The Battle of Newbury 1643

For my next game a return to the ECW in 12.5-15mm ? (Whatever scale Warlord Epic are) This time the Battle of Newbury and introducing Erik to my ECW collection and our Kings of War based rules.

An excellent map from the web, I think these being the ones produced by the Battlefield Trust.

Historically the Parliamentarians under Essex were heading south towards London, the Royalist army encamped in and around Newbury sought to cut them off. In the early morning Rupert headed out to capture the high ground to the South West of the town. But Essex had beaten him to it. The Royalists then attacked in difficult terrain and after a lot of fighting claimed a victory, they had driven the Parliamentarians away but it was really only a fighting draw as Essex was able to get away with much of his army. They did however prevent Essex from getting to London.

The setup on the table. Despite reading the battle through several times and looking at various scenarios I managed to get the balance of troops wrong. Specifically I didn’t give the 

Parliamentarians enough infantry as historically they outnumbered the Royalists. Anyway it gives me the chance to correct this in a future re run of the battle. As mentioned above it was as much as anything an introduction for Erik to my collection and rules for which it worked admirably.

With the Royalists having the initiative they advance along the whole front, looking where possible to use the fields and hedges to prevent any counterattack.

Prince Rupert taking his position on the Royalist right and with the advantage of numbers leads a dynamic charge across the open ground of Wash Common

Some above average dice and the advantage of numbers and the Parliamentary cavalry is hammered, the shock so great they are staggered

And forced to retreat but this decisive win on the right set the scene for the battle as Essex is now forced to try and defend a worryingly open left flank, you can see the London trained bands advancing from behind the hill to try and block the flank but the royalist cavalry now has pretty much free movement across the common !

On the other side of the battlefield where the ground is more broken neither side quite has the advantage. You can see beyond them the Royalists have chosen not to attack the hill direct and instead have pulled back to await the outcome of the cavalry battles.

parliamentary dragoons and cavalry exchange shots, but neither side is really making a significant break through here

But at Wash Farm, the London Trained bands, here represented by my Scot’s but with a thinner pike block, try to hold the flank but the Royalist cavalry is just dominating the open ground

Forced to try and salvage something Essex sends two pike blocks off the hill to try and cut the Royalists off from Newbury, their cavalry is able to draw back in good order

Whilst Essex still holds the hill with artillery he doesn’t have the number to take the fight to the Royalist, in the distance the Royalist infantry rather than assault the hill is also heading around the flank across the common

Here they are form the other direction

They do take a few casualties from the artillery on the hill but not enough to slow them down, the battle is pretty much over now for Parliament, in a final throw of the ‘dice’ a pike block charges forward to try and clear the common, but they become very isolated and are quickly surrounded by the Royalist cavalry. They surrender rather than be wiped out !

Returning to the Newbury end of the battlefield it has ended in a stalemate the King has the numbers and Parliament can’t make any progress. With their right flank broken and the Royalists making a general advance the battle is over Essex must flee and attempt to save his army, hopefully the Parliamentary baggage will prove too enticing for the Royalist cavalry and the army can be saved.

A fun battle and a good introduction I hope for Erik. Essex was up against it when his cavalry was crushed and it didn’t help that I reduced his infantry by mistake. A very nice battle with lots of options we will certainly see this one again before too long to see if the infantry imbalance makes a difference to the result. Having played several battles now with this adapted KoW rules it is the first time a significant cavalry dominance was achieved in a single round of combat, the parliamentary cavalry performed very poorly indeed !

That’s it for now, my Saturday game was postponed, so I have spent some time painting the first Highland unit for the Covenanters and I hoping to complete them this evening ? We’ll see……

A game planned for mid week then Easter and the following weekend a trip down to London where I’m planning to visit SALUTE again this year if anybody is going.

Thanks as always Matt ❤️

Fantasy Battle Ogres vs Empire : Kings of War

With a lot of Historical games in the last few weeks and several more coming up this week, and looking for a quickish game I unpacked some of my Warhammer collection for a sadly rare outing in the dungeon.

Somewhere in the North the villages of the empire have been marauded by foul Ogres worse than that it appears the ogres have been touched by the evil gods of chaos. An Empire army under the renowned Knight Sir Stephen the Bold has been despatched to deal with the trouble !

Sir Stephen finds his foe in a suitably desolate location, a mixture of sharp impassable rocky outcrops, icy swamps and the decaying bones of giant creatures.

The stalwart men of the Empire, knights mixed infantry and they have managed to drag some cannons with them.

The ogres are a Brutish lot touched by chaos. There is some variation in the deformities but who can tell the difference, they have a lumbering giant with them looking for food and a mammoth  !

