Battle of Walton

 A return to the Wars of the Roses this week and a game of Never Mind the Billhooks.  Most of my games of this have been the large scale series of games we've played at Eric the Shed's so it made a change to play at the level the games were originally designed for.

The game pitched Percy against Clifford with Clifford's Yorkists having an edge in missile troops while Percy had brought along his cavalry and mounted Knights.

The game has a manoeuvre phase and I tried to use this to send my cavalry off on a long flanking move.  They were quickly headed off by some mercenary handgunners who took some pot shots at them as they passed by a wood.  This opening salvo brought the Manouvre phase to an end and the game proper started.

The handgunners take aim from the woods...

Actually my Knights were in some serious bother...handgunners are particularly nasty against men at Arms but fortunately for me the mercenaries decided to camp in the woods while they renegotiated their terms and conditions... unluckily for Andrew the Yorkist skirmishers card failed to come up for the next 3 turns in a row!! (If I had any card shuffling skills this might have looked suspicious but I'm very cack-handed when it comes to cards!!)

My Knights were able to ride safely past the skirmishers and onto the flank of the Yorkist army, pinning down some archers and foot Knights.

The archers stayed on this hill for most of the game

Back in the centre I was taking a bit of a hammering from the Yorkist archers and my own bowmen were rapidly being shot to pieces.  My own skirmishers were slowly whittling down the enemy but not fast enough.  Several melees broke out with the tide seeming to turn in my favour but my morale counters were dwindling... when you can't hand over a counter the game is over.  At one point I was down to zero but managed to recover one by rallying a unit.

The Yorkist foot Knights charged my lone unit of Billmen in the centre but were foiled by an unexpected ditch which protected their front (thanks to a Special Event card and much to Andrew's exasperation, not helped by me laughing like a drain!!)

Over on the flank the Knights had ridden down and destroyed the Yorkist foot Knights but were a bit fragile afterwards and were then shot to pieces by archers and the handgunners who had finally signed a new contract and ended their work to rule.  These were quickly followed by the demise of my Light Horse and this emptied my pot of morale counters, handing the Yorkists a narrow victory.    

It was definitely a game won by firepower... I dont think the Yorkists won a single melee but were able to use their archers and skirmishers (eventually) to great effect.  It also really showed up the problems of cavalry and mounted Knights... they're great for marauding on the flanks and can be devastating in a charge but they are also very brittle and tend to be an expensive one-shot weapon.  Excellent fun as always.