A Pike and Shotte ECW game.

Its often difficult not to give the impression that I wargame infrequently, when in reality John and I attempt to have a battle once a week. If we are fighting at John's I normally dont take images of the battles, which is a shame given the quality of the battles.I feel however they are John's personal collections and I feel like a fraud if I report on the battles. It would look like I was claiming credit for them.
 Anyway, this week we staged a large Pike and Shotte ECW game to show how the rules worked for an old wargaming friend, Steve Taylor. So John kindly brought his lovely 15mm ECW armies to my home, to fight over an 8 foot battlefield.

Steve and I were the Royalists and were paired up against John. Now normally I manage to fail the odd command throw as is expected in the Pike and Shotte games.

 Steve, who was in command? of Rupert's cavalry, the best we had and Newcastle's infantry which were very decent as well managed to exceed my usual dismal throwing.

 Rupert has a very high command rating of 9 and it is basically a given that his brigades will move when required.Not this day. In the opening three moves Steve managed to fail Rupert's command rating. So between command failures and the odd Blunder any Royalist plan soon went out of the window, followed by my dice.

 Meanwhile I was left facing the bulk of the Parliamentarian army and Cromwell with his invulnerable Iron sides. From the images, any units with an S or a D are invariably mine. S stands for shaken and means they are shot to pieces, D stands for disordered. S and D together means they are in deep doo doo. One may notice I had a lot of S+D 's.

 At one stage the Royalists were doing so badly I used King Charles to make a 'follow me ' order and lead a weakened cavalry regiment against the  Brooke's raw foot regiment due to the centre of the Royalists being repulsed by heavy musket fire.

Surprisingly I didn't get the King killed which was a novelty. Unfortunately the wild charge didn't break the Parliamentarian centre either. That damned hedgehog rule. John never failed to pass the test to form a hedgehog while the Royalists couldn't form a queue never mind a hedgehog.

                  This unit? of raw peasant recruits was all that I had left facing Cromwell. The game was up.

Some of my causalities from the right wing.

 The battle was a salutary lesson for the Royalists. Rupert finally got his troops moving and they managed to sweep away a brigade of Parliamentarian cavalry before being wiped out by a second brigade when they lost control. Still a cracking game albeit a heavy loss.