Marston Less

 I could only attend one night of gaming this week so I offered to put on a quick session of Tony Cullens 'Marston Less' ECW rules. We played a few games of these at the club before lockdown, and I'd modified them to incorporate the Thirty Years War and adjusted the combat system to use 2D6 instead of a D20. We'd done a couple of hypothetical battles as well as Edge Hill and Fleurus (an early TYW battle).

Early in lockdown I'd been playing around with the Portable Morschauserscope and hacked the code to update the unit types, maps etc and I'd done a Marston Less scenario for First Newbury in 1643 intending it for remote play.  

As we only had about an hour and a quarter of game time and a lot of players, I just went with the historical setup. 

The game is played on a grid three zones wide (left flank, centre, right flank) and seven zones deep. There is a extra column at each end for dragoons. Once individual units are deployed in a zone, they form a part of an indissoluble unit - this models dividing the army up into brigades. It is those larger elements that then manouvre, essentially straight forwards or backwards! Although there is scope for victorious cavalry to turn in on the infantry centre.

The Kings Army was covering a siege east of Newbury and Essex marched to lift it. Charles/Rupert inexplicably gave up a critical terrain feature (Round Hill) which was immediately occupied by the Parliamentarians who emplaced artillery on it which threatened to dominate the battlefield.

Both sides had 12-14,000 men, the Royalists had superior numbers and quality of cavalry, while Parliament was superior in Infantry. The terrain to the north (left) was very broken, so poor ground for cavalry. The main cavalry action was fought on Wash Common to the south, but ultimately Charles had to take the guns on Round Hill or be forced to retire so the onus of attack was on the Royalists.

John A was Essex, Russell had the Parliamentarian Horse and John B the Foot and Guns.

Tim was Charles, Pete had the Royalist Horse and Prince Rupert, Micheal the Royalist Foot.

After a relatively ineffective cannonade, the Parliamentarian Horse charged on the right and was successful in moving up both lines of cavalry. You get one activation for free, any subsequent moves have to be diced for, and any failure ends the turn. I like that for this period where armies are relatively cumbersome. 

The initial cavalry melee was indecisive, both sides had supported lines and Essex's Dragoons on the flank counteracted the superior quality of the Ruperts cavalry.

After a bloody struggle however, eventually Rupert was victorious, albeit suffering three hits (lines rout on four hits). The Royalist guns had cunningly focussed on the second line of Essex's cavalry, inflicting two hits and firing so enthusiastically that one battery ran out of ammunition. 

Rupert managed to restrain his victorious troopers from pursuit, but Essex's guns on Round Hill managed to rout them anyway. The last Royalist battery exhausted its ammunition firing on the remaining Parliamentarian cavalry.

Rupert went to join the Royalist infantry in the centre, while his second line swept away the remains of the enemy horse, and set off for the rear to loot the baggage. They did actually manage to rally before disappearing, and turned in on the rear line of Parliamentarian infantry. (I forgot to take a photo of that). Sadly, cavalry are really bad in rough ground, and there were an awful lot of Pikemen in there.

Anyway, it was attack or lose for Rupert, so the cavalry attacked and the first line of infantry attacked, the second line lagged behind somewhat. 

The Royalist cavalry were repulsed however, albeit not without loss, and in the absence of any meaningful artillery preparation, the first line of infantry were also routed. Essex's first line was in some disarray (three hits) but the chances of the last line of Royalist infantry carrying the hill was slim, so we called it a day at that point.

It was interesting to get the rules out again, although I was a bit rusty. I do like the clumsy movement, although they suffer a bit from lots of fiddly things to remember in terms of dice modifiers - I think some tables would help with the presentation. The main issue I have is with the combat system, once formed each 'line' has a morale/SP value of four, regardless of of how many or few units there are, whereas line firepower is based on how many units there are. This is fine until you get two sets of weak lines engaging each other, in which case the combat never ends (as on the left flank here). It would be better to compare the relative strengths to determine combat outcomes, not the absolute strengths.

I am sure it is fixable quite easily, but I'm not sure I can be bothered at the moment.