We've done Marston Moor before, but Russell missed out so John A put it on again. Russell is fairly familiar with the battlefield as he used to walk his dog over it!
The scenario is using Johns Pike and Shot Squared rules, run remotely over Zoom using Powerpoint to display and manipulate the toys.
I honestly can't remember who was who, I'll hazard a guess that me, Pete and Russell were Parliament and Tim G and John B were the Royalists. Something like that anyway. I do recall that I had Cromwells contingent as a subordinate commander, as I've played this one a couple of times before.
Prince Rupert is commanding the Royalist forces (blue) at the top, Parliament is in red at the bottom. My boys are the two lead cavalry on the left and the two infantry units on the left in the front rank. They are rather better than the raggedy Covenanters who are tagging along.
Rupert has a forlorn hope lining the hedge in front of us. The Royalists are outnumbered, but their troops are rather better.
First thing was to get out superior cavalry numbers into action. They moved up and shook out into line on each flank. The Parliamentarian infantry moved up, although a couple seemed to get left behind. Not sure what happened to them.
Ruperts infantry advanced over their Forlorn Hope, reabsorbing them and the infantry exchanged astonishingly ineffective musketry while the cavalry action got underway.
The first Royalist horse on the right break, but one of our chaps is routed too. Over on the left it is honours even. Our infantry are starting to win the firefight, although the second line has adopted a very exciting echelon sort of formation.
The Royalist rear line isn't quite sure which way to go, and Rupert has got his reserve cavalry tangled up in an inconvenient enclosure.
Rupert had to take a break and John took the opportunity to show off his new Russian churches. Very nice indeed!
Back on the moor, Parliament is getting the upper hand. The Royalist cavalry is largely broken, and their infantry is looking very shaky.
The Royalists begin to collapse.
As the last of their cavalry routs, the few remaining Royalist infantry are looking distinctly isolated. Time to march back where they came from.
This is a tough scenario for the Royalists, but I do think they can win it, even if the odds are long. In this game they would have been better waiting for the Parliamentarian infantry to charge them, but there isn't much they can do about the cavalry imbalance apart from try and gain local superiority and beat them in detail.
Anyway, having unwisely offered this opinion, we swapped sides and did it again! This time Russell was Rupert and I commanded the Royalist infantry.
This time we let them come to us.
The Parliamentarian infantry took some losses from the Forlorn Hope as they advanced, while the enemy cavalry formed up on each wing.
Our infantry just held their ground, shooting away, although I re-aligned one of the second rank units to better cover the left flank. As we had local cavalry equality on both flanks, we charged. What else is Royalist cavalry going to do?
The cavalry battle began to go our way as they tardy Parliamentarian reserves moved up the far left. Their infantry overran the Forlorn Hope and ran straight into our infantry line. Personally I'd have rallied before advancing.
We broke both the Parliamentarian cavalry on the right, and even Cromwells cavalry were forced to withdraw on the left. Most of the first line of Parliamentarian infantry were also broken now, and their second line was far too back to support.
Our infantry busily set about rallying while our cavalry re-focussed on the left flank. Cromwells cavalry were slowly reorganising.
The reserve line of enemy infantry now moved up.
And another firefight erupted.
At end game it was looking awfully like a draw. We still had our original five infantry left, plus three cavalry. Fairfax was down to four infantry and five cavalry, and Rupert was still in the field. Not exactly a shattering Royalist victory, but certainly much better than the previous three times we've done.
We were trying out some rules revisions in this game, particularly around interpenetration and cavalry pursuit, and I think the changes worked very well indeed. This felt much more 'in period' than some of the previous outings, which were still a bit Napoleonic for my taste. So much so, that I was inspired to have a think about retrofitting them to the Thirty Years War. Main challenge is how to model a Tercio and other large infantry formations, but I have some ideas.
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