A closely fought Billhooks battle

 With Charlie busy elsewhere and Ian ill it was left to Nigel, Phil and myself to fight out a small, 120 points per side battle. The dice decided that Phil and Nigel took charge of the Yorkists whilst I led the Lancastrian side. Terrain was fairly symmetrical and deployment was quickly done leading onto the manoeuvre phase. I was happily surprised to be allowed to move two skirmish units up to the central wall ready to pour missiles on the slowly advancing Yorkists blocks of Archers and Billmen. 

This photo was taken showing the initial deployment, note the wall top centre. 

View from behind the Yorkist lines, note the skirmishers now lining the wall, top centre. 

The skirmishers then fired on Phil's troop starting the battle proper. 

Note also my piece of artillery in the centre (right). For the first time ever, artillery fire was effective and didn't blow up. Points well spent this week. 

Although my skirmishers took some casualties themselves they had inflicted a lot more casualties on the Yorkist archers. 

Then disaster, a special event card gave the Yorkists an extra unit of skirmishers which they cannily deployed on the right flank just behind my skirmishers. Two turns in and suddenly I did not feel so confident of victory. It was time to pause for tea and cake!. 

After some chocolate brownie the Yorkist skirmish crossbow advanced round my left flank and were a real pain. I just did not have enough troops to counter them.  

I managed to rush a unit of bow armed skirmishers across the table to see off the Yorkist extra skirmishers just visible top right. The game was turning back my way.  

(I forgot to take any more photo's at this point). 

Both sides were running short of arrows by now so we were getting ready for melee. Then Phil threw a disastrous Melee Crisis throw resulting in the loss of a whole block of infantry. This opened up the centre and as I moved forward the Yorkists lost their last Morale tokens whilst I had two left, a narrow and hard fought victory to the House of Lancaster. 

Billhooks providing us with a really fun game once again.