The 1st Battle of Newbury...an extravaganza!

I'm lucky enough to be a part of a slightly anarchic gaming collective gathered together by Eric the Shed of Shed Wars blog fame.  Mostly our gaming is a regular weekly evening game but for the last couple of years Eric has organised an annual full day extravaganza.  In previous years this has included Isandlwana and Rorkes Drift (both in one day!) and Hastings.  This year's spectacular was to be the 1st Battle of Newbury from 1643...a pivotal battle in the Civil War.

There are several posts on Eric's blog explaining the background to the battle and how he put together the terrain,  the armies, rules amendments, orders of battle etc.  He has now posted a great write up of the game itself here.

6 of us gathered at Eric's early on Sunday morning and after a fortifying bacon roll and coffee we went through the briefing for the day.  The table  looked excellent with every regiment represented on table...there had been a bit of last minute reorganisation to make it all fit but everything worked perfectly.  Each regiment and ech commander had an info card which outlined who they were and stats for Pike and Shotte rules.  I know some people aren't keen on cards like this on the table but they really helped and I don't think  we would have been able to keep track of things without them.

Before the battle...

I had been assigned the role of Essex, Parliamentarian commander but each commander also had a commander named after themselves who could take command of a battalia which was a nice touch...funnily enough despite several historical commanders dying in the battle, all of our own mini-me's survived unscathed!

The Parliamentary army had an advantage in infantry battalia but was outnumbered by Royalist cavalry with most of both sides cavalry massing on one flank.  In the centre Parliament's large gun battery were able to quickly get to Round Hill, the high  ground in the centre of the table, and command the field. In the end they were pretty ineffectual but they looked good!

The view from Round Hill

Both sides played a cagey opening couple of moves with the Royalists on their right flank spending several turns skulking in Newbury before they decided to venture out.  Parliament's left flank was a maze of hedgerows which slowed down both sides and in the more open centre both sides sat and stared at each other for a while, with the cowardly (or sensible)  Royalists staying out of artillery range.  It was obvious that the opening moves were going to be made on our right with a cavalry battle and sure enough, after a couple of turns of manoeuvring into position, both sides charged. In fact the very opening casualty was the Parliamentarian cavalry commander, picked off by a sniper!

The cavalry mass...

...and then charge!

The cavalry battle was to last all day and despite being outnumbered  the Parliamentarian horse managed to fight the Royalists to a standstill thanks to some excellent generalship. General Stapleton's death at the hands of a sniper was avenged a few turns later when Prince Rupert died in a clash of cavalry.  A small unit of dismounted Dragoons fought off several Royalist horse units throughout the day and became the target of increasing attacks by the frustrated Royalists before eventually being overrun but they had accounted for several cavalry squadrons before the end.

Although our far left flank had fought to a standstill in the centre-left we began to make some progress and towards the end of the day we had made some progress but in the centre my advance had stalled in the face of heavy musket and artillery fire. I had moved my reserves (the London Trained Bands) over the right to support the cavalry battle so now everything was committed and the clock was ticking down to the end of the day.

Fighting over the hedgerows on the left flank

...and in the centre

In the afternoon we had started checking at the end of each turn to see how close we were to the armies breaking and it was pretty much neck and neck throughout the day.  As we approached the end, generals were flying around trying to rally shaken regiments and shore up the defences.  At the end of the last turn the Royalists were 3 units away from breaking and Parliament was 2 units away so we called it as a draw... the King had failed to destroy the Rebel army which could slip away to London, a pretty historical outcome.

A really epic game with some desperate individual battles fought across the table.  The company was, as always, excellent and really made the day very special.  There has already been some discussion abut the 2021 game,,,I better get painting!!!