English Civil War Game

Today we played an English Civil War game. We had four players and an umpire. Each side had eight units of foot, five regiments of horse, plus a few dragoons and some guns.

The table at the start of the game, before the Parliamentarian deployment

Put simply we Parliamentarians deployed badly, and paid for it dearly. Our cavalry was roughly handled by the Royalist hosre on our extreme right with two regiments easily driven from the field. One remaining regiment played an uneasy game with the remaining Royalist cavalry driving of one of their regiments before being driven off themselves by Royalist guns. 

The initial Parliament deployment

Our infantry on the right had a hard fight with some Royalist cavalry, which caught two units in the rear, but we eventually managed to secure the village, that was one of our objectives.

Our infantry on the right, just before our cavalry collapsed and the Royalist cavalry attacked the two rearmost units.

The rest of the our infantry and two units of cavalry were on the left in an awkward position that meant they could not get enough units in the front line. A bold attack by the Royalist trapped and destroyed them. It wasn't a rapid collapse, and there was a fairly decent fight back from our troops, but the Royalist success here was inevitable. All but one of the four units of Parliamentary foot and one of the two regiments of horse were destroyed. 

Below, some of the units, both Royalist and Parliamentarian.

On our extreme left two regiments of dragoons played a cat and mouse game with two regiments of Royalist horse, keeping those Royalists out of the fight for the entire game.

The victorious Royalist carry the ridge in our left

It wasn't a good day for Oliver Cromwell, but it was a fun game that lasted about four and a half hours on a winter afternoon.