Battle Report - 18 Nov 2918 - "The Second Battle of Newbury" - Pikeman's Lament

Newbury is top right of this board,.

The final game in our club Pikeman's Lament campaign - the Royalists are fleeing towards Oxford and have been caught on the hop by a night march and pincer movement by the forces of Parliament.

Grahame set this up as two battles on back to back 8'x4' tables - on one side 3 Royalist players (Shawn, Tom, Pippa) against 3 Parliament (Colin, Tony, AndyM2), on the other 4 Royalists (me as Maurice, Carl as Goring, Ash, Alan) against two Parliament (AndyM, Grahame), both with double size forces. There was an option for Parliament to cross from one table to the other (across the main road to Oxford) if they broke through the lines.

Donnington (and a regimental gun which must
have taken some effort to get up there)
bottom left.

Each named commander had chits they could cash in for an activation re-roll: our cause wasn't helped by Goring (and his supply of re-rolls) getting killed in an early cavalry fight on the left wing, resulting in me having to bail out Carl's terrible dice rolling in order not to have AndyM (as Cromwell) simply roll up that flank.

I held on reasonably well in the centre - Grahame played his usual cagey waiting game which meant we were both dying the proverbial death of a thousand cuts from long range musketry. A fight I always seem to lose in the long run. Ash and Alan between them held off Parliament around Donnington keep....

Over on the other table, Shawn did a superb job of keeping Colin out of Newbury, but unfortunately, AndyM2 (we have too many AndyM's, never mind Andy's, at the club) managed to break through the Royalist left with a sizeable force, and at the point we called it was sitting astride the road to Oxford and threatening Ash's rear and the Royalist baggage train.

So - a win for Parliament, much like in history :D

Add another to our long list of ECW battles the club has refought! (Edgehill, Marston Moor, First Newbury, Bridlington, Stilton, Cropredy Bridge (twice)...)

Battle Report - 06 Oct 2019 - "Marston Moor" - Pike and Shotte

Slightly late (as I had a bunch of photos to sort through), here's Sunday's refight of Marston Moor using Warlord's Pike and Shotte rules. Huge thanks to Gary for organising it, and Rod, Pippa, Ash, Dan, Grahame, AndyM, and Shawn for making it an enjoyable day.

[This is our seventh (or so) ECW battle recreation - Carl ran Edgehill in 2012 with Warhammer ECW, Gary ran Newbury later in the same year with Pike and Shotte, Grahame ran the little-known skirmish in Stilton in 2014 (as well as at a couple of shows), we've run Cropredy twice, once in 2011 and once in 2012 (both with WECW), and of course we ran Bridlington the other week.]

Initial deployments, Parliament on the left. My rough guess is there's a bit under 1000 figures on the table.

Initial advances in the centre. Hampered by Pippa (as Tiller) having rotten luck with activation rolls, and AndyM (Lord Fairfax) and Shawn (Baille) not doing much better.

Gary (Black Tom Fairfax) starts his assault on the right.

Parliament's right wing continues its advance while Rod (Goring) attempts to deploy in response. 

I (Rupert) do a quick head count and realise the right is in trouble, so send Rupert's two units of Horse (including his rather beefy Lifeguards) to Rod's aid.

Nothing's actually happening on the Royalist right, as neither Dan (Cromwell) or Ash (Byron) appear to be able to throw anything under a 9 for activation! 

Rupert's Horse arrive. But possibly too late.

Make that definitely too late. 

Serious cavalry action ensues on the Royalist right. Tom's stray unit of commanded shot get caught in the crossfire, but somehow manage to repel a charge from some Roundhead cavalry. Twice.

I (Newcastle) bravely elected not to form hedgehog with the foot facing Dan's cavalry, and despite being pushed back...

...survived, clearly inspired by the commanded shot to their right. Dan's front rank falls back for the first of several breathers. 

The astute will notice there is no left flank cavalry of a Royalist persuasion remaining. Told you Rupert was too late :(
Tiller's second rank of foot wheel and mount a sterling defence of the hedge line. 

