Incident at Chudley Bottom...

Picture courtesy Sealed Knot

As the third storm in as many days batters the English coast, and the rain comes sweeping in, in solid lines, there's not many better places to be than up in the loft slapping on paint, watching Talking Pictures (Freeview channel #81 - currently showing the excellent "An Inspector calls" with Alastair Sim) and the job today (amongst other things) was to start working up some rules suitable for use with the English Civil War project...

The first game [clicky] the other weekend was with the rules in the One Hour Wargames book, they were good, a little basic straight out of the book for my tastes, but the strength of the One Hour Wargame rules lies in their ability to provide a framework that you can add things to and change around to your hearts content..

For this outing though, I wanted to see if I could do anything with the rules I have used for the AWI and Marlburian projects for years now - not the period specifics, just the firing/morale mechanism that caught my fancy years ago and I still think is clever..  the added advantage for me was that the mechanism I had for modelling British cavalry in the time of Marlborough would be ideal for modelling the same behaviour in galloper/cavalier cavalry in the English Civil War. Marlborough was clearly a disciple of Rupert and encouraged the British cavalry to always close with the blade as soon as possible..  possibly apocryphal but I seem to remember reading somewhere that Marlborough even limited their ammunition to encourage it. Either way, a handy thing in a set of rules..

Specifically, in these rules the moves sequence is:

• A checks moral and moves, 
• A declares charges at the end of the movement, 
• B fires,
• Melee/tests/outcomes
• ...then B starts the cycle.. 
• Once both have moved the turn is over...

..if a unit is charged but then withholds fire during the firing phase, the rules allow the unit to counter charge in some circumstances. If we assume the cavalry are following Rupert's tactical doctrine of closing with the blade and using pistols only in the melee, then not allowing them to fire (at any time) but factoring in the effect of pistols to the melee result forces them to charge/countercharge (providing the dice roll fair )

Anyway, an hour or two writing up the rules and we had v1. ready for a play test - so what better than a little skirmish? Table was 4' x 2', three infantry, two cavalry, one dragoons per side - all troops regular..  Parliamentary horse was classed as trotter (can shoot), Royalist as galloper (can't shoot), and off we went...

Deployment (follows)..  Royalist left, Parliament right..  from top to bottom, the cavalry formed up against each other on the open flank, infantry in the centre deployed Dutch style (two up one in reserve), and at bottom, the Dragoons are looking to secure the flanks by occupying Chudley Bottom*, or more specifically the inn (the Chudley Arms - the bigger of the two buildings).

You'll note that 'Scary' Mary (the landlady) is currently accepting a delivery  ("there's going to be a lot of thirsty throats by the end of the day, Alice"), while the local preacher, Israel Bickley harangues the local populace (who have all made themselves scarce) on the sins of drunkenness, whilst keeping a close eye on Alice the barmaid's all too obvious charms...

A view of the Royalist deployment..

..and the Parliamentary..

I diced to see who starts, which the Royalists win, and they trigger a universal advance..  a couple of moves later though, and one Parliamentary cavalry regiment has been seen off, and the second is about to depart the field..    shades of Edgehill!

The melee's worked well - Royalists moved, declared charge, Parliament fired, threw low, didn't stop the charge to contact, and in the following melee, threw poorly again, and were routed...  job done.

The Royalist dragoons also won the race to the Inn - following - and occupied it (much to Alice's delight, if not Mary's )

Last of the Parliamentary cavalry departing the field (following):

Meanwhile the infantry battle had largely come up evens...  the Royalist regiments charged home, the Parliamentary regiments counter charged..  each side won one - in the following Charles Gerard's can be see retreating (red dice), the Parliamentary regiment was too close to the table edge and they have already departed the scene...

The Parliamentary commander knew all was lost and started to withdraw on the cover of Chudley Bottom, but as his dragoons had assaulted but failed to take the Inn, he declared good sense to be the better part of valour, and withdrew from the field leaving the Royalists triumphant..

"Come and get it, if you think you're hard enough", (following)..

Post match analysis:

• I wonder if I need a mechanism to model Galloper cavalry getting carried away and not stopping? Something like the old mechanism for "knights" in DBA?
• Are trotter type cavalry overly "weak"? I think probably not, but a few more plays are needed to confirm..
• I would like to utilise the random movement mechanism I use in the American Civil War rules, but the move sequence in these rules doesn't allow it..   I sense a mashup of the two and see what comes out of the end..  

*If anyone is in any doubt as to the veracity of this encounter, I need merely to point out that Chudley is the home of the Chudley Cannons Quidditch team...