Sunday, July 22, 2012

Pike & Shotte Sunday School

Steve's New Model v. Mark & Byron's Royalists

The Royalists are on the left with 2 infantry divisions in the centre and cavalry on each flank.  The new model has 1 large infantry division in the centre with horse on their right and Cromwell's ironsides behind the foot.
The royalist cavalry advanced on both flanks while their foot advanced slowly.  Parliament refaced their horse to meet the oncoming cavaliers while their foot waited.
On the far flank the Parliament's horse initially gained the upper hand, but the royalist foot came up to help out and in the end both cavalry divisions broke at once.

On the near flank, the cavaliers fell back on their infantry support as Cromwell advanced.  A short flurry of charge and countercharge resulted in a stalemate as both sides worked on rallying their units.
With the Parliament's horse on the far flank gone the Royalist foot made a converging attack on the Parliament's foot and began eating it up from the far end.

Another cavalry fight broke out on the near flank as the cavaliers tried to support their foot in the centre and Cromwell charged towards the centre to intercept.
Cromwell did break the cavaliers on his flank, but it was too late to save the foot.  The foot broke and gave the Royalists victory.

We again used the Hail Caesar divisional & army break tests.  This made the battle go on for longer, but not excessively so (less than 3 hours).   Under the P&S system Parliament may have won just by breaking the 2 relatively small royalist cavalry divisions, but Parliament was out played and our system definitely gave the right result.

The other house rule we tried for the first time was allowing any flanked unit to make a command test to turn to face if not also attacked frontally. Shaken or undisciplined units have to re-roll passes, and elite troops re-roll fails.  If they pass, they turn to face disordered.  Further, we make a result of fall back become break if the enemy follows up in contact.  (We cannot see the logic in cavalry automatically turning to face, while infantry has to cop it - it makes more sense to have a test favouring better troops).    It seemed to work just fine.     

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