Given the short hours of light this far north both sides  charge forward

Crashing through the swamp the knights seek to knock the giant out of the fight, he staggers back but doesn’t fall

Annoyed by the pop pop of a unit of hand gunners the Mammoth charges across the field stomping them immediately, but he may now be trapped but the empire poleaxes ?

The giant is going in the swamp by at least two units of ogres and although the giant succumbs to his wounds limping away to recover, the Empire knights are wiped out and collected up for the stew pot.

The Mammoth is struggling agains the poleaxes, but does eventually break through, a pesky wizard is annoying the ogre Warlord !

General mayhem on the snowy field now, the Ogre armed with rudimentary ranged weapons can’t hit a thing,  it on the Empire right flank their superior ranged weapons bring down an entire horde of ogre caught out on the open snow, food for the crows (or other Ogres perhaps)

Luckily the empire cannons have very limited effect, half of the poleaxe troops have been squashed, the Sir Stephen the Empire General is floating about on his Griffin looking for a target, or is he just looking to stay alive ?

Although the empire has pushed back the Ogre left flank (not sure Ogres would really understand the concept of flanks ?) and are holding their ground there. The empire men are being butchered everywhere else, the swamp is literally turning red with Empire blood and the Mammoth is running a mock in the Empire artillery. The battle is up and the remaining Empire Forces must withdraw (go home for tea) the Ogres of course will have a veritable feast on or the soft squishy bit of men and horses left on the field.

We played using Kings of War which we are now much more familiar with rather than good old Warhammer Fantasy, but still we had a lot of fun. This Ogre army is one of my favourites as they are pretty much all converted in some way. Just getting them out of the box was a joy, and I found plenty of stuff not completed, needless to say we might see these have some attention on the painting table for one thing I never completed the bases which I will now put on the list.

I have a busy gaming week this week, with the Seven Years war Battle of Breslau on the table yesterday, we are off to Sicily on Wednesday WW2 and then ECW Friday……..and potentially a game Saturday as well. Having said that the rain has returned and back to cold weather so I need to stay indoors anyway.

Thanks as always for popping in 🙂

Matt

Battle of Nantwich 1644 : and other stuff…..

The run on battles continues, this time the Dungeon hosted a refight of the battle of Nantwich to introduce George to my ECW collection and rules we have been using.

The battle of Nantwich, the Kings forces had been besieging the town which had a substantial protective wall. It was I understand the last town in Cheshire holding out. Fairfax arrives to break the siege. But attacks across difficult ground which is broken up by hedges, ditches and fields.

Our set up the Church at Acton on the right with the Royalist artillery. The scenario is broadly historical, although from my brief reading on the battle the Royalist had no cavalry, this being stuck on the other side of the River Weaver which is in the line of trees in the distance. To give some balance we would allow some Royalist cavalry across the weaver on D6 roll.

The Parliamentarians begin their advance through the broken ground. The Royalists are slightly unsure what to do, they open fire where they can but the enemy use the cover to their advantage.

Quickly Fairfax sees the opportunity to out flank the enemy with his cavalry, the Royalist infantry begins to fold back to try and prevent this, in the distance a unit has also been detached to deal with the threat from Nantwich !

Arghhh if only they were Royalist cavalry ! But they are not the Royalist left flank has been turned ! It’s going to be a struggle now for Byron the Royalist commander

The Royalist cavalry make it cross the bridge, but the path is block , they charge in and a swirling melee ensues 

Quickly forming into a defensive position, in the middle distance the Royalists are on the attack hoping to link up to their cavalry ?

“We are undone” the cavalry charges the rear of a second unit and the artillery in the church yard

The royalists bravely fight on but it is really only a matter of time now, in the distance the Nantwich reinforcements have been thrown back into the town by accurate musket fire. But the main Royalist line is close to breaking 

In the far distance the Royalist cavalry has broken through literally wiping out the Parliamentry horse, but they are too far away to save their infantry. And instead spend time looting the Parliamentary baggage, this forces a morale check for the Parliamentarians but they pass easily

With all but one infantry block fleeing the field the Kings forces surrender the ground and the siege is lifted of Nantwich. A good job for the parliamentary army as their baggage has been looted and they will need supplies from the town.

A fun battle and a good introduction for George, the rules worked well, the disrupted terrain didn’t help the Royalists enough to hold back the tide. The flank being turned so early was devastating and rightly so. Seeing off the Nantwich contingent was a bonus but it had tied up an infantry unit which was needed elsewhere. The Parliamentarians didn’t quite have it all their own way……..just most of it ! I’m really enjoying the ECW setup and the scale is giving the mobility which I was looking for plenty more mid scale battles to stage, but I would play this one again…….

A change of scale ….

