The English Civil War - 1642

With a lovely new campaign map, and a simpler random army generator I thought that a quiet Saturday morning (the second in a row) would be a great time to try out my English Civil War campaign again. Once again I would use Dominion of Pike & Shot to fight the battles.

As stated in my previous post the new map adds a tenth area - North Midlands, and renames Midlands to South Midlands. The Royalists control South Midlands and South West at the start, whilst Parliament controls the South East and East Anglia.

To go with the nicer map I also switched to using wooden blocks (from a 1950s copy of Risk) as markers.

So here's the setup at the start of the 1642 turn.

In the 1642 turn the sequence is that two random uncontrolled areas are selected, and a battle fought for each. Years from 1643 onward use a different system.

With ten areas and four controlled at the start of the campaign this makes selection of the other two areas easy. I simply assigned each a number from 1-6, then rolled 2D6 until I got two unique results. The areas selected for the opening actions of the campaign were North Midlands and South.

The first battle was fought in the North Midlands.

Game 1 - The Battle of Bingham

Royalist troops looking to occupy Nottingham were blocked near the village of Bingham by an equivalent Parliamentarian force.

Royalists (Attacker) - 2 x Horse, 1 x Melee Foot, 1 x Shot, 1 x Dragoons, 1 x Artillery

Parliament (Defender) - 2 x Horse, 1 x Armoured Horse, 1 x Missile Foot, 1 x Missile Foot in Defences

NB: All Melee and Missile Foot are assumed to be Mixed pike and shot. Pike are ordinary Melee Foot whilst Shot are ordinary Missile Foot. Dragoons are Missile Mounted. Horse are Melee Mounted.

All battle pictures are taken from behind the attacker. Left and Right are always from the attacker's point of view. The yellow die shows the turn number whilst the red and blue dice show combat rolls for parliament and the Royalists respectively. The arrow shows who is attacking.

Parliament deployed horse to the left and right, with that on the left being cuirassiers. In the centre some pike and shot defended a series of enclosures. The Royalists opposed the cuirsasiers with dragoons, the other horse with horse and artillery in the centre.

The pre-battle artillery bombardment for both sides was ineffective.

Turn 1 - Royalists chose the right flank with Horse against Horse. The Royalists won and Parliament moved up more Horse from their reserve.

Parliament responded on the left flank as the cuirassiers advanced on the dragoons. But they were shot down. Parliament moved their missile foot from the reserve.

Already two units down, Parliament attempted to rally the cuirassiers, and succeeded.

Turn 2 - The Royalists activated the Dragoons on their left. The exchange of fire with the Parliamentarian foot was inconclusive.

Parliament's foot moved through the enclosures under fire from the enemy guns.

Turn 3 - The Royalists kept up the artillery fire in the centre and drove off the Parliamentarian foot. Parliament moved up the newly rallied cuirassiers to cover the retreat. I forgot to take a picture of this.

Parliament's horse kept up the attack on the right, with the horse of both sides becoming bogged down in a swirling melee. (both units were defeated). The Royalists moved up horse from their reserve, swinging the fight in their favour and driving off the Parliamentarians.

The Royalists rolled to rally their lost horse and got it back.

Turn 4 - Firmly in control on the right the Royalists moved to outflank Parliament's centre, which held.

Parliament's foot advanced on the left attempting to drive back the Royalist dragoons, but simply got caught in a firefight.

Turn 5 - The Royalists kept up the pressure on the right and Parliament's army broke.

So the Royalist victory meant that they soon controlled Nottingham and therefore the North Midlands area.

The second action of the year took place in the South.

Game 2 - The Battle of Kingsclere

Parliamentarian forces under Sir Thomas Fairfax were moving through Basingstoke towards Salisbury. The Royalist army under Ralph Hopton marched quickly from Newbury and the two forces met at Kingsclere.

The Royalists were attacking again

Royalists - 2 x Horse, 1 x Pike, 1 x Missile Foot, 1 x Dragoon, 1 x Artillery

Parliament - 2 x Horse, 3 x Missile Foot, 1 x Dragoon

Fairfax deployed Horse on both wings and foot in the centre in the approved style. Hopton deployed his guns to the fore with horse on their left and dragoons on the right.

