For King & Parliament

Around six years ago I had a chance to play For King & Parliament. I enjoyed it, but had someone else explaining the game to me as I went, so didn't really entirely get my head around the mechanisms.

I actually have a copy of the rules, but had never really given them much of a read in the intervening time. And I tended to be focused on other, shorter and simpler rules.

But the other day I got out For King & Parliament again and gave it a full read. I think on previous attempts I found that, whilst I could see how the core mechanisms worked, I couldn't quite pull it all together. This time I decided I was going to read it with a view to actually trying out a game.

On Saturday I gridded out a 3' x 2' cloth with 3" squares, which fit my paper figures. Last night I set up and played a game.

Here's the two armies I selected arrayed for battle, Parliament on the left and the Royalists on the right. Terrain was randomised. Parliament got a nice long ridge in their deployment zone, so set up their foot on it.

The armies were equal in terms of units; four foot, five horse and one dragoon each side. The Royalist horse were seasoned Swedish whilst that or Parliament were raw Dutch. Parliament's foot was shot-heavy, whilst that of the Royalists was standard. The dragoons of both sides were raw.

Here's the position after a couple of turns. Parliament decided to stay put, but did organise some horse (bottom right) whose deployment was hindered by a wood. The Royalists are advancing slowly; their foot was deployed in a block at the start and had to manuever into a line.

The first combat! On their right Parliament charged in with their horse. The Royalist horse counter-charged, which actually makes them the attacker. It took a few reads through a couple of sections to work out the combat, but I got there in the end.

The Royalists scored two hits! (They rolled more dice than this, but these are the ones that hit_. The Parliamentarian horse promptly saved both of them. In fact this particular unit would save regularly throughout the game.

A view of the general cavalry fight on Parliament's right. The stones show its on units.

A view along the board - the horse on the other flank were now also engaged, as were the dragoons in the fields at the very top of the picture. The dragoons would skirmish ineffectually all game.

Parliament had pushed one foot unit forward to support its horse on the left, and it was pounced on by Royalist foot. It hovered on the edge of breaking for ages, with the Royalists unable to quite finish it off.

The first actual casualty was a unit of horse on Parliament's left, along with the brigade's colonel.

The Royalists also lost a unit of horse on their left. 

Horse began to disappear on both flanks. On the Royalist right they still had both of their units in play, but they were also both engaged in an uncontrolled pursuit.

A view of the battle. The horse of both sides had thinned out on the flanks, with most of the survivors engaged in pursuits. In the centre the infantry lines had closed up and furious musketry was taking place.

One Royalist foot unit was demolished by multiple double-volleys from a Parliamentarian unit on the hill.

A surviving Royalist horse unit is charged in the flank. But it survived.

A push of pike saw one of Parliament's foot units rout.

The flanked Royalist unit not only survived the attack, but was able to turn and charge, routing its attacker. That was enough losses to break Parliament's troops, although the Royalists were pretty much one unit from breaking themselves.

The foot were still holding on in the centre, although a couple of units were looking shaky.

It took me about an hour to set things up and draw up the army lists, then just over two hours to play. I had to look a lot of things up, and I'm not sure I did everything correctly, but once I got going the rules were relatively smooth. 

You'll note that I used dice throughout instead of cards. I just found it easier, although there is something more elegant about playing cards.

It was a lot of work to play, but I enjoyed it and it gave a nicely unpredictable game. I may try a smaller action next time though.

I did find a couple of things that were unclear. Maybe I need another read:

(i) The rules state that a roll of '1' is an automatic failure. But it doesn't seem to be clearly stated what the target number of a unit's first roll of the turn is. I assume that you have to roll 2 or more, subject to all applicable modifiers.

(ii) There is an activation penalty if a move is through rough terrain. Does this apply both  if the unit moves into the square with the terrain and again/also if it wants to move out? I assumed so. So you are penalised if you enter a wood, but are also penalised if you start in the woods and move out.

(iii) There's mention of units that pursue off the table being able to come back, but I couldn't find how this is resolved. In my game the battle ended before they had a chance anyway, but I could see it being an issue in future games.