A Portable ECW Encounter

I replayed the simple encounter battle I played the other day, but this time I used my Portable ECW rules. Once again the Royalists had a force strong in cavalry whilst Parliament's was strong in foot. The Royalists had a hill and some enclosures on their side of the field.

A view from behind Parliament's lines showing their impressive force of foot.

The Royalists, showing their strong cavalry contingent.

Early moves. Both sides had randomised deployments and ended up with their strongest force in a line across their front with the secondary arm to the rear. So Parliament advanced their foot, whilst the Royalists swung their horse across to their left.

This enabled the Royalists to make a strong, bold attack on their left flank, once that Parliament's forces actually held off.

Indeed steady fire from their dragoons actually routed one of the Royalist horse units.

In the centre and on their left Parliament was advancing well, and launching a strong attack on the enclosure. The Royalist dragoons put up less of a fight than did their Parliamentarian counterparts; outflanked and surrounded they quickly routed.

Parliament began to wrap around the Royalist right flank, with their horse threatening a sweep across the field to destroy the Royalist artillery.

Meanwhile on the other flank the Royalist horse was finally mopping up the enemy. But Parliament had foot units available to block any further attacks.

However Parliament's commander fell in the centre, leading the attack on the Royalists in the enclosure. This would hinder their activations for the next turn.

And overview of the battle. At he bottom of the picture parliament's troops can be seen exploiting their advantage over the Royalist right flank, whilst at the top Royalist horse are trying to exploit their advantage over Parliament's right flank.

Parliament swung their foot round to counter the Royalist horse. They had foot to spare.

One of the units got surrounded, but amazingly put up a strong fight and resisted the Royalist attacks again and again.

Meanwhile the Royalists were still holding on in the enclosures. But both armies were at their breakpoint, so were rolling to see if their army gave up at the start of each turn.

A unit of Parliamentarian foot broke ...

But the Royalists were then driven from the enclosures.

However Parliament then failed their morale test, and their army broke.

This was a much more interesting action than the OHW ECW version I played the other day. And I spotted a couple of possible tweaks to my Portable ECW wargame. The first is to do with when an army rolls to see if it breaks - to some extent once an opponent reaches their breakpoint there's no real incentive to keep pressing them since eventually they will fail their morale test. The obvious solution is that a side only takes a test if they've taken casualties since the last one; I just need to work out how to phrase that properly and in a way that makes it easy to keep track of. The second tweak is that foot with pikes who defeat horse should not pursue, so that will just be a slight rewording of the pursuit rules.

It occurs to me that I really need to write up my various changes to the published ECW Portable Wargame. 

Team Yankee

I went back to Thursday evening wargaming last night for the first time since June. We're at a temporary venue at the moment, in a local RSL club (with access to food and a bar) as opposed to our usual venue at the University. We're hoping to be back at the University sometime early next year, when the academic year kicks off again.

Anyway, I went as an observer; there were two training games of Team Yankee being played; not really my thing at all, but it was nice simply to be out and socialising with gamers again.

Here's a few pictures. Make of them what you will.

One game featured Soviets vs British

This game was a larger affair. The one force was combined West Germans and French, whilst the other was run as Soviets but the troops were Bryan's Indonesians.

OHW ECW

I fancied trying out my ECW One Hour Wargame variant last night. Rather than run a specific scenario or battle, I simply created two equal forces - two pike & shot, two horse, one gun and one lot of dragoons - then added two random units. The Royalists got two more horse, whilst Parliament got two more pike & shot.

I randomised the terrain - one possible item in each of the four quarters. The Royalists had a hill and an enclosure on their side, whilst Parliament got nothing.

Parliament's horse was Disciplined, whilst that of the Royalists was Dashing. Disciplined horse can lose their impetus dice, but may also regain it after a combat. Dashing horse never lose their impetus dice, but lose a strength point if they destroy an enemy unit.

Thanks to the flexible OHW moves there was a lot of activity on the first couple of turns. The Royalists occupied the enclosure, but attacked with their horse. The first melee took place on their right flank.

To be honest the whole action was a bit of a mess, rather than an organised-looking ECW battle. Parliament got their foot into position to hold off the Royalist horse.

The Royalists were losing the cavalry action on their right.

They charged on the left. Some of their horse reached the enemy gun, whilst another found itself attacking Parliament's foot, with the alternative being shot to pieces by it.

