A Wars of the Roses Game at Guildford!

The board set up.  Mike Lewis (left) of Black Hat Miniatures took command of the left flank

Well, I went along to the St John's Centre in Merrow on Saturday morning, home of Guildford Wargames Club.  The club had been asked to put on a demonstration game as part of the activities being laid on to celebrate the hall's tenth anniversary.  As church halls go it is pretty impressive (it is Surrey after all) with a first floor, where the seminar room is, in which the club meets every Monday.

The most popular figure on the table!

We had decided on a game set in Britain as we felt that it should have more resonance for our visitors.  The ultimate selection of a Wars of The Roses game was fortuitous given all the recent coverage of Richard III and nearly everyone asked if we had a Richard figure.  Fortunately, I had the one I painted for Guy's mini Bosworth demonstration at school a few years ago.  This was his first game, however, which is usually a bad omen.

My battle on the right flank.  This is one of the few actually viable armies I have!  About 1700 points

We had three players each side, authentically commanding a battle each.  I was on the right flank as Richard III or, rather, as our fictitious battle was set in the 1460s, the Duke of Gloucester.  We laid out our troops with, what to us on the Yorkist side, looked like a vast numerical superiority on the Lancastrian side of the table, particularly in cavalry and archers.

Our extremely numerous opponents

We used WAB 2 rules, which I have never played, although I have played WAB quite a bit.  The key changes seemed to be around making manoevering more difficult, the effect of characters as regards morale and three rank depth bonus limits.  Anyway, I forgot my rule book (or rather I brought my revised WAB 1 instead as I had completely forgotten WAB 2 was a large hardback) so although it didn't make much difference I did plod along at normal moving speed as I wasn't sure about the rules for moving at marching pace.  I thought you needed to be in column or have a musician but everyone else was moving at eight inches a go and I was moving at four.  Anyway, this did prove to be critical in the end as my foot units never really got engaged in melee. 

Old technology beats new technology in the village

Most of my game was a missile duel.  I had a cannon, two units of longbowmen and two units of crossbowmen who I remembered were very strong in WAB.  Most unusually, I had good dice throws all day and by concentrating my fire on certain units I sent some running very early in the battle.  My mercenary crossbowmen (my force is actually the Earl of Oxford's, so are usually fighting on the Lancastrian side where continental mercenaries would have been more common) did a great job on the far right; destroying Dave's handgunners completely and sending his cavalry back the wrong way.

My artillery crew flee their gun to escape the hail of arrows - but not before breaking two units of the opposition

It was the first outing for my cannon as well and, although the crew were eventually sent running from their piece by concentrated archery they did cause quite a few casualties first.  The other guns on the table mostly blew up!

End of the game

Thinks didn't go so well for Mike on the left flank where there was a vicious back and forward in the churchyard.  The centre also saw a reverse for the Yorkists.  Altogether we played for about four and a half hours without a final resolution I still had a viable force and hadn't lost a unit other than my artillery crew (and they still had a chance to rally) but our centre and right had been pounded.  The scene at the end of the game (above) shows me with a unit of men-at-arms (unengaged) and units of crossbowmen, pikemen and archers still fighting.

Further to the right I still had another unit of bowmen, another of crossbowmen and a unit of billmen (also unengaged).  Both of Dave's remaining units would have been removed with one or two more casualties in the next round.  So whilst it was a loss for the Yorkists I would like to think that Richard could have made a tactical retreat, at this point, to fight another day!

As to the real purpose of the day, we had a constant stream of visitors (and even at least  one potential recruit) all of whom seemed fascinated by what was going on.  Dave and some of the others had also laid out some static displays of troops from other periods, ships, aircraft and  the Lord of the Rings. People on  TMP are rude about Games Workshop but it was amazing how many people knew about Warhammer!  The ladies from St John's Centre kindly provided cake and there was free tea which helped calm my battle-stressed (or, rather, rules-stressed) nerves somewhat.