Some painting this week so SYW artillery horses, rather than have full limbers I have gone for horses and a spare artillery figure to hold them. Simple but nice to add to the collection

Look what the postman (well Evri delivery driver) brought, I had been pondering these for a while, not my favourite but they came up at a bargain price on eBay. We’ll see what we can do with them

With the rugby on TV (Ireland/wales) not that enthralling I set to to paint the HYW infantry from Wargames Atlantic. They took about 3 hours start to finish.

I chose simple colours and painted them the same way I do the ECW. The only difference being a grey undercoat rather than brown, given the armour on show. I then picked three colours to see what they would look like and mixed them up. Some Agrax stain and then pick out some details/highlights.

I think I have missed a bit on some figures as I have now referred to some pictures which show all the figures in surcoats a few of mine don’t have them painted, hey at this scale it makes little difference. I think the bases are a 30x40 which bunches them up a bit, I tried various different bases but this seemed to give the most attractive result. Not too regimented and with another set you could have quite a lot of variation brining the individual figures to the front rank. Quite happy with the overall effect. What takes the time is the variation in coat colours, the more variation the longer they would take.

Scale wise here they are compared to a unit of Pendraken SYW infantry and some Epic scale ECW. I guess the photo shows they are much closer to 10mm, but as previously shown the ECW are really small 15mm. Food for thought anyway, we’ll see how the cavalry turn out when I get a chance.

Another game planned for today and then I need a rest 😂

Thanks as always for checking in

Matt ❤️

Battle of Roundway Down 1643 : ECW

A couple of weeks of Radio silence as I recover from a winter illness. A couple of games postponed due to the real world. However, plenty has been going on in the Dungeon.

First up we managed another ECW battle this time the battle of Roundway Down July 1643. A really interesting battle with the Royalists split, their Cornish Infantry in Devizes, their Cavalry attacking the main Parliamentary force under Sir General Waller.

There are lots of different maps of the battle on the internet, this one perhaps the most useful depending on the scale of the battle to be played. 

My 8x5 foot table allows plenty of space. The Royalist cavalry on the left. Regular readers will know almost every battle we play is a bespoke scenario and I always try and blend some elements of the historical battle to create further interest. In this case the accounts of the battle seem to indicate that the Royalist infantry held up in Devizes thought the ‘battle’ was a Parliamentary ruse to draw them out of the town. So they only left the town after the gun fire and noise made it clear a real battle was under way. This means the Parliamentary force has a limited time advantage to tackle the Royalist cavalry. Spoiler alert : I goofed in this battle with the timings of the Royalist infantry arrival !

The parliamentary force look out towards the Royalist cavalry

As the Royalist cannons open up the Parliamentary force decides to take decisive action and they carry out  a full assault, seeking to wipe the Kings cavalry from the field before any reserves can support them.

The Royalist cavalry have some slight advantage in numbers and on both flanks close range pistol shooting begins the engagement

Cavalry supported by dragoons

After the initial pistol shots the cavalry engage in hand to hand combat

The Royalist cavalry are holding their own but they are gradually being pinned down

Finally Horton and his infantry arrive on the battlefield marching to the sound of the guns

Despite their robust defence the Royalist cavalry is struggling to hold and the Parliamentary infantry is now breaking through in the centre

All is not lost for the Royalists who have effectively won the cavalry battle on both wings…..

Unfortunately it has taken too long and they are pretty much blown themselves, added to this their infantry reserves have arrived too late to influence the outcome of the battle. It was a well fought battle, and fun even if the scenario didn’t quite work out as planned. We need to run this one again sometime and amend the arrival time for the Royalist infantry to give Waller some real challenges.

Some painting I have managed to complete….

French light infantry, this are Fronk Rank figures, mainly bought secondhand but bulked out with a couple of new purchases to fill the unit.

Completed one of my Christmas presents a Carden Loyd carrier, this probably sits alongside the Beaverette as fun but slightly under powered British armour to defend against the German sea lion invasion.

I have also been painting up some shaken markers, these for my Napoleonics

In our AWI campaign we have reached the battle of Germantown. As a large battle we have decided to break it down. Famously this involved the fight for the Chew House

I realised I didn’t really have a suitable stone house

Whilst I didn’t want an exact model, so I could use the house for other scenarios and periods, I thought this war bases house would be a good start

All the bits painted before construction

Then I set to with milliliput modelling clay and some extra cardboard, I also found I had some pillars from a previous project. A slow process but as I wasn’t doing much else it was fine.

Then onto painting with plenty of dry brushing

Happy with the result 😀

Well that’s it for now, my health is not ideal but I managed to build my Tirpitz model over the last couple of days.

Thanks as always for popping by 

Matt ❤️