Sword and Spear - 10mm Wars of the Roses game

We gave Sword and Spear another outing with our Wars of the Roses armies at the last club night. We have played these rules a few times, but I'm still not convinced with then for this period. I've previously enjoyed them for games with Dark Age shieldwall armies and Roman era games, so we will persevere. I think we need to try a couple of tweaks to better reflect Bill and Bow units and see how they go.

The battlefield was an open valley with hills and wooded areas on either edge.
Mark and Henry set up the Yorkists with their mercenary pike block in the centre of the line, with their Irish kerns on one flank and mercenary handgunners, backed by border horse, on the other.
I decided on a bit of a gamble and split my Lancastrian force, intending to take the high ground on either flank.  On each flank I put bowmen on the far end of my line with the melee troops closer to the centre of the table. If I took the hills I could hope the advantage of the ground would help be beat of their attacks, or if I had the opportunity I could envelope one (or both) of their flanks.

On Mark's flank my archers quickly took possession of the hill while my handgunners into the wood in front of it. Mark countered by moving his handgunners up block them, but that brought them into range of one of my longbow units, who rolled a 6 for activation (which I used to add a bonus to their shooting) and cut the handgunners down. His line now look a bit exposed so he brought the border horse forward to screen his flank.

On Henry's flank the hill was farther away so my longbowmen plodded forward onto the lower slopes. The Yorkist main line didn't do anything much for the first few turns of the game. Henry was reluctant to advance until he had secured the hill on his flank and Mark didn't want to advance unsupported. I wasn't sure why, my deployment meant I was effective fighting two separate battles on the flanks, The gap between my troops was for too much for me to have reinforced the flank facing Mark, even if Henry had decided to retire! As it was, their inactivity allowed me to concentrate on my flanking maneuvers.

Henry decided to contest the hill with his Irish kerns and moved them forward, reaching the top of the hill first. However light infantry with javelins against longbows wasn't going to end well...and it didn't. One kern unit routed straight away from the arrow storm. The other did get close enough to inflict one hit on a longbow unit before it to was blasted away. Henry now brought his reserve unit of mounted men-at-arms up but my longbowmen planted stakes and stood back, making rude hand gestures. He decided a frontal charge probably wasn't worth it, so pulled them back again, out of range.  This allowed me to take control of the hill, from where I could pepper his infantry with bowfire if they decided to advance against my melee troops after all.  In the next turn Henry decided to strike before my archers had time to set their stakes and charged up the hill with his knights in very shiny armour. He hoped the lance charge would smash the unit on the end of my line and give his infantry the opportunity to advance unmolested. \Even with the advantage of ground I was not in a good position, but the dice gods smiled upon me and the charge failed, with equal casualties on both sides. This was the opportunity my border horse were waiting for as they were hanging around behind the line of bowmen and they charged the end of the knights line in turn. It was enough to send the knights over the edge and the unit routed. Henry now pivoted the end of his line to face the bowmen on the hill.

On Mark's flank I had positioned two longbow units to be able to shoot at his flanking unit, whilst the handgunners moved around their flank.  The light horse were quickly cut down by the archers and I moved on to his next unit in the line. Seeing his line slowly crumble didn't appeal, so Mark decided to charge forward (at last), detaching a longbow unit to prevent his line being flanked. It didn't help, now under fire from 3 units, the flank guard soon gave way. As the Yorkists advanced their archers concentrated on my men-at-arms in the centre of my melee line, who took a couple of hits before the lines clashed. In the melee Mark concentrated his attacks on the men-at-arms, hoping to break them and isolate the billmen on either side. Overall he inflicted more hits than he took in the melee, but my line held and I now had archers behind the Yorkist flank. My next activation roll was just what I needed, two 6's and two 5's! I was able to charge a unit of archers into the flank of Mark's end unit, the maneuvre another unit of archers aside, allowed a clear charge for my reserve heavy cavalry to hit the same end unit. Under the successive hammer blow the unit routed.

By now the Yorkist pikemen in the centre had started to move across to support Mark's attack, but it was two late. In the next round of combat, as I rolled up his line, two more units routed and the Yorkist army reached break point!

No so many pictures this game, I'm not sure what was wrong, but several came out blurred this time.

The Yorkist Line

The Lancastrian Left Flank

The Lancastrian Right Flank

Kerns and Knights face off against my longbowmen

Yorkist losses at the end of turn 2

Yorkist losses at the end of turn 4 (sorry no pictures of the Lancastrian losses, I didn't lose a single unit in the game)

Other games on that night.

Warhammer 40K

WW2 Chain of Command, somewhere in the Far East

And a blast from the past, Man O'War

Big 10mm WSS Battle

Mark, Henry, Colin and myself had a big Black Powder War of Spanish Succession game at club on Friday. Using our 10mm armies a Anglo-Dutch-Catalan Confederation army faced up against a Bourbon Franco-Spanish force. The armies deployed in conventional fashion, infantry in the middle in two lines (each of two brigades) and a brigade of cavalry on each flank. I was a bit concerned that a wood on the French right flank meant that my second line could not be deployed properly until we had advanced and had the space to bring them up into position.

Things did not go well for the British and their allies. On their left flank (Henry) rushed aggressively across the table, but his cavalry failed to move leaving the infantry flank wide open and his limbered gun very vulnerable. I took a gamble and charged the gun with my French cavalry and managed to catch it before it could be unlimbered! In response Henry threw his front line of infantry and his cavalry into the French troops opposite. Unfortunately, his partner did not match his enthusiasm! On the Confederate rightt flank (Mark), the British front line got confused and retired to the edge of the table leaving the Catalan units in the second line advance unsupported across the table. His Catalan cavalry were slow to advance and just trotted forward, but to be fair Colin's Spanish cavalry opposite also failed to charge.