An overview of the battle. The Royalists were already a unit down.

Parliament advanced their foot under fire, and attacked the Royalist dragoons in the enclosure.

Royalist horse in action on their left.

Despite a load of casualties, Parliament's foot was pushing forward and the Royalists had little to stop them.

The last Royalist foot unit made a brave stand on the hill, but was quickly routed.

Soon the only Royalist unit left were the dragoons, still holding out in the enclosure and close to breaking the frustrated Parliamentarian horse opposing them.

I found this a less than satisfying game; the rules didn't do it for me at all. Maybe in the end I just simply wasn't in the mood for them as much as I thought.

Burlesque Update #20

From the end of June until well into October we were in various forms of lockdown in New South Wales, so as you can imagine my burlesque activities were somewhat curtailed. However yesterday they briefly flickered into life again when I went to a one-off class. It was fun to just be up and moving again; whilst I could have done stuff at home over the past few months the general apathy of lockdown had pretty much pushed burlesque from my mind. The class was a much-needed boost.

Anyway, it made me realise that I hadn't posted an update since April of this year. Obviously there's not much to report, but there are a couple of bits.

In my previous report I said I was going to be performing in Sydney at the end of April, and that's exactly what I did. Here I am in full Professor Persano mode at one of my favourite regular shows, Burlesque In Hand in Glebe.

Maya was due to perform at the June show. We all know how that ended ...

Around May/June we started another multi-week class, learning the rudiments of chair-work - performance with a chair as the centrepiece. We almost got through to the final lesson before ... Lockdown! The final class was actually yesterday, and a few people did it. Most of us just felt that, sadly, we'd lost the momentum on the routine we were learning and it was too hard to pick it all up again.

So now the holiday season is coming around - Christmas, the New Year and Summer Breaks - so things will be pretty quiet until stuff starts up again in February/March. I have an idea for a new routine I want to try and develop, though, even if at this stage it will just be sketching it out on paper until I get the chance to have some mentoring. So that may be the subject of the next update. Or maybe not.

Gainsborough 1643

I have done Portable Wargame conversions of some of the scenarios for 'Warr Without An Enemie' listed on the Wyre Forest Gamer's website before, but this is one that I haven't previously played. It's an all-cavalry action and it features an early appearence by one Oliver Cromwell. You can read about the actual action, and see the original scenario, HERE.

I ruthlessly simplified it, and rotated the map to allow the road to be portrayed more easily on a square-grid. The primary terrain feature in a large hill on the Royalist side (left). This has a 3 square by 2 square summit, surrounded by a one-square width lower lever, so occupied an area 3 squares by 5 squares. The lower slopes are difficult going. As you can see, I resorted to the traditional 'books under a cloth' approach for this one.

I ended up adapting the OOBs to give both sides six units - these are the Royalists, under Sir Charles Cavendish with two Veteran Horse, three Trained Horse and one unit of Raw Dragoons. They started on the top of the hill.

Parliament, under Sir Joyhn Meldrum, had two Veteran Horse, two Trained Horse, one Raw Horse and one Raw Dragoons. Cromwell was with one of the Veteran Horse.

Historically Parliament attacked, so that's the plan I went for. I used my multiple-dice initiative system from This Post. Parliament started off well, and were able to move their entire force forward.

The Royalists redeployed slightly, and then Parliament's hose were charging up the slopes.

And, really, that's where it all fell apart. As you'd expect, charging upslope is generally never a recipe for victory, especially when you opponent enjoys a slight edge in terms of quality. Their units began to fall back with mounting casualties, and the Royalists pursued and also worked around the enemy flank.

The first Parliamentarian unit routed, swiftly followed by another.

Meldrum led his men in charge after charge, but to no avail.

Parliament enjoyed a small success on their left, driving off one unit of Royalist horse ...

... but Meldrum fell in the centre and the battle was lost.

The Royalists quickly mopped up the opposition.

And that was it. It was a quick game and somewhat one-sided. Both sides got good activations early on, then the Royalists kept getting them whilst Parliament didn't. Ideally Parliament might as well stay where they are and let the Royalists come off the hill to them, but why would the Royalists do that? And, historically, Parliament does seem to have taken the initiative in terms of the attack.

I'm not sure how Parliament can win this one.