Portable ECW - Edgehill

 After all the 3x3 Portable Wargame excitement, here is a more traditional PW game. I missed the last playing of this, so I was pleased to be able to make it along to Johns game covering Edgehill using Alan Saunders ECW PW variant. I've run Edgehill myself twice (using Marston Less and the Neil Thomas Pike & Shot rules), and we've also played it using Johns old ECW rules from the 1980s, so it is a fairly familiar battle and a good ECW playtest scenario.

The game was an excuse to field an array of ridiculous hats. Tim C had dug out his old ECW re-enactment uniform. My hat is a charity shop find with a cloth band around the brim.

Diego was the Earl of Essex, I was the Parlimentarian cavalry commander and Tom was the infantry commander. Tim C was Charles, while Tim G was his infantry commander and Simon was Prince Rupert with the cavalry.

The action opened with a Royalist attack on our left. This duly achieved nothing at all in the time honoured PW way (a function of mainly needing 5+ to hit anything and only throwing a couple of dice a turn). We responded with a cavalry counterattack and a massive fusillade from our infantry, which was also completely ineffective.

Things got a bit more interesting when I finally managed to push back one of the Royalist cavalry. My other cavalry failed to overrun the handful of enemy dragoons standing around in the open however, and suffered the indignity losing an SP to their musketry.

The Royalists shuffled some of their units around to straighten their line, and the other wing of cavalry charged, again with no effect. One of our infantry brigades chose this moment to run away (special scenario rule).

Things started to look a bit more promising when we finally got rid of those pesky 1SP Dragoons. There was something of a gap around the Royalist northern flank. Time for a hell for leather cavalry charge!

In we went....

And in a glorious series of victories and pursuits, destroyed most of the Royalist cavalry and got as far as attacking the Royalists second infantry line. Well that all went very well. We came unstuck at that point however and were repulsed. When the smoke cleared I was left with a single 1SP cavalry unit, and the Royalists still had one behind our left rear. Oh dear.

In the south, our cavalry attack was defeated and the Royalist cavalry returned the favour and assaulted our infantry line. Oops. 

Fortunately the impudent cavalry were shot down, but not before the other Royalist cavalry (accompanied by Charles himself) had wiped out the last of the Parlimentarian foot. It was down to the footsloggers now, but our foot had already fallen back after a series of adverse fire results.

We broke for the evening at that point. Russell was due to take over from me the next day. At least I'd left him a pair of intact Dragoon units to command!

The next day opened with a very successful Royalist cavalry charge which drove the dragoons right back and finally destroyed them.

The cavalry then withdrew to the safety of an enclosure (perhaps not the best spot for horse soldiers) while the infantry battle resumed. Both sides tried to reform their infantry lines which were looking a bit ragged by now.

The isolated cavalry (and King Charles!) proved to be a bit tempting for Essex and three infantry units set off in their direction.

The cavalry were rapidly shot to bits (enclosures don't provide cover for people on horses) although the King survived and ran away.

The Royalists had reached their break point, and made a last ditch attempt to break the Parliamentarians too, but this failed. In this version, exhaustion isn't automatic, but you need to make a break test at 50% losses, which the Royalists duly failed, so they day belonged to Essex.

The game rattled along fairly well and I prefer this version to the standard PW, but as a group we all agreed that the narrative didn't flow brilliantly as a game of the period. I'm sure it works fine for solo play, but once again the ease with which units can just move around the battlefield willy nilly didn't feel right - perhaps it needs some more stringent wheeling restrictions on infantry units? There were some nice ideas in this variant though, and I'll look at working Alans activation system in to some other rules.