Continuing our flurry of Wars of the Roses games we opted to refight the Second Battle of St Albans this week. This scenario gives an interesting situation where the Yorkists deploy facing the wrong way, tucked behind their specially prepared defences but the Lancastrians had done a sneaky night march through the town to enter on the Yorkists flank. After a quick discussion we deemed the Yorkist well prepared defences would be hard to maneuver through so would cause disorder on any troops who tried to cross them from the front.
Here we see Northumberlands men still advancing through the town.
Luckily for the Yorkists they won the dice off for who took first turn. Ian and Nigel decided to turn the Yorkists to face the advancing Lancastrians and also withdraw to allow them some space before the Lancastrians came steaming in. Ian managed to throw low on his order dice earning himself 3 moves to get into position. It seems that the few Yorkist troops left in the town must have raised the alarm to alert the Yorkist command that the Lancastrians were approaching from an unexpected direction.
We didn't have much to represent prepared defences so we spaced out our few bases of stakes to cover the front of Warwick's and Montague's divisions. As it turned out no troops actually had to cris the defences during the battle so we removed them after a while. .
These are the positions right at the start of the game, the Yorkists on the left, facing the camera, the Lancastrians pouring out of St Albans on the right.
Turn 2 saw Trollope advancing on Montague's division with Percy marching his men in column down the road. A few arrow storm's were exchanged. Somerset was a bit slower to advance over on the Lancastrian left.
At this point the Yorkists were trying to narrow the frontage of the battle to compensate for the fact they were outnumbered as Norfolk had not turned up yet. Turns 2-4 also saw the effect of drizzle preventing the Yorkists from using their gunpowder weapons.
By turn 3, things were going well for the Lancastrians, breaking one of Montague's units and forcing another back off the table. All orders were being passed and the Lancastrian arrow storms were proving very effective. Then we stopped for tea and cake!
As Northumberland deployed in line and ordered the advance he was also able to recapture Henry V!th who was found singing whilst sat beneath a tree. The Lancastrian high command decided not to execute the two Yorkist knights who had been guarding the king (although they were beheaded in real life).
After tea and cake, Trollope in particular struggled to pass a single order which was very annoying as Montagues division were in real trouble but I could not get in close enough to kill them off. Maybe I should not have put the kettle on!
Over on the far left Northumberland was slowly picking away at Warwick's division. On Turn 4 Norfolk arrived and was able to move into position behind Warwick's. With Warwick's division now poised to break with the loss on one more unit Nigel swapped those two divisions around to frustrate that ambition.
Turn 5 saw the drizzle cease allowing the Yorkist artillery to fire but to no great effect and Northumberland's men destroyed one gun with an arrowstorm.
On turn 6 Northumberland was injured in the melee and so was replaced by the Duke of Exeter. We had enough time to play a 7th turn but not a lot happened other than one of the Yorkist units of handgunners were shaken in melee and pushed back. This left Warwick's command in real trouble. So with two Yorkist divisions being very close to breaking and they had lost possession of the king plus not a single Lancastrian unit lost yet we called it a hard fought win for the Lancastrians as the Yorkists now withdrew.
It has to be said that Ian and Nigel as the Yorkist command did very well not allowing me to make my greater numbers overwhelm them. I was slowly picking them off but the Yorkists did very well in frustrating my ambitions for a quicker and easier victory.
