Caesar was interested in giving For King & Parliament a go, so having not unpacked the stuff for last week's game I took it all along to the club again this week. I used the same orders of battle except that, feeling more confident with the rules, I added a unit of raw dragoons to each army. These could be assigned to any one of the three brigades.
Here's the setup and terrain. I went for the classic setup - foot in the centre and horse on the wings. Caesar put both of his horse brigades on his left in two lines and his foot over to the centre-right. His right flank was relatively open. Caesar took Parliament, whilst I was the Royalists.
I was feeling a little vulnerable on my right with a lot of horse coming my way.
I pushed some of it forward (partially to get the benefit of a small hill, but did see an opening on the far right and sent one of my units haring off in that direction. In the distance, on the other flank, you can see my response to Caesar having no horse there; I pushed my horse down the gap between his army and the enclosures, looking to turn his flank and get into his rear.
I got the first unit kill, with Pullman's Horse routing Barnaby's Horse. Naturally they set off in pursuit.
Both flank marches stalled in command indecision, but Caesar's foot were also reluctant to respond to enemy horse in such a dangerous position. In the middle ground some of Caesar's horse had a go at charging my foot.
The attack on my foot went pretty much as you'd expect. They managed to inflict a hit, then got routed.
Saying that Caesar followed up with a second unit, and they did destroy my foot unit, blasting a hole in my infantry line. Of course being horse they weren't able to exploit it since they also hared off in a wild pursuit that took them off the table, never to return.
Clarke's Horse had been sat on a hill on their last hit for a few turns, but couldn't be dislodged. In the end they were able to charge, and routed some more Parliamentarian horse.
On my left I had finally got my horse organised. Caesar had responded by advancing his infantry into mine, so now I had nothing in front of me but his artillery and the rear of his army.
The Causton Trained Band found itself attacked on two sides - horse to the front and dragoons firing from the flank.
The infantry fight in the centre. On the hill both of our veteran units clashed in a long slog of a fight. The isolated Borchester Conscripts on my right kept up a steady fire on Caesar's surviving horse. In the distance you can see my horse moving along the hill to destroy the Parliamentarian guns. And, further over, my right-flank horse is reorganising having returned to the field from its pursuit.
The Borchester Conscripts destroyed the enemy horse, preventing it from turning into the gap in my infantry line.
On my side Halford's Foot broke; half of my foot was gone now.
But it was the dragoons that administered the coup de grace. A volley from the flank routed the Causton Trained Band and broke the Parliamentarian army.
To the right of the picture are the heroes of the Parliamentarian army, the Causton Militia. This raw foot unit survived an attack on its rear from fresh Royalist horse, shaking off a ten dice attack by saving three of the four hits that were inflicted on it
Caesar lost around 15 medals. I lost 8 of my 14, but had a couple of horse units that were hovering on a vulnerable last hit, so it was maybe a closer game than it looked.
It was a good fun game with several tense moments. Caesar's inexperience with the rules (and the period) meant that his got his deployment in a bit of a mess and I was surprised to get a rare chance to outflank him, something he's done to me on numerous occasions. But sweeping flank moves aren't the easiest thing to do with these rules, which make maneuvering armies suitably hard (or, at least, time consuming). But thanks to Caesar for a great game.
I'm really enjoying For King & Parliament, but I am having trouble finding much in the way of historical scenarios for it.