Henry's aggressive action had effectively pinned my command with nowhere to bring up my second infantry line. Trapped by the melee in front of them and the wood on their flank, they just had to wait until the front line had pushed the British back (or been broken themselves), before they could get into action. Much to everyone's surprise the British and Dutch cavalry, with their superior charge, bounced of the French Horse in confusion and two regiments promptly routed when the French reserve ranks smashed into them. The infantry fared in similar fashion, the French musketry closing fire was unusually effective and 3 British battalion recoiled, one of the routing. Then a second battalion routed when the French riposte crashed into them.

On the other flank the two cavalry brigades were funneled by a wood, so both could only fight on a single unit frontage. They spent the battle in a grinding melee, first one side gaining the upper hand, then the other, only to be thrown back in turn my the enemy's next rank of fresh troops.
The Catalans and Spanish opposite settled down into a conventional musketry duel, whilst waiting for the British infantry to catch up.

Back on my flank the British second line advance to plug the gap and routed one of my battalions that had broken through the front line. But just as they started to stabilise the situation, another round of fierce combat (or rubbish dice on Henry's part) saw the British cavalry quit the field, a broken brigade. With their flank wide open, Henry pulled a battalion out of the line to refuse the flank. But this stalled his attack and allowed me to finally get my second line moving. They smashed into the opposite end of the British line and routed another unit from the front line, which broke that brigade. Henry was now left with just one infantry brigade, pinned to their front by a French infantry brigade with another wheeling around onto his flank and a cavalry brigade circling around behind him! It wasn't long before they were in flight as well. With 3 out of 6 brigades broken, that was half the Confederate army gone and a Bourbon victory.

 The situation at the end of the first turn. Note the novel Confederate manoeuvreing!

 The French cavalry catch the artillery napping.

 The view from the French side with the infantry of my second line bunched up by the wood on their flank.

 And suddenly the British cavalry were gone!

 Feeling a bit lonely with all those horsemen galloping around in front of them!

 On the other flank the assorted Spanish take it in turns to advance and retreat in a gentlemanly fashion.


Other games on that night:
A Warhammer 40K game.

A Necromunda game.

And a large Chain of Command game somewhere in Burma.

 In the face of the banzai charge it looks like the British are trying to resort to a square. They are not Zulus you know!

10mm 30 Years War - Pike and Shot

We had three games running at the TWC Games Day on Saturday. I was playing with Chris and Colin in a 30 Years War game, using Warlord's Pike and Shot rules, with Chris' superb 10mm Swedish and Imperialist armies. We managed 3 games, swapping sides each time, with 2 wins to the Swedes and 1 to the Imperialists.

I've always been a fan of Black Powder but this was the first time I'd played Pike and Shot. It was quick to play and great fun.

Other games being played were a 6-player Warhammer 40K game.

And a game of What a Tanker set in 1940 with Belgians fighting off the German Blitzkrieg.

BKC in Italy

Played a BKC game at the last club night, set in Italy in early 1944. The Canadians had pushed a unit of panzer grenadiers out of a hilltop village, now the Germans were coming back with their mates!

Two companies of Canadians, with a company of Shermans and a supporting battery of 25 pounders, against Mark with two and a half (the surviving garrison) companies of veteran panzer grenadiers, a company of Panzer IVs, supported by a battery of Wespes.

I deployed one company forward, with the FOO and one company in and around the village. The Shermans I held back until I saw which way the German armour was going. To begin with my forward company succeeded in delaying the German advance, or at least the off-table artillery did. But once they were outflanked by infantry moving down one side and the armour moving down the other I was forced to pull the back. Unfortunately the Germans superior firepower and ability to concentrate on the units at the end of my line, made short work of anything they encountered, so I pulled the advance company back. The rather heroic FOO stayed put until the last moment, calling down bombardments just in front of his position, to allow most of the infantry to reach cover, then scooting back just in time.

I moved the Shermans up to face up against the Panzers with initial success, taking out two Panzer VIs for the loss of just one Sherman. Then the dice gods decided I'd obviously had enough good luck recently and I needed a bit of a kicking! I lost a second Sherman to equal the situation, then Mark brewed up my other three tanks in rapid succession! With nothing left to stop the tanks, Mark generously suggested I bring on some reinforcements of a 6 pounder atg and a couple more Shermans. The gun got one shot off before it was destroyed and the Shermans seemed to have broken down as the refused to move for three turns. Once the did get into combat they also brewed up quickly.

On the other flank the panzer grenadiers continued to advance, pinning my outposts with frontal attacks whilst enveloping around the sides. They lost a few troops in the frontal assaults, but were soon in a position to attack the village. By this time I had exceeded my breakpoint and was forced to retire.

It was a fun game, but very one-sided. Veteran panzer grenadiers are very powerful and my rubbish dice throwing was matched by Mark rolling a horrific amount of 6's when shooting at my units in cover. I'm going to play around with the scenario and we will give it another outing sometime soon.

 The table viewed from the German side.

 The initial German advance getting slowed by artillery fire (red markers are suppressed)

 Out-flanking maneuveres.

 The village defenders.

 The Shermans wait for the order to advance.

 The German juggernaut rolls on!

Other games on that night were an early Western Desert game using Chain of Command.

A multi-player game of Congo.

And a couple of Warhammer 40K games.