Lazy Sunday Afternoon

 Most of Saturday was spent sorting out more stuff to sell, projects that will never see the light of day, figures that are painted but incomplete armies, buildings - lots of buildings that are no longer required or again will never get painted/ assembled.

Next thing is to sell it!

Sunday morning was spent finishing the sort out. So in the afternoon I decided to have a solo game,

Norm from Battlefields and Warriors Blog  https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/  has played a few games from the Men of Iron board game by GMT the latest release is effectively 3 games covering the Crusades,  14th century battles and the Wars of the Roses - his reviews intrigued me enough to buy a copy of the game.

I’m not doing a review as Norm does a far better job, I’ve refought 1st St.Albans which is a good introduction so today I thought I’d refight Blore Heath.

The game mechanics are all pretty straight forward but I like the attritional nature of the combat and the command and control mechanic.

There are no turns a side commences with a free action by which they can activate a commander and the troops under their command, after the free activation you can then elect to activate another commander having to throw less than their ability, each activation increases the difficulty by subtracting one off the score required on a d10. 

If you fail then activation passes to the other side and the same process is followed.

This can be stopped by a player playing a seize the initiative chit ( each side draws so many at the start of the battle) most of the chits have a score required to seize the initiative from the enemy, if they pass they activate a battle etc if they fail it goes back to the opponent with a free activation. 

In this battle the Yorkist had 4 chits  to the Lancastrian 2 there are a few other chits that allow you to negate the seizure attempt or improve your combat result or disorder the enemy.

I chose this scenario in that the Battle is different to most War of  the Roses battles, the Yorkists - outnumbered placed a wagon laager on their right flank, dug a ditch to their rear and deployed caltrops to their front.

The Lancastrians deployed a significant number of mounted men at arms with plenty of infantry and dismounted men at arms to support.

I didn’t take a pic of the initial deployment but Audley ( Lancastrian) had deployed his mounted troops to the front with dismounted men at arms behind them and infantry behind them - the Longbow were deployed to the right behind a hedge but out of range of the enemy.

As mounted troops are heavily penalised if they move onto the wagons or the ditch I decided Audley would lead them towards the centre of the Yorkist line ( in the scenario cavalry shake a die to see if they become disordered crossing the brook) likewise I deployed the caltrops between the stream and Yorkist front line ( some are dummy counters and to make it interesting I placed the counters randomly) again when crossing cavalry shake to see if they become disordered.

The  many of the Lancastrian cavalry pushing over the brook became disordered and Neville had moved the longbow forward with the result that more Lancastrian horse were unhorsed or forced to retire

Dudley pushed forward with the infantry but soon realised an attack on the troops behind the wagons was fraught with danger .

You may wonder why in a game without bounds why the Lancastrians don’t just bide their time and assault when everything in position the game has a timed factor in that if the Yorkist player forgoes a free activation then the clock is moved on one the Lancastrian has 12 - its a tough nut but it means the Lancastrian can’t sit back and let the Yorkist count the clock down.

Audley with his unhorsed knights managed to punch through the enemy Longbow and start to assault the main Yorkist line - I had rashly brought forward the Lancastrian longbows my thinking being they could annoy and irritate the Yorkist infantry however Neville seized the initiative twice in a row and launched a stinging counter attack which saw two enemy longbow destroyed and two men at arms   

Dudley continued to work around the wagons in the hope of getting to the rear of the Yorkist line  but suddenly Neville killed Audley and another man at arms and with a failed army flight test the Lancastrians called it a day,

A great game and one which I enjoyed immensely, a couple of small mistakes but none game changing. The system works well solo, so thanks for bearing with me

Finally as I can’t just let things be I thought this system would work well with figures but not wanting to go buy and paint I printed off some of Peter Dennis’s paper boys. Printed at 15mm and two strips fit nicely on a 60 x40 base with enough room to put unit info on the back! I may do a couple of bases and see how they look all done.