...while Baille and Lord Fairfax decide the time is right to attack the centre.

...leading to a bit of a meat grinder.

Over on the right, Dan wades in again, and eventually the Royalist right breaks.

Gritty defence of the left, still, but it's only a matter of time.

And there we called it - a resounding win for Parliament, and a great game.

My one lone gripe, which has always been the case for the Warlord mass combat rulesets, is that it is very easy to fluff one roll and end up doing precisely nothing for one or more turns with an entire brigade/battalia. While I laud their attempt to add some friction to the rules, IMO it can be a little bipolar, especially if you're attempting to move a large chunk of units as one and you miss the roll.

That said, it only detracts a little from an excellent day. Even if Parliament won :D

Prepping for Sunday

Gary from our club is putting on a recreation of Marston Moor using Pike and Shotte tomorrow.

Lucky (?) me gets to be Prince Rupert, so I spent a chunk of the afternoon having a quick read up about the battle and tidying up my small collection of Warlord ECW figures. Looks like I need another KR Multicase box, although this one might have to include a fair bit of pick and pluck to fit the pikes ;D

Battle Report - 23 Sep 2019 - “Escape from Bridlington“ Pikemans Lament

A huge and somewhat epic scenario run by Grahame, which saw the Royalists attempt to defend Bridlington from a Parliament landing force, while simultaneously attempting to spirit Queen Henrietta and a whole bunch of wagons of ammunition off to York.

I had the dubious pleasure along with Tom of attempting to defend Bridlington: suffice it to say we were somewhat overwhelmed by boatloads (in the literal and figurative senses) of Roundheads, but we did hold them up but enough that Shawn and the ammunition train managed to get away.

Pictures without captions unfortunately, as I’m stuck on the iPad and it doesn’t seem to handle lots of pictures in the blogspot editor very well.   Also, apologies this is a day late, but I had to get up at stupid o’clock this morning to get into London.  Drop back in a couple of days and I may caption them  :)

Battle Report - 19 Aug 2019 - "Fog of War" (Pikeman's Lament)

It was too foggy to take photos :D The map of the initial
positions, however, is drawn in Wonderdraft. My units in red.

Club evening, and another round in the Pikeman's Lament campaign. An interesting scenario this - essentially two forces have been blundering around in the fog and bumped into each other. The set up was each side gets one piece of scenery, to place anywhere, and then 8 cards, on each of which they either write the details of a unit in their (24pt) force or some suitably anti-their-opponent slogan ("Death to Cromwell!", "For King and Country!"). Cards are placed facedown, alternately, anywhere in their own half of the table and no less than 6" from an enemy unit...

An interesting recipe for carnage, as it turned out. I wound up with a unit of gallopers on each flank, and two units of shot in the centre, one behind a wall, with some pikes behind one of the horse right out on the left. Probably fortunately, I got first activation. Cue the elite gallopers on the right advancing, rolling a double 6 for activation, and then getting another free activation, which sent them smack into Colin's dragoons. Which the latter didn't like. And liked the followup charge even less, departing the table, but leaving my gallopers wavering.

Meanwhile, in the centre, there was an exchange of fire after my shot moved up to the wall, which was largely inconclusive - my musketeers at the wall wavered a bit and fell back. On the left, Colin's trotters charged one after the other and were met by countercharges - and for once it wasn't me rolling dreadful dice: both bounced off, one after the other. And then it was my turn... ;D

Let's just say that when the dust settled one unit of (not veteran!) gallopers had pretty much done for two units of trotters, at some cost to themselves. My musketeers advanced back to the wall, more shots were engaged, and the pike rumbled forward and across into Colin's leftmost shot - that's the first time I've managed a charge with pike and it was kinda fun!

This being a campaign game, Colin wisely chose to withdraw and preserve his forces.

Thanks to Colin for being (as ever) a gracious and friendly opponent, and to Grahame for organising the campaign.

