Welcome to Blitzkrieg Squadron’s official rule list for a scenario mod for the game Minecraft, which the clansmen affectionately call it, Siegecraft. Minecraft’s sandbox environment is expanded upon by setting up a balanced PvP system that can introduce more complex aspects to gameplay rather than the seemingly ‘goal-less’ objectives to vanilla Minecraft.
The spirit behind Siegecraft is a representation and intellectual strategies of politics, peace, and war from Medieval Europe. Before we gather into the rules of the particular game mode in question, first you must take a venture into the history of the peak of the Hundred Years War. It all started in the early 1300’s, as birth of kings will tear countries apart.
At this time, the French King, the Dauphin, would struggle to maintain power over the realm. Each county in France was run by a noble, and each noble felt no reason to conform to the Dauphin’s rule, only used his laws as guidelines. Thus, for the most part, each county was independent, had a large castle, and sizeable army.
England had a large army as well, and the Enligsh operated as one entire nation. That was their advantage to many of the sieges that had taken France by storm. The French castles, however, were so well designed that the English had to come up with new tricks to win the battles, including the use of sappers in the early 1400s.
French castles utilized confusing castle structures and traps, all of which included false drawbridges as seen in the castle Carcassonne. Knowledge like this was studied and learned by the siege engineers, which were the physics specialists of the day. In this mode, it is time for you to play the siege engineer, on both the defense and offense of castles. To make this scenario work, rigorous rules will have to be maintained, and the realistic structuring of the castles must also follow a particular code. Some rules are obvious, as in no lava built inside a wall. Others are more detailed, like the complexity of a cannon build, and the height of a siege tower.
First we will cover our rules for the walls, including some strategies for the defense of your castle, and or fort. The idea behind this game is to create a wall that accents your skills as a defender, not make walls that do all of the work. That being said, you cannot:
1. Build your wall out of Obsidian – First off Obsidian is not hard to make, you simply pour water on lava, and the difficulty of breaching the stone compared to the ease of its creation make it an unfair tool to use in the defense of your stronghold. The fun of a siege is to knock the walls down, take that away and no one will bother to siege your castle or even acknowledge playing with you.
2. Walls may not be filled with lava or water – The castles in the medieval ages were not filled with a dangerous chemical or substance, they were filled with mortar, sometimes sand and gravel to detour people breaking down the walls, and also to help act as a cushion to absorb the force from projectiles launched from catapults.
3. Make your walls low enough to fire from – The range of arrows makes it difficult to judge the accuracy of the shots at a large range. Also, falling from them by accident from a height too unrealistic will be fatal.
4. Utilize creative defense of the ramparts – By using murder holes, crenulations, and even hollow walls that allow the defenders to fire from inside protected spaces.
5. Repairs between siege waves – Can only be built using wood planks or dirt, NO OTHER MATERIAL.
6. Cannons can be used against walls, but must be built within the confines of a 3x3 platform made of wood – Cannons can be constructed on towers, but not walls. Cannons can be placed outside the walls during a siege, but not moved after the construction.
7. Ladders, ladders can be built on walls but must be a continuous ladder that is not segmented – In other words, as you are scaling the wall, you must place a ladder on every part of the wall that you wish the scale.
8. Any picks or shovels can be used to attack the walls – I allow this because of the fact that the sieges will be small, so to compensate for the lack of attackers, diamond tools will be allowed.
9. Siege towers – Siege towers were only used in the most desperate of situations during a siege, as they were vulnerable to pitch or flaming arrows. Thus they were not widely used. To build a tower, you must construct the tower out of wood in the same shape as you would craft armor pants in the game:
The X represents where wood planks are built, and the L represents where a ladder is built attached to the center X on the right or left columns. That enables you to clear a doorway in the center X on the top row for whatever height you need.
X|X
X|L
X|X
