Saturday, November 21, 2020

ECW Campiagn II First week battles - Warr Without an Enemie

 So my youngest son and I set out to generate some battles on the tabletop using my ECW troops and the "Warr without an Enemie" rules by Wyre Forest Wargamers 

So our map moves generated two battles between rather uneven forces ... expected in the early stages of any civil war campaign.

The first battle we game'd out was between Prince Maurice and some unnamed captain of a foot company of clubmen from the Barkshire region.

the Parliament milita was a clubmen and pistol armed horsemen (lower left)
Royalists under Prince Maurice were a Pike & Shotte Veterans from Cornwall,
a pair of ultra-light guns and a mass of Barkshire clubmen (3 units) (top right)

the ultra-light guns did all the work
and a single 'sort-of' carracole/charge feint managed
to push back one unit of clubmen


the Veterans of Cornwall did not get close enough to volley

the Parliament 'border horse' fled the field

after five turns the morale of the Parliament was close to collapse and the commander wisely chose to flee from the site of battle in Barkshire.

That same first week of March 1643 saw another lop-sided battle, where Major Bradford and the Western Association took on a lone brigade of Royalist militia near Bathe and the border of Wiltshire.


battlefield this time was on a river
Parliament again to the left
Royalists are right

behind the river and on a hilltop were three units of clubmen
to their left were the lone pike and shotte of this mostly militia force

Parliament came loaded for bear with the Western Association
and one small militia battalia of clubmen and border horse

video was running for this game

Artillery again doing all the work

Royalist pike and shotte are damaged in turn 1

then routed in turn 2 as more casualties mounted from more
artillery hits!

seeing their only real combat unit flee, the Royalist Captain
ordered a retreat ... that turned into a rout

Parliament ultra-light gun team made all the action happen
as the commander wisely stood his men still and forced
the Royalists to come to him ...

Little battles with large on-map consequences.

Week two moves are also done and a BIG BATTLE is shaping up ...

Both Princes Rupert and Maurice are now on the border of
Wiltshire to do battle
William Waller is close by,
meaning week #3 will also have a
big battle prospect ...




3 comments:

nundanket said...

You haven’t hung around to get started on your campaign. Great stuff!

The prospect of asymmetrical battles is one of the good things with campaigns. It’s not something that you would often contemplate doing otherwise.

Codsticker said...

Lol Murodock, with so many raw clubmen turning out, I imagine there was a fair amount of running away. I could see morale collapsing pretty quickly for the side losing the firefight early on. Your teddy bear fur bases look great on your green game cloth - very nice!

MurdocK said...

Yes I like the asymmetrical battles also, makes you think more about what you are going to do.

Yep, our 'blanks' on the map are mostly 'clubmen' and they do not get to move without a Major or Lord or other named commander 'moving them' unless they retreat.

I just figured that there must be some 'troops' that were scrapings at all times in the area and could be sort of press ganged into a fight ... though they have poor leadership of their own and are most likely to just 'book it' out from any stand up fights unless there's some special leadership present or really really a lot of them (like 2-3 'counters' - which we are treating as battalia for this go-round) lets see what more mayhem we can create.

Cod, we might be interested in the siege works you have for a future battle, since there are some fortifications in the game...