Edgehill

Fired up by the new Twilight of Divine Right (ToDR) scenario book for the ECW, I adapted one of them to the Portable Wargame, and played it through yesterday afternoon. I chose Edgehill because, well, you have to do Edgehill at some stage.

Both sides had fourteen units, which left the board a little cramped. Each side had six Pike & Shot foot, four Horse (Trotters for Parliament, Gallopers for the King) and two Dragoons. Parliament also had an extra foot unit, whilst the Royalists had some Artillery. All of the above units were Raw. Both sides also had one unit of Trained Gallopers each, as a reserve.

I adapted the map from the scenario. This seemed to place the Royalist deployment as much off the main ridge as on it. Indeed the Royalist's high ground just scrapes onto the bottom the the playing area. In front of it is the village of Radway. Parliament sits on a wider ridge. Along the flanks are a couple of areas of enclosures.The ToDR scenario gives a win to Parliament if they are still on the field. This is why I gave them no artillery, compared to the Royalists'; whilst Parliament can win by sitting tight, the Royalist guns can steadily inflict hits on them whilst they sit on their starting positions.

Here's the setup, with the Royalists closest to the camera. I played with a few tweaks to the rules. One of these, freely poached from ToDR, is that Artillery can fire through friendly units. This allows them to be placed in a way that friendly units offer them some protection. Oh, and the nature of my hills, plus my reluctance to have the Royalists totally crammed onto the rear edge, meant that I brought forward part of the ridge.

After a couple of rounds of artillery fire, Parliament advanced, with both wings covered by their horse and dragoons.

Their commander was an early casualty. In my rules the commander simply represents a point of focus, so whilst his loss can be critical towards the end of the game, in that it makes an army more likely to break, his loss in game terms simply denies the army some combat bonuses. In addition I added in a rule that allows a commander to possibly be replaced each time the deck is reshuffled. and just after the Parliamentarian commander was lost, the deck was reshuffled and they rolled successfully to get a new one.

The horse of both sides battled on the flanks ...

... whilst Parliament's foot advanced slowly in the centre.

The Royalist position looks strong, but Parliament has an extra unit of foot, plus the Royalists are pushed up against the back edge of the board, so can't retreat and are therefore more likely to take hits. Parliament can fall back to avoid hits.

The advance was slow and deliberate.

Soon the Royalists were under fire and under attack.

On the flanks the dragoons were still fighting each other, but neither side was making much impression on the other. Their primary effect was to limit the movement of the other side's horse. The Royalist horse was beginning to suffer though, and both sides had committed their better quality reserve cavalry.

Parliament regroups. Most of the Royalist horse was gone by now, but their infantry was still holding steady.

I impose a time limit on my games - four runs through the initiative deck. Owing to the early appearance of the reshuffle card, twice, the runs were quite short, and at this exciting juncture the battle technically ended. Of course this being solo play I simply continued. It lasted one more run through the deck, with the Royalists breaking partially due to their commander getting panicked and fleeing the field (a random event)

It was an interesting game. There were probably too many units for the size of the board - I think 12 is really the upper limit for an 8x8 board, but it made for an interesting tactical game where the rules on stopping movement in close proximity to the enemy really came into play. Obviously it also made controlling the flanks very important. I think I still need to explore how my time-limit mechanism works, as it possibly doesn't give the game enough activations in the normal run of things. Four runs through the deck may be too low; maybe five or six would be better, or I need to use some other process.