English Civil War 15/07/12

Steve's Royalists v. Jim & Mark's Parliamentarians

The armies are the sames as last Thursday.  We also used the same table, but with a few tweaks.
We experimented with a few rules, namely:
Deployment:  After a dice off to decide who went first, each side took turns to deploy a division.
                    The side that placed the last division moved second.
Division Break Test: More than half units broken, or all shaken.
Army Break Test: More than half divisions broken, or both infantry divisions broken.

Pics taken from Parliament's right flank, Royalist left.  The Royalists generally advanced, but command dice resulted in a ragged line as their right advanced faster than their left.
Parliament responded by redeploying their left flank cavalry to face left and redeploying their dragoons in the village to support them and advancing their foot to counterattack the advanced Royalist foot.

In the foreground the cavaliers have charged the roundhead horse.  The roundheads had a little artillery support and won the fight by shaking all the cavaliers while themselves having 1 broken, 1 shaken & 1 ok.  If we were using the rules as written, both divisions would have broken.

On the far flank the cavaliers declined to charge past the dragoons & artillery at the roundhead horse.  In the centre the infantry slugged it out with shotte exchanging fire and the odd pike charge.  

The left end of the Parliament infantry line was hard pressed, but the right end gained the upper hand.

By either good luck as claimed by the Royalists, or good tactics as claimed by Parliament, the parliamentary foot gained the upper hand.  The Royalist left broke while the attack by their right was stopped.

The Royalists pulled their cavalry back from their right to bolster their centre, but it was too late.  The Royalist foot was outflanked and broken by the roundhead foot.

  The Royalists now had lost 3 of 4 divisions and thus their army broke.

We decided that using more Hail Caesar style Break Tests gave a better game.  If we had used the P&S system, both cavalry would have broken on the near side, then the would have depended on a lottery as to which division was the first to have more than half shaken - probably in this case a tie.  Instead the battle went on much longer giving both sides more time to win by better tactics.  Even so the battle took less than 2 1/2 hours and it certainly maintained interest to the end.  So the consensus was that the experiment was a success.