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.