Trying Hail Caesar 'The Wars of the Roses' supplement.

 Just before Christmas the new Hail Caesar supplement for the Wars of the Roses arrived and I have to say I am pretty impressed. There are lots of ideas within the 144 page book to help players add WOTR specific flavour to your games.  There are also numerous historical scenarios and a simple campaign system that our little gaming group really must try. 

Thus inspired more WOTR figures soon found their way to my painting table to be assembled and painted. There are at least four of us within our group with lots of figures already painted and based for the 'Never Mind the Billhooks' rules which are going to be ideal for this game too. We used the armylist out of the new supplement but added in the small light troops from the lists in v2 of the main rulebook to give us some skirmish style troops, limited to one unit per division. 

Here is how we will represent a Household unit, a 'Billhooks' base of 6 figures of billmen with a base of longbowmen on each side.

The longbowmen are from Trollope's retinue and are fresh off the painting table...but would they suffer the curse of newly painted units?

Happily, an opportunity arose to squeeze in a quick, last game of this year. Ian popped round with his figures for a quick trial game using just two divisions a side and randomly raised commanders per the rules on p.47 of the new supplement. So here is a truthful and honest account of the infamous battle of 'The Battle of the Broken Manor'. (You won't find that battle in any Book!). 

So our randomly generated commanders created Lord Percy Thrower and his aide Lord Summer in charge of the Lancastrians (led by me) and Lord Trevor Cleverly (Clever Trevor) and Sir Archie the Bald  commanding the Yorkists (led by Ian).

Yorkist deployment, note the light cavalry at the bottom of the photo. 

Both sides deployed. 

Lancastrian deployment. 

As Ian started the game, a blunder saw his own skirmish crossbowmen forced to retire almost off the table. They then blundered again next turn moving to their right. We both laughed at this. 

Ian held his line but raced his light cavalry around the woods to threaten my left flank. I was fairly confident that my Household unit with support from the crossbowmen in the woods would soon sort out the enemy cavalry. How wrong was I, the arrowstorm from the household unit was pretty ineffective and so were the crossbowmen. Ian then charged his cavalry into the household unit and with some truly appalling dice throws from me, they routed them from the field.  

Inspired by the success of Ian's light cavalry I quickly advanced my own unit around the wood on his flank. This turned into a complete disaster and my cavalry was destroyed having had very little impact on Ian's household foot.  Ian was the only one laughing by now. A blunder by Lord Percy Thrower saw his own household foot wander left, blocking the line of sight of my cannon's. Trollope's newly painted archers failed a Break Test caused by enemy missile fire so broke and fled the table as predicted. 

Ian's light cavalry then dismounted and attacked my skirmishers in the woods, supported by a skirmish unit of his own. My skirmishers gave up without much of a fight and then threw a very poor score on the Break Test so off they went.  

Desperate times call for desperate measures so I tried to get my mounted Men at Arms across to threaten Ian's advancing troops on my left. This just caused Ian to advance his left hand division too and with some very effective archery and cannon fire and yet another dire Break test throw from me, my Knights broke and took the rest of their division with them. 

My Men at Arms about to become pin cushions. 

So a clear victory for Ian and his Yorksist's but a fun game despite my awful dice throwing. The new rules in the supplement certainly add period flavour to the game and our randomly generated characters with their varying traits influenced the game. Overall we like the supplement and hope to play again next week. This time we will be a little more historical and try the Battle of Hexham scenario on p88.