Roundheads and Cavaliers via the Ostfront

Club night and I was in two minds whether to go or not until Simon phoned me about something or other or maybe I phoned him, no matter, I offered a game and we went with Chain of Command, this would be my last game with Version 1 of the rules as I have pre-ordered Version 2.

There will be three 'bundles' on offer pre-order and I saved £20 but it was still a whopping £45.50 for the book a .pdf and some tokens, and I was distraught at £35 for Bolt Action 3, if you are completely new to the game and want everything to make things easy then you are looking at £70! I am sure people will argue this is fine and I should join the 21stC, and if TFL can get that then good luck to them, but that seems excessive to me. On the plus side you can however get the book on its own or even just the .pdf (I think) so you can cut your cloth to suit.

Panzerjager I

StuG III

Collective Pig Farm 452.

Reds!

 I digress, I dug out an old scenario which was an attack on a Collective farm during Operation Barbarossa, but this time Simon chose to be the attacker so we played it as a Soviet counterattack. I had an infantry platoon, a StuG III and a Panzerjager I as I expected a KV-2 to rumble on, Simon surprised me with a T28 and a T27 along with his platoon and a MMG. The usual hopeless public transport system let him down and he arrived late so we did not manage to get a satisfying full game in. The upshot was that the Panzerjager and the T28 spent all evening trading shots without any serious damage, the StuG broke a Soviet squad it caught in the open while the Russians put an end to one of my squads hiding in a dacha. As the clock ticked down my morale which had started at a measly 8 was at 4 while Simon had fallen from 11 to 7. I still had two squads to deploy while the Russians now had no targets as I waited for them to come out of cover. Not the best end for Version 1 but them's the breaks, I look forward to V2 despite my empty pockets. 

Yesterday I took up Erik Faithful's offer of a game at his, it would be the Battle of Roundway Down, an ECW clash which I had heard of and got the impression it had a lot to do with cavalry. When I arrived at Erik's I saw I had been correct and there was a lot of cavalry, much of which he had just added to his growning collection. The table looked nice and he had produced handy guides to the battle along with maps and his homegrown set of rules, he also took the time to explain what had happened historically. I was offered the choice of sides and although not keen on the Royals I am less keen on Politicians so I chose the Royalist forces.

Eric has weather rules as this could have an effect on how well the muskets and artillery of the day performed, normally of course there was no problem and the wind blew fair, this day however a summer gale was blowing and would blow for most of the battle until the heavy rain appeared just as the wind fell. The upshot of all this was that no one would get the benefits of shot during the battle and the Parliamentary artillery was all but useless, no, it was useless.

Roundway Down.

Royalist Cavalry.

Parliamentarian army.

The first clash.

I decided to await my reinforcements coming from the town of Devizes before I committed my cavalry wings. The lads in town took their sweet time and I felt forced to move the cavalry, my right wing hit first and swept all before them apart from one enemy squadron. Flush with victory my left now went in, safe from the enemy artillery due to the gale. Despite a couple of  losses my horsemen once again proved their worth, perhaps I would not require the foot. I now took it upon myself to sweep up the remaining Parliamentary cavalry that had survived, but it was now my turn to suffer and I lost several units to a particularly vicious enemy squadron as I chased it around the board. 

The Royalists about to win the right flank.

 

At last my infantry arrive.

The enemy foot are left alone.

The Royalists close in.

The end.

The infantry from Devizes now arrived and pushed away some enemy Dragoons from their front, they now marched on the enemy army, by now I had managed at last to drive all the enemy horse from the field, I had three squadrons left and set them up to menace the enemy foot which formed a large square as my infantry bore down on them. As they advanced they captured two of the enemy guns and then hit the enemy line, things did not go well for Erik as once again my die rolling and the fact my boys were veterans, despite having low ammunition, ensured a win for my side. It was all over for Parliament, in the fighting I had lost two commanders and Erik one, the dispirited and now wet enemy army made off down the road to Bath.

The rules are fairly basic and play very fast, but give a good game and three times now they have turned up an historical result, so that must count for something, although I will admit to having a penchant for sixes in this game. And now a word from our sponsor, not really, a view from the Parliamentarian side.

 The battle started with a gale blowing from the SE (Devizes) direction - which meant no firing!