Part of the static display

This was the first big battle game I had played since April 2009!  Despite my nervousness about remembering the rules I did enjoy the day in the end and must thank Dave in particular for letting a non-member return.  I am now seriously thinking about re-joining and maybe doing some more Colonial gaming again.  The other question is: Do I start painting Wars of the Roses again?

Cynoscephalae: Society of Ancients Battle Day

I went to the Society of Ancients Battle Day in Bletchley for our Cynoscephalae Game. I hadn’t attended one of these before but it was great fun and interesting to see so many different interpretations of the same battle. I think there were three other 25/28mm games with most of the rest being 15mm. There were some other Guildford people doing a 6mm game which wins my award for "most looks like a real battle" given the over 2000 figures on the (rather diddy) table.

Although there was a lot of specially constructed terrain on show I have to say that Dave’s green cloth over planks and file boxes looked really good and considerably more realistic than some of the contour map efforts there. In addition, his was the only green terrain; everyone else had gone for sandy brown.

Cynoscephalae today

Now Cynoscephalae was fought in the spring and given that the area looks like this today then green was more accurate. During an interesting talk by Phil Sabin of London University in the morning, it was also mentioned that the gradients on the battlefield (whichever one of the 3 possible sites you go for) were quite gradual. Which again, made Dave’s effort more believable than some of the vertiginous cliffs I saw on some of the other layouts.

Unfortunately, Ben was unwell and couldn’t attend so his place was taken by a chap called Peter who had written a set of rules but was unable to play as his group didn’t turn up.

The Battlefield early in the game. The Roman skirmishers advance up the left hand hill.

Dave and Peter commanded the Macedonians and Kevin and I had the Romans. I took the Roman left, which was all skirmishers and cavalry, and advanced up the hill towards Peter who faced me with opposing skirmishers and cavalry. Peter sensibly refused to be drawn down the hill very far and so my troops were whittled away by the terrifying firepower that you get in the Tony Bath rules.

Macedonian Cavalry painted by me support skirmishers painted by Dave. Roman cavalry painted by Dave support Greek skirmishers painted by me!

This picture shows the effect of one turn of missile fire on my skirmishers. Peter proved to be annoyingly good at throwing fives and sixes on saving throws in exactly the same way that I proved to be good at throwing ones and twos.

The Roman Right. The Macedonians descend ominously.

On the Roman right Kevin had to start the long trudge up to the top of the ridge where Dave proved much better at activating his phalanxes than the last time we played the “dice for the unit to arrive” special rule. This fight proved to be a long grind with reverses on both sides. This time the elephants failed to reproduce their impression of a combine harvester and were stampeded by Dave’s skirmishers early on.

Philip prepares to send his guard pikemen on a commando raid across the ravine.

As most of my skirmishers were destroyed I had to feed in two legions from the centre, particularly as Philip V sent in his elite silver shield guard pikemen (newly painted by Dave).

The silver shields charge the Roman cavalry!

They tripped down and then up the ravine as if they were manoeuvring on Horseguards parade and attacked what was left of my cavalry (yes, heavy cavalry charged in the flank by pikemen). They totally failed to behave like newly painted troops and changed formation faster than the Red Arrows to deal with anything I threw at them from whatever direction.

By this time I had 3 skirmishers left from the Roman/Greek force on the left and my Velites from the centre had gone too. What was left of my two Legions were surrounded by Macedonians.

We finished on turn 12 having played for around five hours. We could have played another move or two and technically the Romans could have come back (with a lot of luck) but only technically.  There were only about 120 figures left on the board out of around 500.

The sorry state of what were 24 figure units on the Roman right!

The Tony Bath Rules are great fun and, for Roman games at least I prefer them to Warhammer Ancient Battles because you can have more linear units.

The next idea is to do the game using WAB and see how that pans out. I’d better put the army lists together!