Battle Report - 29 July 2019 - Pikeman's Lament

Ok, so.. I can actually roll dice, sometimes. And my luck (or lack of it) seems to be transferable.

And those are all Gary's forces beyond mine, just after I've been
suckered into charging his dragoons in the wood.... because
Andy's still scared of veteran shot with first volley :D :D (I tease
mostly because it's his only failing! Normally he slaughters me.)

Catchup game (hey, I was in the States) for our Pikeman's Lament campaign - a 2 v 1 scenario with Gary and AndyM2 (again) trying to stop me getting a supply caravan down the table and off the end.

I picked an entirely different force to last time - two lots of Elite, Aggressive gallopers and 2 stands of veteran shot. It... sort of worked, in that I managed to protect the carts long enough to get them off the table, though it did cost me an unwisely placed unit of gallopers to a couple of Wild Charges, and a unit of shot to being nibbled to death by multiple volleys from commanded shot and dragoons.

Club still meeting at the studio, as our regular venue is having,
shall we say, issues with their decorators.

Andy's still afraid of being shot at by veteran shot, and... apparently sitting on the same side of the table as me causes my rubbish dice rolling to transfer to him - he managed four (I think) double ones and several more failures to activate. My damage rolls weren't brilliant but at least the carts activated every time they needed to (bar the time the civilians got shot and I had to move a unit of shot to manage the carts!).

A win for the King! Yay.

Battle Report - 17-Jun-2019 - "Mike and the very bad no good dice rolls" - Pikeman's Lament

Not pretty, and getting less
pretty by the turn.

Today was a demonstration of the one real reservation I have about the Dan Mersey rulesets (Vicious Beast Rampant, MHWBK, etc). My (belated, because the chairman gets to drop out when numbers are unbalanced) first game in our Pikeman's Lament game.

So - attacker/defender scenario - Parliament attacks, I defend for King and Country. With this in mind, I pick a force with two veteran shot, a gun, a stand of pike and a couple of units of commanded shot, and let AndyM2 come at me.

Very wisely, he decides first volley from veteran shot is not his idea of a good time, so hangs off at a safe distance, and skirmishes with some commanded shot and dragoons...

And I cannot make morale rolls to save my life. Andy is scraping activation rolls by the skin of his teeth, and I'm by turns activating nothing, rolling double ones on morale saves... it's all horrid :D

Talk about being nibbled to death by ducks... every time: dragoons or shot skirmish, one kill, I fail a test, unit goes back... lather, rinse, repeat.

Can't even blame the new Lardy dice, as they were being reserved for shooting at things... which I hardly got to do :D

Battle Report - 8-Apr-2019 - Pikeman's Lament

As we have another club campaign this year, I figured I'd get a refresher game in against Carl at the club.

Royalist-on-Royalist, as he had the same idea of a refresher as I did, but he had a raiding party (dragoons, no shot or pike) and I had a garrison force (pike AND shot).

It started off like a typical ECW battle - the cavalry had a big dustup on one flank, which I sort of won, at considerable cost, until a bunch of his dragoons waltzed up and broke my gallopers. Was pretty downhill from there, actually: I was having awful luck with activation dice. Carl kept going through all his units without failing, and I kept failing after moving 1 or two. It didn't help that one of my veteran shot broke and ran, on an abysmal morale role, leaving me with one wavering unit of pike, one, likewise, of shot, and a unit of commanded shot that wasn't long for the world.

Good game, though :D Still think it's one of the best of that core ruleset, although the activation rules and my inability to roll dice still bug me.

BTW the unit cards are from here.

Battle Report - 16 Jun 2014 - Warhammer ECW

"Sunday, 24, to Huntingdon. In this march, before wee came to Stilton, wee mett with a body of horse lately raysed out of Suffolk and Essex, about 400, commanded by Colonel .....Leiftenant-Colonel Lehunt, Major ....., Scotus, and Captain Loe. The Major and about 100 were taken that night. Gosnal, Minor, Wroth, Sym. et al' ceperunt..."

     -- The Diary of Richard Symonds, August 1645

Monday night saw us do a run through of our ECW game for the Peterborough Heritage Festival - a nice little recreation of what was little more than a skirmish around the village of Stilton (of cheese fame) just south of Peterborough. A clutch of Royalist horse ran into some more numerous but more inexperienced Roundheads, and there was something of a running battle down the main street.

Grahame umpired, with a light and informal hand that worked really well, and Ash, Chris and I took the King's men against AndyH, Carl and Pippa.

By all accounts it went pretty much according to history. Chris' dragoons raced up the main street to find a good vantage point in a building near the Blue Bell Inn, while two units of horse followed them and a third took a detour through the back gardens of Stilton.

The first clash was outside the Blue Bell, my Cavaliers being driven off by some remarkably doughty raw Roundheads, eventually reining in halfway down the High Street and turning back to face. By then, the Parliament unit had collected two rounds of shot from the dragoons, and the second unit of the King's horse had ducked out between two of the buildings to confront a second bunch of Parliament's men, which they successfully drove off.

Round the back on the left of the High Street, Ash engaged another group of Parliament's so-called finest, and succeeded in driving them off and pursuing them a goodly part of the way to Huntingdon. On the other flank, the followup skirmish went the way of Parliament after several rounds of combat, causing one unit of Royalist gallopers to flee into the Fens.

Roundhead prisoners.

There was then a sort of general pause for all parties to catch their breath and reload pistols, before combat was rejoined between the remaining forces. After several rounds, it pretty much went the way of the Royalist, the remaining Roundheads fleeing the field as the sight of a cloud of dust on the road down from Peterborough heralded the arrival of the King's main force.

Great fun - a nice, light game after the fierce concentration I needed for the weekend!

Thanks to Grahame for running it.

Battle Report - 03 Dec 2012 - Warhammer ECW Campaign

Gary (left) and Dewi ponder the
problem.

So, having reached the end of our campaigning, Carl decided we'd cap off the club ECW campaign with a battle. Conveniently, it was late June of 1643, and our campaign area was the general vicinity of Oxford, so... we had a go at Cropredy. To be specifically accurate, we had another go at Cropredy, since long-term readers of this blog may remember that Carl and I had a go at the battle last year.

Forces were, as for our last couple of large battles, provided by Gary (barring a few cavalry by me). What's really scary is that Gary is now retired (early - the youthful good looks are NOT due to a picture in his attic), and happily painting away... and that this insane volume of Warlord plastics was painted in his spare time in less than a year... before he retired.

Royalist gallopers charge the bridge.

Carl and I (lacking Andy, who was indisposed) took the Royalist rearguard and rear of the main force, and Dewi, Grahame and Gary took the forces of Parliament. It.. actually went pretty much as per history. My cavalry charged Waller's approaching Roundheads coming over Cropredy Bridge, and proceeded to demonstrate just how good decent Royalist gallopers are, smashing through several units one after another and causing a real logjam at the bridge.

A convoy of Royalist foot head for
Hays Bridge.

That was pretty much what decided it - while the forces of Parliament were recovering from that, the rest of the Royalist rearguard managed to get most of the way to Hays Bridge, and we called it by about 4pm campaign time.

And that's that for the ECW campaign. Grahame and the Roundheads (sounds like a great name for a band) won the campaign proper, having by the end of June more cash and forces and territory than we did. A great time was had by all - thanks to everyone who took part, but especially Carl for organising the whole thing. We'll do it again in 2014!

Works in Various Stages of Progress

First off, apologies for what, by my standards at present, is a long silence - the family took turns at a two day tummy bug this week, and I've just about got over my go at it. On the good side, I have got the workshop a BIT tidier than it was, and was disturbed to discover how many 4L Really Useful Boxes I seem to have filled up with figures since I last did a serious audit. And I have had a couple of days to Think. And Plan.

