Wars of the Roses Game #1

So my Wars of the Roses troops finally made it onto the table with Lord Percy finally able to take the fight to his arch-rival Richard Neville.

This evening we tried out the embryonic rules for the planned WotR campaign game which Eric the Shed has been working on.  There are still some tweaks needed but essentially, using the boardgame Kingmaker as a starting point, players are given a selection of troops depending on which Nobles, Titles and Offices they have... not exactly the same as in the boardgame but inspired by its cards.  Once the game starts  some players are definite opponents while others are undecided and use a card system to 'bid' to support one side or the other.  The main players can also influence this.  After the 1st couple of turns this resolves itself with players committing to one side or the other.

This does mean that in a 4 player game there is a danger that 3 players will end up ganging up on the 4th which is exactly what happened in our game.  I think this would be less likely to happen in a 5 or 6 player game though.  We used Hail Caesar as the rules for the actual battle.

In our 1st game we ended up with Neville quickly being attacked on 3 sides by an alliance of nobles.  My troops led by Lord Percy and Lord Talbot took a more cautious approach than the 2 other players and stayed back exchanging bowfire at long range: I did try charging at one point but failed my command roll and stayed safely tucked behind a hedge, dodging the enemy arrows.  The other nobles took a less subtle approach and charged straight in.

Looking length ways down the table with the Nevilles on the right

The Percy forces deploy - the cards were used in selecting
 the force but weren't needed in the game

Neville's troops move up through a farm

Percy forms into a neat battle line ready to advance

The cows decide to ignore the advancing infantry...

Once Neville realised the odds against him were pretty overwhelming he threw most of his troops towards Percy in an attempt to resolve the historic feud between the 2 families but the other Nobles were able to crush his flank before he could get to me.

While the Percy's hide behind the hedge there is ferocious fighting
on the other side of the farm buildings at the top of the picture

Apart from bowfire my only actual attack was unleashing the Irish troops who were obliged to make a 'frenzied charge' if possible but by this point it was all over for Neville.

The Irish charge home...

The pre-game mechanics were interesting and mostly worked well: there is bit of fine tuning to be done but it has the basis of an interesting way of setting up games that aren't a straightforward head to head fight.  We also realised that we'd made the units too small which meant it was too easy to concentrate a lot of force against units... making units a bit bigger should balance this out.

It was very satisfying to get the figures on the table...I'm sure this will be the first of many games!