War of three Kingdoms 10 battle of Wistanstow

 Now dear reader, we are whisked away to Shropshire in 1645, to a battle just before Naseby with the Parliamentarians sending out a reconnaissance in force under Sir Reinking and the Royalist commander scraping together a scratch force drawn from local garrisons to try and retake Wistanstow, even though my flags were for parliament I was cast in the role of the fopish cavalier, Sir Michael  Woodhouse as Des a scion of the Geneva of the north(Bolton) would not countenance being anything but the rebels, so he was Colonel  William  Reinking.

We've just taken the scenario from warlords for To kill a king supplement for their Pike and Shot rules, which is part of the same stable of rules as Hail Caesar and Blackpowder,  it's not really a tournament type of game but gives a good game in a reasonable time with a fair amount of frustration as activations are a big part of the system, personally I quite like that. We were looking for something a little smaller as we didn't complete St Albans as it was so large a game the previous week and neither of us wanted to be up quite so late!

The parliamentary reconnaissance in force meant, under the scenario, that their artillery and troops were already set up and their command rating was higher General 9,battalia commanders 8, which in order to activate you need to roll equal or less. In contrast my troops were in a less advantageous position and my general was an 8 and my battalia commanders 7.

Entertainingly blogger has reversed the order of all the photos! Ah how we laughed! Essentially I  tried to move the battalia on my right flank around and over some hedges which worked for the first go,but stalled for some time after( my unit of cuirassiers were there pretending to be normal cavalry for the day!)

Des's army was a recently purchaded minifigs army,aromaticaly based with oregano, in opposition were my Essex/warlord plastic troops.I managed to rally off the damage my yellow regiment took with my commanding officer attached to it, which worked in spite of the  dreaded double six or blunder, which in this case merely bundled them into a hedge! Focusing all his ire on that regiment proved to be beneficial to the rest of my army as I was able to eventually outflank him on my right and get in amongst his artillery which was when we called the game. Great fun,although we didn't have enough hedges or road! Next up? Another AAR, theres precious little painting happening at the moment,hopefully blogger will put the pictures in the right order next time!

To kill a king does have rules for sieges, so I'm quite tempted by that!

All the best Iain