The Battle of Alton, 1643.
We returned to playing ECW this week with our 15mm figures and Warlord Games epic ECW Pike and Shotte rules. These rules give a quick moving game (or they would if we knew them well enough). For a scenario I chose one of the ECW's smaller battles; the Battle of Alton fought in 1643 somewhere below Winchester. I added in a unit of clubmen as I had just painted some up and a unit of dragoons per side because we all like using dragoons and to make the number of units more easily divided between 4 players. Nigel and I are collecting Parliamentarian armies and Ian is a Royalist with Charlie as his sidekick.
The Royalist on the defence on the left, the attacking Parliamentarians on the right.
Note the Royalist horse, commanded by our Lord Crawford... Ian, top left being held back. In the actual battle they fled at first sight of the Roundhead troops so I said if they ever scored a blunder for their orders they would flee instantly. Would this happen during the game?
Charlie in his role as Col Bolles deployed just outside Alton, ready to fall back to the defensive barricades on the other side of the stream.
The Parliamentarians on a steady advance (another way of saying that our Command roles were not very good).
At the top of the photo Nigel squares his infantry up against Charlies.
Most of these units were of questionable quality.
My Roundhead cavalry advance along the hedge only to become totally stalled by the hedge, especially when Charlie moved his dragoons up the road to harass them.
The fight in the centre. Nigels Roundheads were doing very well until we stopped for tea and cake. After that Charlie took the offensive and eventually Nigel's division was broken.
My cavalry looking good until they got bogged down by the hedge.
My dragoons trying to get around the Royalists small field piece.
Then, with my cavalry division in tatters and Nigel's infantry broken a comfortable Royalist victory was declared. This game was great fun but we need to read up on the rules a bit more before we play again next week.
That looks a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteNice table, the village is very effective and those hedges are good(I'm making some of my own soon).
The hedges are home made from pan scourers etc... and the buildings are hovels resin ones. They have so much more character than mdf ones.
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