshots.

[Erpingham]

Constantinople also offers various rioting mob options, with good factional dynamics.  Or you could try a Sicilian Vespers game, perhaps with various French players trying  escape/effect rescues/save the McGuffin activities against an umpire/AI mob.  Or faction fights, like in article, with a "capture the base" driver, perhaps with allied factions (who may change sides or decide to sit things out) and neutrals into whose territory you may venture at risk of triggering an armed response.  Plenty of inspiration but actually representing the combat might be challenging.

[Swampster]

The fighting in Rome between partisans of Emperor Henry VII and Robert of Anjou could be interesting. I have seen Rome of that period as described being more like a cluster of villages surrounded by the old walls, with much of the old city converted to farmland. There could be a combination of street fighting and more conventional tactics, all overseen by the relics of the Romans.

[Jim Webster]

When I wrote Hell and Uncivil Disorder rules, whilst they're 'modern', in the playtesting we did do 'Ancient' rioting as well.
Other than there being no real equivalent of the Media (monkish chroniclers probably don't count) there wasn't a lot of tweaking needing to be done.

[Ian61]

Not something often wargamed but this article on 15th century Castilian urban action might prompt some interesting skirmish ideas.

Thanks Antony.
I enjoyed that article. Well written, impressive for a person not a native English speaker I enjoyed some of the oddities of English, that certainly didn't detract from the whole, perhaps, "his husband" the best, a little more 21st Century than 15th - we complain too much about having to get genders right in foreign languages. (I have obviously spent too many years helping non-native speakers with their EPQs on often quite complex topics, hence I tend to proof read well despite being dyslexic and awkward in my own writing.)

PS Would the siege of Jerusalem by Titus count as urban warfare? The Romans had to take it bit at a time and if I remember they were helped by the fact that the different Jewish factions were fighting each other inside.

[Ian61]

"Luis de Pernía always tried to avoid fighting inside cities, where 'even the most miserable coward could, with a crossbow or an espingarda, easily slay the greatest warrior'. Ironically, Pernía died during an urban combat at Carmona, in 1472, at the hands of a mere barber armed with an espingarda. ...... in urban combat, even the most experienced warrior could die at the hands of a fresh recruit."

Old ladies armed with roof tiles aside, I used to fence a bit in days gone by and it was an oft repeated saying that; "the greatest swordsman in Italy feared not the second greatest but the worst." The idea being that it is very hard to predict what a total beginner will do - deaths have occurred as a result of good fencers assuming they didn't need that mask to engage a beginner! Or in the actual streets a man armed with any sort of sharp/heavy tool that in normal use is not really a weapon but that he handles every day and knows the weight of.

[Jim Webster]

Or in the actual streets a man armed with any sort of sharp/heavy tool that in normal use is not really a weapon but that he handles every day and knows the weight of.

I suspect that was one reason why street fighting to take a town was so dangerous.  That and the constant rain of roof tiles and slates

[Imperial Dave]

plus an inability to make numbers count in narrow choke points