A Cabin Divided

The last miniatures game from last week saw Paul's old Minifig ECW troops take the field. The ECW has never quite been one of my "periods" though I have on occasion read a bit on campaigns and battles and painted troops in 15mm, 25mm and 54mm and played the occasional game with mostly other people's armies.

Note on images: The bright, clear, pictures are Rob's, the dark, fuzzy ones are mine.

My handful of Minifig Scots took a vote and marched off to join Paul's Scottish army. Here they are spearheading the counterattack.

None the less, when Paul recovered his old ECW armies along with a horde of Scots to which I added my own handful, we needed some rules so I did a one pager last Spring and we used a slightly improved version of those. Like most one pager's they are woefully inadequate for "accurate simulation" but provided a decisive game in a few hours with enough high level period flavour  for my superficial knowledge.
They are available here: Ross's One Page ECW.

The battle begins.  

The scenario was inspired by an historical one but inspired by is as close as it gets. There was no attempt to recreate any historical action. 

The Royalist army under Paul and Mike had an extra cavalry unit, one of which was Elite, all of which were "shock" cavalry with a charge bonus but lower staying power. 

The Allied army under Rob and Anthony had an extra Infantry unit, an Elite unit of Scots pike and shot as fate would have it (Well I painted them 40+ years ago and they're carrying my clan badge and battle cry aren't they - no prejudice involved!), as well as a unit of Cuirassiers.

Another shot as the game gets under way.

Parliament was allowed to send a handful of units to occupy the hill in the middle of the table before the battle began. Victory would go to the side which managed to break the enemy army's morale before night fall in 15 turns.

We were a little short of English cavalry so these bareheaded Scots were deemed sufficiently Cavalier to fight for the King.

Parliamentary foot, disordered by heavy casualties and 2 hits from destruction.

The battle began with an exchange of artillery fire followed by a lengthy period of musketry while the cavalry supported by dragoons and detached shot and Highlanders probed on the flanks and tried to get the enemy off balance or mislead him.

The climax approaches!

At last Parliament had enough of an advantage in the infantry fight to pull back their hardest hit unit, replace it with a fresh reserve and launch an all out assault.



Casualties were heavy on both sides and the Elite Scots looked about to be overwhelmed and flanked.

Finally the Royalists brought on their Elite cavalry reserve  and launched an all out cavalry attack on the right.

But........ those old Scots are tough and handfuls of 1's and 2's won't over awe Roundhead cavalry, though they were amazed at how many such dice the Royalists could throw.  There were a lot of severely battered allied units at the end but even more broken Royalist ones.

The end of the game or near it. Rob is behind the camera, that's Anthony on the left, 3 victories on his first visit to the Maritimes, Paul, the eldest, is standing, Mike is seated behind the remnants of his cavalry and then there's the old geezer who wandered in and kept telling people what they could and couldn't do.