The Royalists had the initiative (moving first) but elected to hold their position and (potentially) wait for their foote to arrive. Waller therefore seized the initiative and ordered Hungerford’s wing forward to engage; Crawford's and Byron's brigades then advanced to meet them. Wilmot and Maurice also advanced towards Heselrige, who remained in position (hoping to benefit from artillery and infantry support in the anticipated melee), with half of the Devon Horse moving out to their right flank.

The cavalry combats initially seemed to favour the Royalists and, although Byron was wounded, most of Hungerford’s wing was routed and the Royalists managed to rally all of their victorious troops from pursuit. However, Hungerford himself with his own veteran squadron performed exceptionally well, chasing three Royalist units off the field. On the other flank honours were more or less even, the Royalists eventually won through with one unit rallied after Heselrig’s wing had been defeated, although one unit of Heselrig’s Lobsters routed their opponents and chased them off the field. This left the Royalist cavalry masters of the field with three units (one from each brigade) available to support their infantry in dealing with Waller’s infantry.

The Cornish foote were quite late in arriving (commencing on Turn 5) and two of their battalia were held up for a while by Waller’s dragoons in Roundway, helped by weather conditions meaning muskets were useless – although this also meant that the Cornishmen conserved their limited ammunition.

They then advanced towards Waller’s infantry, which had formed three sides of a square around their baggage; their artillery remained useless due to the gale, which, other than briefly dropping in strength, remained a feature throughout the battle and deviated only a little between SE and E. As the Cornish foote closed in to engage Waller’s infantry, heavy rain added to their misery. The weather conditions meant no firing at all took place during the battle.

Both Heselrig (who had taken refuge with the infantry) and Major General Wagstaffe commanding the Cornish foote were wounded in the ensuing melee; but when one of Waller’s units broke, he threw in the towel and surrendered his remaining two units (circa 1600 men) and with all his guns lost.

Although in this 18-turn 3-hour game it was the weather conditions that prevented Waller’s artillery from taking any effective part in the battle, the refight played out once again very close to the actual events of 1643.

I watched a podcast recently which dispelled several myths of historical wargaming, I have to disagree that it is not just an old man's game, look around at shows and at your club members playing historical games, youngsters are not there in numbers. I think the youngest we have at our club are mid twenties perhaps older, in over ten years at my club in Scotland we failed dismally despite trying to get new members, I have had twenty odd years here and again failed to get anyone local interested. Our club in Lancaster has been successful in getting new blood in over the past few years but it is old blood, not young blood. I am selfish now and although happy to show anyone the ropes I concentrate on what I like, I do not lose sleep or give much thought to 'growing the hobby'. I play with people only just younger than me as I age gracefully and I enjoy their company and that is what is important to me, life is too short.

On the subject of age I have reached that point where I scan the obituary pages of the Chevron Newsletter to see which of my old workmates have passed on to that oilfield in the sky. Recently one of my old bosses, Roy Paterson, passed away in the Shetland Isles where he had retired. Roy was a man who earned my respect which is not given lightly to many, he was ex-Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm and his claim to fame was that he led the bombing runs on the oil tanker Torrey Canyon when it ran aground off Cornwall. A total of 161 bombs, 16 rockets, 1,500 tons of napalm and 9,800 gallons of kerosene were dropped by Hawker Hunters, Buccaneers (Roy) and the lovely Sea Vixen to ignite the oil spill.

I have gone a bit crazy on books recently in addition to the one's I ordered a week or so ago I noticed Max Hastings has a new one on Sword Beach, although I am aware of the sacrifice the Americans also made in Europe it is so good to see something on the British, so I now have that as well. One of my favourite customers years ago went ashore on Sword. After reading the dark facts about October 7th in Douglas Murray's book I felt I needed to get something light for a change. I turned to author Ben Kane, I have his 'Eagles' trilogy which was brilliant, and although his 'Lost Legion' series ended up in the bin I cautiously got the first book on Hannibal Enemy of Rome. I now have the last two winging there way to me as I am hooked.

 

 Oh, and I am going into radio silence for a few weeks.

Swiss Again and Konigsberg Finishes

 I got a call last week out of the blue to say mate Robert would be in the area and if I had time would I like to play something, we had been playing a Chain of Command campaign but that sadly has had to be put on indefinte hold. We decided therefore to do something Italian Wars, I once again looked through the new book to find something not too large and fairly simple, I went for Agnadello. Basically the Venetians were caught on the march and they were decisively beaten by the French after a heroic attempt at holding them off, they were not helped by some of their troops withdrawing and leaving the remainder to be slaughtered.

Robert took the French as he had dabbled in Renaissance warfare a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away and had had a French army. The scenario has an allowance for the Venetian and French reinforcements to turn up but I elected to fight without them as we did not have the time so I was hoping that my pike blocks behind the dry ditch would hold off the Swiss and with a bit of luck my right would also hold, otherwise I was doomed.

French on the left, Venetians on the right.

Venetian right.

French left.

I gingerly moved my right flank forward as the French send mounted crossbows around that flank and two Swiss blocks to try and flank the ditch on the left. Surprisingly Robert managed to keep his men from going hell for leather against the Venetians as he sent his Gendarmes against my centre. At least he did up to a point, one of the Swiss units which had been trying to turn my flank gave up and went for the defenders behind the ditch, if they became disordered perhaps I would have a chance. The French Gendarmes in the centre wiped out my Stradiots and to my suprise a small pike block which had had the temerity to attack them, at the same time the Swiss facing my right made short work of my Italian shot, I was struggling to hold back the enemy tide. 

The clash on the Venetian right.

The right collapses.

 

The Swiss breach the breastworks.

 My own men-at-arms were now attacked on my left and were soon whittled down and were ready to run for the rear, further along the Swiss had indeed been disordered fighting over the ditch but were still throwing back my men. On my right my army had gone, there was nothing between my survivors and the rest of the French army, it was over.

Would the arrival of the reinforcements changed the course of the battle, probably not, it is a hard ask that the Venetians stand against the Swiss although I think it is well worth fighting, just in case. My luck had not been great and my guns failed to fire several times as the enemy advanced, Robert also seemed to have the edge with the initiative dice. Nonetheless my troops did not fight as well as the Venetians on the day.

We finished fairly early so I met Robert later for a drink and then returned in time to sort the terrain for Matt and I's last game of the Konigsberg Campaign. We did not follow the instructions as it seemed almost impossible for the Germans to win the way victory points were constructed, but in the end decided to fight a battle on each of the seven tables and see who won. We both had three wins each as we entered the final showdown. Matt had four squads some with a few men down, an MMG and a PzIV, I had a very beaten up platoon with a T-34/85 as support, I doubted the battle would be worth Matt's trip down from Penrith before he won.

An early panzer.

The German infantry surge forward.

Now Comrade!

Matt got off to a good start and managed to win the Patrol Phase and ensure I was stuck in an orchard although to be honest there was really nowhere else for me to go. The Germans came on very agressively and the tank clanked on to the road, a surprise to me at this early stage. As my turn rolled around I set up my infantry in the orchard just out of sight of the enemy, but in the next turn I decided to bring on the T34, boom, up went the Panzer, the game had just changed. To make things worse for Matt I then got an extra turn, my troops moved up in a firing line and destroyed the lead German squad, my tank also put paid to the MMG as the crew broke and left the field, German morale plummeted to 5 or 6.

The Russian defenders await.

A good shot.

More Germans.

The high point for the Soviets.

Then it all went pear shaped, my tank became virtually useless, if lucky it dealt out some shock but couldn't kill anyone, the German infantry left the church and it was my turn to recieve the hurt, a deadly turn from Matt destroyed one squad and cut another in half, I was now feeling the effect of having lost so many men in the previous battle. My NCO's were constantly hit and with the departure of one squad my morale fell from 10 to 5 in jig time. Still I held out hope as I still had a tank, sadly another deadly volley from the Germans took me to 1, even with one die I managed to get the metal beast to fire, but again it was pathetic, my last, slim chance had gone. Matt captured a JOP and it was the end.

It's all over.

The game, it swung my way for a time then back to Matt, victory for both sides was on a knife edge, I just had to hold out, but I didn't, damn tank. So Matt won (Happy Matt?), although I argued that if we had played the campaign as per the rules I would have won, and I am holding on to that, with both hands. We had some really good games from this but I think the overall campaign ladder is flawed in favour of the Russians although at times they seem to suffer from a lack of support points. Who knows, we enjoyed it.

