First Battle of Newbury - 1643

I finally got the 1st Battle of Newbury played through. I used my ECW rules based on SLS ("By These Things...") on a 4cm hex grid. The only real change I made to the rules was to default each using to only 4DP not 5DP, so that they disappear once they get to 4 rather than lingering round on the base line which doesn't seem realistic. Still trying to get some answers to my key ECW questions - see later.

This was the start-up positions, looking N with Parliament on the L, and Royalist on the R.

The Battle

The game played pretty well, but saw a reverse of the historical outcome. On the N the two cavalry units faced off, with the Royalists eventually seeing off Parliament and in the final turns were about to charge the flank of the Parliamentary Dragoons.

In the N Centre it was classic hedge fighting, the Parliamentary dragoons seeing off on Royalist regiment, and the Tercios on either then getting bogged down either side of the hedges. Parliament's Trained Bands were coming up as reinforcements as the game ended.

The fight for the hedges

In the Mid Centre the Royalists started of on top of Round Hill - and stayed there. After a couple of prolonged melees they saw off the Parliamentary attack. At game end reserve Parliamentary brigade was moving up to have another go.

The attack on Round Hill

In the S Centre Royalists made short work of the Parliamentary brigade in the open and by game end had made it across the main road and where swinging N ready to take the Parliamentary reserve brigade in the flank.

In the S the open country meant it was primarily a cavalry battle, as in real life. The clash of first lines was a bit inconclusive but the Royalists had a stronger second line. With the rest of the game stagnating, and by this time Parliament only needing to lose on more Brigade to lose I decided to just fight the last few turns on this flank only. Parliament held out better than expected but with two regiments blown and pulled back in disorder the Royalists still had fresh regiments to put against them and so started a chain-reaction of morale failures which took two brigades off the table.

Parliamentary cavalry sweeping forward on the S flank

All over in about 10 turns, Royalist cavalry controlled the field, and the remaining Parliamentary troops were around to be flanked and encircled.

ENDEX

Thoughts...

I think that the rules worked well. The fragility change worked well. I finally picked up a decent book on the minutiae of ECW combat (Going to the Wars by Charles Carlton) which has begun to answer my question about what happens with musket at push of pike (they fire and then melee, there's no real stand-off), but still doesn't answer another one:

• If a pike based unit loses melee does it just drop its pikes and run

The biggy for me though is finally coming to the realisation that hexes don't really match ECW very well which is very linear, so I play the next game on a 5cm or 10cm square grid.


And a final few photos: