Command Stands and The Battle of Glastonbury

This past weekend Murdock and I got together for our second game in our campaign, the Battle of Glastonbury, from Partizan Press' English Civil War Campaign Scenarios Vol. 1.  In preparation of this game I put together some command stands to represent specific commanders. For the duration of the campaign these stands will represent these commanders. As new commanders or generals are introduced they will get a specific stand- no more generic stands!

At Glastonbury the Royalist Infantry was led by Col. John Trevanion, taking direct charge of the right division.  Serving as an MP before the civil war, Trevanion would not see the end of it, dieing at the siege of Bristol just 6 weeks later.

The left division fell to the command of Col.William Godolphin. Before the civil war he was also an MP but unlike Trevanion he would survive the war and live on to see the restoration of Charles II.

Lord Hopton's cavalry, divided into a left wing and a right wing,  was led by Robert Dormer, the Earl of Carnarvon. He entered the war with previous military experience, leading a cavalry regiment in the Bishop's Wars. One of his achievements was to secure the surrenders of important towns in Dorset after the fall of Bristol by offering generous terms, only to have it undone by undisciplined royalist troops plundering. In protest he gave up his position in the west to join the King's army. He died later that year at first Newbury.

Carnarvon's own brigade was commanded by Sir Humphrey Bennett of which little is know except that he survived the war and went on to serve as a Justice of the Peace after the restoration.

(as you can see I was in the position of having to double up on commander models).

Last but not least, the left wing fell to Prince Maurice, younger brother of the charismatic Prince Rupert. Maurice started his military career in the Dutch army under the Prince of Orange. At 20 he had moved on to serving in the Swedish army before joining his brother in England in 1642. He came to the civil war with a reputation for bravery however as a commander he did not encourage discipline in his men who brawled with the Cornish infantry and were know to plunder. After the defeat of the king he was banished from England; he served in the Prince of Orange's army before following a career as a privateer, ultimately going down with his ship in a storm in the West Indies.

With the command stands sorted, onto Glastonbury.

With securing Bristol as his main priority, Waller decided to send an army under Col. Alexander Popham to keep his old buddy, Hopton, occupied. Hopton, struggling to keep his Cornish foot focused, saw the approaching Parliamentarian force as just the opportunity he needed to do so. 

The two armies met each other just south of Glastonbury; Popham. however, found himself in the unfortunate position of having lost half his force to desertion due to an arrears of pay!  Choosing discretion over valour, Popham ordered the baggage and most of his foot back north leaving a rearguard to face the oncoming Royalists. 

Here the Royalist are deployed in all their glory, Prince Maurice' regiment of horse in the foreground and Col. Trevanion by his foot, all hemmed in by hedges and muddy fields:

Murdock lays out the sparse parliamentarian defenders:

After choosing to run pell mell up hill into musket fire at Stratton, I chose a more conservative approach at Glastonbury, hoping to send off the raw Parliamentarian troops with my superior foot through volleys of musket fire.

Murdock's foot return fire:

Just 3 raw regiments of enemy foot line the far hedge.  The stones represent the ditches that ran through the fields

In turns 4 through 7, in a spectacular display of dismal die rolling, the raw Parliamentarian foot evaporated. Leaving just a few regiments of horse and some dragoons.

 Here Murdock removes the last few stands...

The plan worked... almost. Yes, the enemy foot disappeared but the horse was rock solid. Their position form which they refused to budge kept me from being able to clear the last hedge with my foot, thereby allowing my horse a chance at achieving their goal of exiting the far table edge (I needed to get 3 units off the table by turn 15 to get a minor victory).  Unfortunately the picture below shows as close as I got. 

 With my foot plugging up the centre, it seemed like my only real option was to get my horse moving up the flanks. This plan was stymied by freshly plowed fields, hedges and ditches. To add insult, the prize horse of this Royalist force- Prince Maurice's Regiment of Horse and Lifeguard of horse- were chased from the field! Aside from those details the result of our game was the same as the historical outcome: the defenders were able delay the attackers long enough for their baggage to get a safe distance away.

The next installment of this campaign looks to be a few months in the future as Murdock is all tied up through the balance of February, March and early April.

Sir Hopton Command Stand

It looks like we will need quite a few different Command stands for our upcoming ECW games so I started by making a dedicated stand for Sir Ralph Hopton.

Made entirely of Warlord Games figures form their Pike and Shot Command Group 2, I utilised the officer to represent Hopton, dismounted from his horse, gesturing towards the enemy (probably should have painted the eyes...).

The ensign and the other officer (not shown) are really nice models; the faces are done better than the model I used for Hopton. The flag is also from Warlord Games.

The horse and horse holder are from Warlord's plastic kits. I have some nice standing horses coming from Avanpost but I couldn't wait. I will probably use them for King Charles' command stand when I get around to making it.

The Battle of Stratton

Having a few days off between Christmas and New Years I made plans to get at least one game in.  Initially it was to be an  ECW game using Pike and Shotte and an ACW game using Fire and Fury. It looks like the ACW game has been postponed (I'm pretty sure I wouldn't make it anyway now) but Murdock and I got our ECW game in yesterday.

This game was the opening round of our campaign using the Partizan Press books as a guide. We chose the Battle Stratton as a natural starting point. For this game we needed a lot of hedges judging by the map in the PP book English Civil War Scenarios, Vol. 2.  I had large number of hedges that I had inherited from Jeff partially finished (see this entry), however they were tidy, more modern, than one would find in your typical 17th century landscape; so I made some irregular hedging using the same methods and materials as described in this post.

We needed another terrain feature for this scenario and that was the remains of an iron age hill fort that the Parliamentarians were ensconced in. 

This piece falls into the "Close but Not Quite" category. As you can see with my 28mm figures, it is perfectly scaled 15mm...

 Although not much info is available about it (not even a Wikipedia page) I did find a little info and seems it was a small univallate hill fort with very little of it remaining today.

 The most prominent feature being a monument built in the early 18th century which I did not include for obvious reasons.

It turns out I needed another cannon as well, specifically a light gun. Although I didn't have a light cannon I did have the recently released galloper gun from Warlord Games; so I assembled it and painted up the crew to stand in for the light cannon.

I also took this opportunity to paint up some 1st. Corp artillery figures I had picked up for a spare cannon.

Really wonderful models. The face of the artillery officer is a highlight- sculpted to be painted.

So, on to the main event...

The Battle of Stratton (also known as The Battle of Stamford Hill) is early in the 2nd civil war, 16 May 1643. Having defeated Hopton earlier, the Earl of Stamford sent the majority of his cavalry away to occupy Bodmin. Despite outnumbering the Royalists, his forces were for the most part raw recruits and to mitigate the vulnerability of lacking sufficient cavalry, he took up a defensive position at the hill fort, and erected some hasty defences. 

Here the table is set up with the hill fort at top left as we look at the numerous hedges the Royalists regiments will have to cross. The brown strips are roads, of which their are two off camera to the right and one off camera to the left. All lead to the hill fort.

From the Royalist table edge with the enemy lining the hedges and behind defences in the distance:

Stamford's troops await the Royalist attackers:

As the Royalist commander I had the lesser forces, generally smaller regiments however nearly all my troops were veteran whereas two of the Parliamentarian battalias were composed entirely of Raw troops, although they did consist of larger regiments. Royalist foot troops were organised into 4 "divisions" each consisting of 2 small regiments and a gun. 

My initial plan was largely dictated by the terrain. I had three roads leading up the hill which I would have to make some use of. My plan was to advance one foot division up each road and move my cavalry up the road on my left, not out pacing the infantry.

Unfortunately I blew that plan up as soon as I started commanding regiments. To really make progress I had to clear the defenders in the fields on either side of the roads so I sent one regiment from each division to do that along with all of  Col. Godolphin's on my left. 

Hopton's men found it slow going; with the enemy to their front almost immediately and the hedges impeding  their movement. Here they are on turn 3 not much further along than in the picture above...

Sir Grenville's foot is caught in column on the road and charged by Merrick's pike. Bad news for the Royalists...

They gone...

After seeing off  Grenville's, Merrick's hops the hedge and successfully blocks the advance of Sir Berkely's :

In another display of plan deviation, the cavalry trot up the road in column only to get stuck in column; John Stowell's troop of horse get charged through a hedge by enemy pike men. They, somewhat unpredictably, loose the combat and flee from the field!