The Roman commanders are now complete, Thrax himself along with two provincial military leaders and four Vexillation commanders. I now have my first close order Lanciarii unit primed and on the desk.

Thrax.

Thrax.

Senior officers.

Vexillation commanders.

I have ordered up three more books now that I am almost finished Douglas Murray's latest bestseller. Budapest I saw in Waterstones and was intrigued, I also saw the Siege of Malta there but got it online. I then read an article on the Hitler book in the Spectator which was interesting and decided me on getting the book, I was surprised that it was published by Osprey.

Swiss!

 Helion Wargames and other stuff editor Charles Singleton was in the hood so we decided to have a game with his newly painted Italian Wars army, and a beautiful thing it is too. I let Charles choose a scenario from the new 'Wargaming the Italian Wars' book and he chose Marignano 1515AD, mainly I think to get his Swiss on the table. 

The battle was a two day affair, on the first there was ferocious fighting as the Swiss tried to breach the French defences and silence their artillery, it was only the onset of darkness which called a halt. The next day the Swiss again assaulted the French line to no avail as the artillery and massed arquebusier fire scythed their ranks, charges by the French cavalry also pinned them and with the arrival of the Venetians even the vaunted Swiss had had enough.

I set the game up as per the new book using Furioso rules, immediately I had my doubts just how effective the cavalry would be, the Gendarmes like the real battle could only throw themselves at the pike blocks to wear them down, they probably could not actually stop them. This meant that for most of the action I simply repositioned the heavy cavalry to attack any pike block which made it across the bulwark, the light cavalry to my front I hoped would annoy the Swiss and cause some casualties and weaken them before they came to push of pike. In the end they too were pulled off to the flanks to give my guns a clear line of fire.

A view from the French position.

The French camp.

The French.

As the Swiss advanced they too had a problem getting the best use out of their artillery and the Milanese cavalry as the battlefield funneled troops between the road and the dry ditch. My artillery at first was desultory to say the least and even with the addition of my missile troops the Swiss easily shrugged off the odd casualty. I decided to let my men at the breastworks take the brunt of the enemy attack then hopefully when they were disordered and struggling send in my Landsknechts to finish them off. A heavy fusilade forced back the first block that tried to force the works but it came back again and managed to maintain its order as it cut down some crossbowmen along with a smaller French pike block. I had moved two Landsknecht blocks up for just this occurance as a large hole appeared in my line, one failed to contact while the other charged in but was pushed back by the victorious Swiss. 

The Swiss left.

Milanese and artillery.

The Swiss advance.

 A second and then a third enemy kiel smashed into my entrenchments, I lost an artillery piece but the defenders held helped by the fact that both of the new combatants had become disordered by the terrain. The main Swiss block on my right was now beginning to suffer as casualties mounted and a second Landsknecht block hit them. I rained down curses on the Germans as even with a wounded Swiss kiel to their front they were pushed back, my cavalry, now set up to hit the enemy in the flank looked on waiting their moment. The Landsknechts took the hint and reversed their backward slide and dealt out enough hurt to disorder their opponents.

Nearly there.

The French in disarry.

A fight between mortal enemies.

 

 

 With all three Swiss blocks held and disordered and with fresh mercenaries ready to enter the fray supported by Gendarmes on the wings we called a halt. Despite the fact that my cavalry had not made one charge due to the outstanding performance of my infantry they would no doubt have mopped up any Swiss survivors who cleared the breastworks. The battle is a huge ask for the Swiss commander but once we got to grips it kept us amused for several hours of fighting back and forth along the defences. I would be tempted to fight it again despite the long odds.

The rest of the Swiss hit the breastwork.

The end.

Charles kindly left me with a copy of the Helion book and if I say so myself it is an excellent wargame guide for the period which covers every aspect from the history to flags and scenarios.

I was in Darlington over Easter for my granddaughters sixteenth birthday and on the Monday we had a walk in a local park and I came upon a Russian cannon from the Crimean War, two had been requested but a political battle ensued between the Quakers, who did not want it, and the locals who did. One was eventually awarded and after a long history ended up in its present position in South Park.

Another unit has now joined the army of Maximinus Thrax, Lanciarii skirmishers. I have decided with almost half the army complete I now need to work on my officers and Thrax himself so commanders are up next.