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Sunday, 29 October 2017

Battle of Adwalton Moor - A Wargaming: An Introduction Refight

After re-fighting the Battle of Adwalton Moor using the Polemos ECW rules, I then re-fought it using Neil Thomas' Pike & Shot rules in his Wargaming: An Introduction

I won't go through the scenario details again, you can see them in the linked post above.

Order of Battle:

Parliament:

C-in-C: Fairfax

3 x Foot units (2 bases Shot, 4 bases Pike, Raw, Light Armour)
2 x Horse units (4 bases Reiters, Trained, Medium Armour)

The King:

C-in-C: Newcastle


7 x Foot units (3 bases Shot, 3 bases Pike, Trained, Light Armour)
6 x Horse units (4 bases Chevaliers, Trained, Light Armour)
2 x Artillery units (but I advise dispensing with this - see Game Notes below).

n.b. This was my reading of the forces in the scenario as written.  Comments for the previous refight using the Polemos ECW rules indicated that the Parliamentarian Foot should be rather better than indicated above, although I'm not sure how many of the ill-equipped raw foot were amongst them.  Perhaps better would be:

2 x Foot units (4 bases Shot, 2 bases Pike, Trained, Light Armour)
1 x Foot unit (6 bases Swordsmen (i.e. a mixture of clubs, spears and pikes), Raw, Light Armour)

Also, re-classify the Horse as Chevaliers instead of Reiters.


The Set-Up:

The deployment: Royalists are bottom, Parliamentarians centre.

Looking along between the two armies.  Warren Road is in the foreground, Fairfax' forces to the left, Newcastle's forces to the right.  Adwalton is centre-right.

Same, closer in.


And from behind the Royalist army, looking over the moor.
 The Battle:
Newcastle's right wing advances

The Parliamentarians make ready to fight

Newcastle advances his centre alongside

And moves hos Horse in parallel on his left

A shot of Newcastle's broad advance

The Royalist Horse have endured some losses on the right flank, but have gained the upper hand

The struggle continues...

And then the Parliamentary Horse are crushed as the Royalist Horse comes round their flank

The infantry firefight, casualties are accrued by both sides

But superior numbers of muskets are making life impossible for the Parliamentary infantry in the centre; note the other unit of Parliamentay Foot (right) moving back to form a new flank position on the hedge

This was to avoid being fixed and destroyed by superior numbers of Royalist Horse and Foot

However, Newcastle makes his superior numbers tell, attacking the "hinge" of the Parliamentary position

With the centre cleared, the Royalists claim the victory.
 Game Notes: A reverse of the situation that occurred in the twin refights of the first part of Rowton Heath: in this game, it was the Wargaming: An Introduction rules which were pretty lopsided in favour of the Royalists, since the attritional mechanic favours the bigger army and the lack of control rules mean there are no real limits on employing those superior numbers.  Making some of the changes indicated in the discussion on the order of battle above would help, but I don't think they would make that much difference, although it would be of slightly more interest.
Very observant readers will have noticed that the Royalist Army seemed to lose its artillery in the early stages of the battle!  This was a deliberate choice by me, since I remembered that artillery is both highly effective in Neil Thomas' rules and that would totally change the character of the game if I used it: the Royalist optimal strategy would be just to sit and blast a few units and force the Parliamentarians to withdraw or attack.  This is very different in comparison to the Polemos rules: artillery just isn't powerful enough to do that. Neil Thomas' rules aren't really designed to do these kind of smaller force versus larger force engagements.  To make it more of a battle, I would increase the Parliamentary force to 4 infantry units and 2 horse units, and restrict the Royalist force to 9 units (player's choice of which).

Figures by Baccus 6mm, buildings by Baccus 6mm and Timecast.



4 comments:

  1. Two things strike me from viewing your BatReps of these dual-rules scenarios:

    1) Playing the same scenario under different rules provides a good juxtaposition on the rules and one I favor doing myself occasionally. Well, "occasionally" in the sense that I rarely get an opportunity to do such. I always favor doing it!

    2) The overhead and distant views of the 6mm battle lines reminds me very much of period woodcuts. In 6mm, having many figures and units on the table actually looks like period drawings.

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  2. 1 - Yes. It is useful that Polemos ECW and Neil Thomas' Pike & Shot are examples of very different types of rules too.

    2 - Quite right. It is one reason that I game in 6mm actually - Arthur Harman made this point in an old issue of Miniature Wargames and it has always stuck with me. I think it is because 6mm gives you both lots of figures *and* lots of space on the same table; big 28mm games tend to have the first, but not the second, so have a very different look.

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  3. Love the battle cloth they're fighting on!

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  4. Thanks very much. I basically used the instructions here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/36331979@N00/sets/72157610259987470/ if anyone else is interested in constructing a similar one.

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