To add insult to injury, the same pike men win two more combats against Royalist horse, disordering them and forcing them to retire, completely neutering the Royalists' "advantage".

 In the photo below you can see the Parliamentarian pike men picnic-ing in amongst the Royalists Dragoons (on the right in red) and horse, whist Sir John Digby (foreground) looks on helplessly. 

 As the battle comes to a close, the majority of the Royalist foot have left, never getting more than about 18" from their table edge.

In summary, the general plan was OK but as the Royalist commander, my execution was very poor. In particular the issuing of orders. During the first 3 or 4 turns I forgot that units on roads and in column gained a +2 command value bonus. That was aggravated by the way I issued my orders as I consistently ordered my foot units to "advance to the hedge, cross hedge and form line".  What I should have ordered was "Advance to hedge, form line and cross hedge." That way, when I came up short on the command roll they would have been against the hedge in line instead of on the other side of the hedge in column (that's bad when in range of the enemy). In my haste to get up the hill I was tactically unsound. I did the same thing with my horse on my left flank. 

I also forgot lots of things rules-wise again; sometimes to my advantage, sometimes to my disadvantage (the Proximity rule went out the window, for example). Not sure if we missed something about horse and foot in melee, as the text of the rules suggests that foot in melee with horse was at a severe disadvantage but we couldn't find actual rules that supported the sentiment of the text and as a consequence the foot faired very well. 

We use a variation of the Movement rules crossing obstacles as found on the QRF at the back of the book. There are actually 3 different sets of rules: the rules under Obstacles on page 41; the Alternative rules listed on the same page;  the rules on the QRS which say it takes a whole turn(!) for a formed unit to cross an obstacle. We play it takes one whole move (ie  6" for foot) to cross an obstacle, as opposed to one whole turn. Although using them as printed in the text would certainly allow for more movement, we felt it costing a move was a good compromise.

Another issue is I still haven't quite nailed down is correlating the units sizes of P&S with the figure count in the Partizan books or how to best represent Raw and Veteran troops. Generally veteran troops we make Elite 4+. As disorder can really stall things, the Elite rule reduces regiments spending a lot of time standing around. Many of the units in the Partizan books are Small in P&S which makes them extremely vulnerable. If you have a whole battalia made up of Small units it can end up Broken pretty quick. Even if the units are all Veteran, the Elite rule isn't going to help with that. 

In summation...

...more work is needed!

JR Miniatures Outhouse

In my recent Sarissa Precision order I received a free sample of their Terrain Tile System. As I had a 28mm JR Miniatures outhouse I needed a base for I decided to combine the two products.

I really like the irregular edge of the base; I beveled it to aid the base in blending into the table surface.

The base is treated in my standard manner: 2mm Woodland Scenics static grass, followed by a 4 mm - 6 mm blend of brighter green grass finished with a mix of home made and Super Turf shrubs.

The tree is Woodland Scenics with 3M stripping pad material and SuperLeaf for the canopy.

Although the casting on the building was much better than the 15 mm buildings I had painted previously, you can see some of the detail obscuring, stray resin on this close up shot of the door; not really noticeable from arms length though.

A Start on More Hedging

We need a few extra hedges (several more feet actually...)  for our next ECW game. As the hedges I have already are a little too tidy and manicured for the period I have made a couple of sections that are more indicative of what would have been called a hedge back in the 17th century.

  They started off as 3M Stripping Pads cut and teased apart with pliers and a couple Woodland Scenics tree armatures glued onto wood salvaged from paint stirrers.

After spray priming of grey the bases were flocked with a little Scenic Express SuperLeaf brown foliage under the shrubbery followed by a layer of 2mm Woodland Scenics static grass and another layer of Peco Scene 4mm and 6mm static grass. 

 Some Army Painter grass tufts, a little bit of lichen and home made shrubs were also added before sprinkling the 3M pad material with SuperLeaf green foliage. I usually use a blend of medium green, light (or olive) green and a smattering of moss.

 These would probably line lane ways and ditches. Our lonely 28mm drover and his oxen to provide a sense of scale: