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 - 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.