It, um, looks like I'm going to have to update the Figures page on here sometime soon, or actually get stuck in to Sekrit Project W again. Suffice it to say the painted pile's gone up by Early Saxon and Christian Spanish WAB armies, as well as my Imaginations army (which I need to dig out again!)...

The unpainted and project piles, and the plans, on the other hand... let's see. This is turning into a 2013 resolutions list!

ECW Campaign Update

For those of you who might have been wondering, no, I haven't forgotten about the club ECW campaign. We've had about five sessions, and (after last night) we've just reached the end of 1643.

The summer campaign season went pretty well - there were a couple of small skirmishes, which largely seemed to result in Andy's Royalist forces covering themselves in glory. In late August, Rupert and Essex happened by, and basically relieved both sides of all their spare cash to fund their armies, which made the next couple of turns interesting, to say the least. Carl (who is GMing the campaign) asked for an accounting of troops to be made to him at the end of August - I provided mine in character (when reading, treat pounds as WECW points :D).

What made winter even more interesting was that for both sides, income from a given garrison dropped by half, and suddenly instead of raking in 500 pounds profit every fortnight, we were making a similar sized loss. Just to add to the fun, the recently-fought (using Pike and Shotte) Battle of Newbury was factored into the campaign, which had very little effect except that the King's forces had captured the Earl of Essex. So Cromwell levied a tithe on the Parliament side's coffers, which, sadly, we (the Royalists) didn't get to see any of.

Graeme and the Parliament forces figured out the best way of dealing with this a couple of turns quicker than we did: in Tinker Fox (plus our local rules), raids only cost if you make the roll to attempt it, so it's worth the risk, as provided your raid makes a profit, not only do you get a small amount of extra funds, you deny your opponent the funds from that area for two turns. That aside, we both currently have the problem of not being able to afford to pay all our troops every turn, so over half our orders are spent making personal visits to garrisons to quell their dissention, having agonised over who doesn't get paid this fortnight.

Hopefully, we'll survive the winter (another six turns!!!) without any garrisons turning mutinous, though not paying the garrison at Stratford over Christmas really wasn't in my plan!

On the good side, most of the Royalist army is now Steady, with a goodly few Veteran.

On the bad side, His Royal Highness Prince Rupert will probably be coming by in March to co-opt half our army for the new campaign season. Joy.

All in all, though? Great fun: even if we have basically spent several Monday nights clustered around a map, and on several of those not moved or laid out a single figure at all! The thing that is interesting on that score is that when we do move to the tabletop, the battle has context in the larger scheme of things, which can even make a two units vs two units scrap surprisingly entertaining.

Battle Report - 26 Aug 2012 - Pike and Shotte

It being a Bank Holiday Sunday, our club had an all-day gaming session. Four of us (your scribe, Carl, Gary and Andy) got together to fight a large ECW battle (a reenactment of the battle of Newbury), arranged by Carl and (barring about two units) using Gary's positively massive collection of 28mm ECW figures.

It was actually my (and Andy's) first game of Pike and Shotte, though we've both played one of more of its relations before. Carl and I took the Royalist forces, tasked with preventing Essex's forces from crossing the river at Newbury (in our right hand corner of the 12'x6' board).

The Royalist forces lined up with 6 battalia - three (a total of ten regiments) of cavalry under Rupert, and three of foot (three or four regiments each) under the King: something of the order of 500 figures, by my reckoning, and a similar size force on Parliament's side.

In short? The Royalist cavalry on the left flank (commanded by me, clearly not on form) were rash and foolish, and paid the price. In the fields in the centre and right it started to look like the Somme, with two long lines of infantry manning the hedges, and blazing away at each other from fairly close range. Eventually, the Royalist horse were driven from the field, and so much like in its real counterpart, Essex would have been able to break through to Newbury and thence to London. (Although, to be fair, we did capture Essex, which might well make the next stage of the campaign a bit more interesting.)

Without further ado... here are some pictures of about 1000 28mm figures to drool over. Huge thanks to Carl and Gary for providing the scenario and figures, and Andy for being, as ever, a fun opponent.