Rowton Heath - 1645

This is another game adapted from a scenario in Charlie Wesencraft's 'With Pike And Musket'. After Naseby, Charles I is in Chester looking to rout a besieging force. His cunning plan was to send his horse on a wide sweep to the east, but when it arrived at Rowton Heath it found an equivalent force of Parliamentarian horse waiting for it. Both forces of horse were supported by a small amount of foot and guns - besiegers and besieged.

This is the field, looking from the south-west corner. Wesencraft's map has a few hedgerows, so I added some random enclosures to mine. To the north is Rowton Heath itself, a gentle hill. The southern base-edge is the River Dee. The majority of forces for both sides arrive to the east - Parliament's in the north-east corner and the Royalists via a bridge over the Dee in the south-east corner. A small force from both sides enters in the other corners, the Parliamentarians from the north-west and the Royalists via the gates to Chester in to the south-west.

Both sides had a main force consisting of four horse and one dragoon. The supporting forces were one regiment, one horse and a gun. I allowed them three activation dice on the first turn, six on the second and the full nine from then onward.

After a few turns this was the position. Both sides had got most of the troops on and were moving into position. At the top of the picture (the east) you can see parliament's horse in two lines, whilst that of the Royalists is still a little disorganised. 

The action opened on the road to Chester, as the smaller forces of horse on the western flank engaged.

However it didn't take long for the main cavalry action to start to the east, and it was immediately fairly bloody, with both sides taking plenty of hits.

And the Parliamentarian commander, General Poyntz, was one of the casualties!

The Parliametarian foot seemed to have been content to sit on the Down waiting for the Royalists to come to them, but a misunderstanding in the aftermath of the loss of General Poyntz saw them advance into the attack. This basically brought the whole battle  to the main Royalist lines.

The artillery of both sides had been duelling steadily, but the Royalist guns came off worse and their crew fled.

To the east the Royalists had initially got the worse of things, with two of their four units fleeing the field. But a counterattack saw them even the odds, as they broke two Parliamentarian units in return.

Both sides were hovering close to their break-point.

The main fighting. The foot of both sides were engaged with each other, as were the dragoons.

To the west the Parliamentarian cavalry had prevailed, and, to the dismay of those watching from the walls of Chester, it swung into the rear of the Royalist line.

The Royalist army was already close to breaking, and this attack was the final straw. They fled the field.

So a historical result. 

This was a nice simple scenario, with a fairly open field and the forces completely balanced. Parliament has a slight edge in that they have the defensible hill in their deployment area, but if this became an issue I'm sure a small adjustment to quality or initial activations could be given to the Royalists to offset this. The forces arriving over several turns makes for an interesting opening, especially with randomised activation. What might make it interesting is to perhaps only allow two activation dice per turn for the first four turns (then the ninth on the fifth turn). This would slow and spread out the arrival of troops even more, and possibly create opportunities for one side to get a jump on the other.