(Note that one assumption of the Dominion series is that troops represent a dominant type in that zone. So the dragoons can be assumed to be supported by small numbers of horse whilst the guns probably have the backing of some foot.)

One again the pre-battle artillery was ineffective.

Turn 1 - The Royalists advanced their dragoons and opened fire on Parliament's horse. The horse responded by charging down the dragoons. The Royalists moved up horse from their reserve to counter this.

Parliament's horse kept up the pressure and a series of inconclusive charges and counter-charges took place.

Turn 2 - The Royalist artillery kept up a steady fire on the Parliamentarian centre, causing the foot there to fall back. Fairfax  moved up more foot to replace them.

However a continued advance by the foot was met by more artillery fire, and was also driven back. Fairfax was forced to commit his final foot reserves to the centre, and things were not looking good for the Parliamentarian army

(Two lucky rolls by the Royalist artillery saw them destroy two Parliamentarian foot units)

Parliament tried to rally one of the lost foot units but failed.

Turn 3 - The Royalists kept up the pressure in the centre, but the Parliamentarian foot held.

Fairfax personally led a charge that finally drove off the Royalist guns. The Royalists moved up their Pike unit as a replacement.

Turn 4 - The Royalist pike counter-attacked in the centre and routed Parliament's foot. This left dragoons covering the shattered Parliamentarian centre.

The dragoons successfully halted the advance of the pike and things stabilised in the centre.

(I made a mistake here; with a roll of 4 the mounted missile dragoons would have destroyed the Royalist pike since they get a +1 vs pure melee infantry. However it wouldn't have affected the result of the battle.)

Turn 5 - The Royalists attacked on the left, and their horse quickly drove off the Parliamentarian horse. With no reserves Parliament now had an exposed flank.

Parliament responded by redoubling their efforts on the other flank, but the horse of both sides simply became too exhausted to continue. 

With only the dragoons left in play, Fairfax's army was forced to withdraw,

A second Royalist victory meant that they now controlled the South as well.

So at the end of 1642 the Royalists are looking strong, with plenty of scope for expanding control into the north, or for striking at the Parliamentarian forces in the east.

To be continued ...

Capture The Flag

Last night was one of our regular Gaslands nights at the Wollongong Wargamers and, as ever, we had a good turn-out for it with six players. We ended up with the Capture The Flag scenario; each team had one vehicle carrying a flag, which is placed on the board if that vehicle is wrecked and which can be picked up. A team wins by having two flags on a single vehicle at one time.

I say 'teams'. Because we were paying at 30 Cans, only one team had more than one vehicle. Caesar was running two bikes, which is a risky strategy in any game.

Obviously with each person only having one vehicle we assumed the game would be short. After all, once an enemy vehicle was wrecked, releasing its flag, another player only had to pick it up with their vehicle to win.

We kept the arena fairly simple.

I didn't note down the details of the other teams, but I think we had Idris, Scarlett, Verney and the Warden represented. I went for a Mishkin vehicle with a turreted Death Ray. I fired it once.

Stuart managed a ram from the start ...

... and then started deploying RC bomb vehicles.

Graham had to run a gauntlet of dropped weapons. He went through the mines and escaped with nary a scratch.

Plenty of chaos. At this stage Caesar had lost one of his bikes and the other (the green trike) wasn't looking too well. My Mishkin technological terror had wiped out, and we'll not hear of it again.

Stuart's bombs were causing a lot of entertainment. The first had been shot just after launch and blew up. Stuart's vehicle was the only thing in range of the blast.

The second vehicle went up when Caesar ran over it with his bike. It wrecked the bike and damaged Stuart's vehicle some more.

Stuart took a decent amount of damage from his own bombs.

Caesar's vehicle wrecked and the flag was up for grabs. Graham rose to the challenge, deftly avoiding some caltrops.

Nothing could stop him now; to pick up the flag he had to collide with Caesar's wreck, but that wasn't going to do enough damage to stop him. We called the game at that point.

So we really did have a fast game, but an enjoyable one with plenty of dropped weapons and lots of Fun With Bombs.

