Once again Blatherguts Parliamentarian attempt to overwhelm the Royalist forces with a massive cavalry flanking move failed as he got caught up with his own troops tripping over each other.
Bad day for the Dragoons on both sides as they all ended up routing as first casualties of the battle for both sides.
We decided to do use the 1643 list restrictions which opened up the later Royalist list for me, so no more musket* with the exception of 1 unit of poor Regional Foot. Perhaps one of these days I will give the Cornish a try.
The Royalists started off with 14 battle groups to Parliaments 18 battle groups, and Parliament chose agricultural instead of his usual woodlands which resulted in a very nice open battle field with a gentle hill touching my table edge and he got a hedge running off his left table side. Other than that there were only 2 enclosed fields that ended up on the flanks and nicely out of the way. Blathergut has used a combined pike and shot unit and commanded out shot unit in the past so I thought I would give it a go to try my own 8 base pike and shot unit.
Unlike past battles Blathergut deployed his artillery off to his right with a unit of pike and shot directly behind it and facing off to the flank where my Cavaliers had deployed 1 unit with commanded shot and 1 unit behind. next to that were 2 pike and shot units that did not have a gap between them, then his large pike and shot, another pike and shot. Behind all that was a poor cavalry unit for rear support and Dragoons and light artillery out front. On his left he had his massive cavalry flank, with 1 poor unit of carbine horse as rear support for his 2 units of carbine horse and his commanded shot on the outer flank, then his Cuirassier, commanded shot Cuirassier combo and his commanded out shot.
My right flank had Cavaliers superior, commanded shot then Cavaliers average behind. Next was my large pike and shot group, followed by Ruperts blewe coats, the Kings Life Guard of Foot, a regional pike and shot in behind (musket*) then the hill with my artillery on top, my commanded out shot behind the guns, Talbots foot then Cavaliers superior, commanded shot Cavaliers average and Dragoons out front.
My original idea was to run my Dragoons up to the hedge pop some rounds at his cavalry and hold up his flank from getting triple moves, it worked partly well for me. The Dragoons managed to take the hedge, did not hit anything from shooting and when he was able to charge me I rolled down for evade and got caught in the rear... ooops
Before that oops though Blatherguts Dragoons were shot at by my artillery, went disrupted, my foot moved up and shot them up some more and they went fragged. I then charged them and they broke, and failed to be rallied, so score 2 for the Poodle early on.
As for the Dragoon flank Parliaments pursuit put them on up beside the flank of my outer Cavaliers. The rest of the line turned 180 degrees, the other guys turned to face would become a pinning move by the evil Parliamentarian cavalry. Next move their other horse unit moved up and put me into a double pin, allowing me one chance to get away, but poor die rolling meant I had to stand and face a double charge. Had I made that CMT (failed by one) I could have turned 90 and moved off, leaving Parliament staring at a nice blank space. The following melee went for 2 turns and resulted in my auto breaking, the pursuit causing a nice traffic jam for Parliaments horse. Meanwhile feeling bold after his successful cavalry bashing the Cuirassier/commanded shot/Cuirassier charged my own line of Cavaliers and commanded shot. Now the traffic snarl of the Parliament horse came back to haunt Blathergut. Facing towards the flank of his own engaged line he spent one turn wheeling 90, next move he wheeled 90 again so he was now facing my commanded shots flank. By this point I had managed to auto break his one Cuirassier, and fragged his commanded shot, while my own commanded shot was facing his other Cuirassier and was also fragged. My commanded shot broke on impact, but the rout brought 2 of his horse into another muddle as they had been at 90 degrees to each other and my rout forced them to get in each others way, good for me in the end. Meanwhile I broke his commanded shot, pursued them into his commanded out shot and a unit of fragged pike and shot, who then broke. They had been shooting it out with one of my own pike and shot units for a few turns, with my artillery shooting in to try and get the -1 on their cohesion tests which finally paid off for me.
That was the tripping all over themselves cavalry flank, on the other side of the table....
I had decided to move my infantry into his guns hoping to block them from shooting at my Cavaliers on my flank. So my Cav stayed put while his dragoons rode up to long range and decided to try and shoot it out with me. I brought up my commanded shot into close range and was able to frag his dragoons from shooting cohesion tests, then I charged them and they broke from the charge, so much for that flank. I began to move my 2 Cavalier lines forward since my infantry was dealing with Blatherguts artillery. About this time my first Cavalier broke on my right and it did not look good so I took my rear Cavalier unit with the general and made a flank move across the rear of my lines.
Meanwhile in the center I had gotten 2 units of pike and shot within range of Parliaments light guns and had broken them from shooting, unfortunately Blahtergut charged out with his 2 units against a damaged Ruperts Blewe Coats and it was a melee of 2 units VS one, at one point I had 1 die against one of his units and 2 against his other VS 6 dice back at me. Ruperts foot broke and Blathergut pursued to my rear for 2 turns, before he turned about. Not looking too good for me at that point. His second pike and shot unit pursued into my regional foot, so the King decided to move in and take the lead so I would not have to re-roll those 6's ( I had pattern of rolling two 6's for my cohesion tests with them) Fortunately I was able to autobreak the enemy and pursued up into range of the rear supporting poor horse that had been sitting back behind the line so far. I moved up to close range and shot them up to fragged, even with their general over the next couple turns. Meanwhile the Kings Life Guard had also pursued but stopped short of hitting what was left of the combined foot unit, so I stood back and we started a shooting at each other. As things looked more bleak for Parliament they charged the Kings troops, who rolled 5 out of 6 hits in impact, they lost the death roll and autobroke, I had to not roll a 1 to not autobreak myself and was relieved to have managed a roll of 3 instead.
My own combined foot unit had charged into the medium artillery, had fought a turn of melee and ended up fragged, so I decided to break off after which I managed to rally them back to steady but decided to wheel my right in to close range of the artillery and that ended up with us shooting at each other and the artillery ended the game disrupted.
Victory finally came when Rupert (who had been triple moving my Cavaliers from my left to just right of center of the table) finally managed to get into position and charged into Parliaments poor horse. They had dropped to disrupted after another Cavalier unit had broken a fragged unit of pike and shot by pursuing into it (see above) and after a nasty round of melee where I hit with all 5 of my dice they went fragged and the animal hating Parliamentarians finally hit their army break point.
A very fun game, but as is usual for us the grand cavalry flanking move never seems to work out as it takes too long to try and smash through whatever is in the way or it gets caught up on its self or both happens. We are pleased to report that so far all of our games have been very different in how they play out but have all been good fun.