Here's a few pictures from Caesar:

ECW Campaign Map

I have improved the campaign map for my simple ECW campaign. I have drawn up the areas using county boundaries, and it looks much nicer.

The observant will see one major change - the Midlands has been split into two areas. When drawn up this way the original area was huge compared to what was covered by the other areas. This split into North Midlands and South Midlands makes a little more sense.

I have run some test campaigns with this map and it doesn't radically how the campaign pans out. The setup for the Royalists changes; they start with South Midlands, but North Midlands is uncontrolled at the start.

In some of the campaigns I used random rolls to select the active area each turn, but then allowed that side to choose which area they moved into. If they go into an uncontrolled area then they simply take it over. If they choose an enemy area then they fight a battle as per the rules, which causes time to advance.

The really, really observant will see that the map I chose for the background was actually produced fifty years after the ECW. I liked the image though.

Great Victories - Part 1

I've been playing around with Dominion Of Malborough And Peter The Great over the past couple of days. I'd tried a few Great Northern Wars battles, and they were OK. But I decided to have a go at some of the War Of Spanish Succession scenarios as well,  using my GNW figures, naturally.

I really enjoyed how they played out, so I thought that it would be fun to try a series of linked games. Not really a campaign. Just some linked games.

Malborough's victories at battles of Blenheim (1704), of Ramillies (1706), of Oudenarde (1708), and of Malplaquet (1709) ensured his place in history as one of Europe's great generals, and there's a scenario for each in the rules. So I decided that I would play them through in order against Mrs Kobold, swapping sides after each game. I would give the winner points equal to how many units they had left at the end - the loser would get one or zero depending on how badly they did.

Mrs Kobold has only heard me waffling on about the Dominion series up until now, so for last night's session I started with a fifth battle to get her used to the rules. I chose the prelude to Blenheim; the July 1704 Storming of the Schellenberg.

Here's the view from behind the Bavarian defences. I use small stones to mark most traits, or paper earthworks to show units in defences. Malborough and his allies have their infantry to the fore. On their right is a formidable fortress with elite artillery in defences.

The Bavrian right was where the battle opened, and it developed into a sustained brawl (both units destroyed each other which I chose to interpret as them being caught up in a sustained fight that would last until the end of the battle). We both moved up foot from the reserve to support the action there.

(I used the option slow reserves rule, where a sector in which you've deployed reserves can't be chosen on your next turn).

The artillery on the Bavarian left pounded away at successive Allied attackers.

Despite a breakthrough in the centre it was their failure to subdue the Bavarian artillery that defeated the Allies.

So with an understanding of the rules Mrs Kobold was ready for the first battle. And it's the famous one - Blenheim.

This view from behind the Franco-Bavarian positions shows the initial setup. On the right is Blenheim itself, whilst the rest of the French forces are represented by artillery backed up by some foot and formidable numbers of cavalry. The Allies have all of their foot to the fore and a strong cavalry reserve.

The scenario relies on the Allies being able to force the Nebel and take out those Franco-Bavarian artillery units. Mrs Kobold, as the Allies, found that hard to do, but did eventually manage to push through in the centre, only to face massed French horse.

She also neutralised the defenders of Blenheim. Things were looking good.

But the French cavalry in the centre proved unstoppable, and the Allied reserves were not up to stopping it. Malborough and Eugene were defeated and I picked up 4 points for the French. Mrs Kobold got 1 for Malborough.

We swapped sides. I was confident Lady Luck would be with me and that I would be across the Nebel in no time.

She wasn't. My attack on Blenheim stalled. And the Franco-Bavarian centre and left also held back Malborough and Eugene.

Prussian horse (probably) was sent to support the failing attacks on Blenheim. They didn't help.

The French right held against all-comers and whilst the Allies were starting to make inroads in the centre, the Franco-Bavarian reserves were holding them. The Allied left collapsed and the unsupported army was defeated.

Malborough lost even more badly this time, with Mrs Kobold picking up 5 points to my 1.

So after the first of the 'Great Victories' Mrs Kobold is on 6 points to my 5 and Malborough is on a paltry 2 points to the French 9.

We called it a night after that, but Ramillies beckons the next time we sit down at the table.