Sunday 1 August 2021

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 

37 comments:

  1. Wonderful report Iain, the set up and forces look spectacular as always. Shame you didn't have enough hedges as you made a lot last year. As for Blogger, what can you say but DAMN ! As you prewarned I scrolled down and went through them in sequence.

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    1. Thanks Dave,I was quite surprised about the lack of hedges!
      Best Iain

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  2. A nice sized action, with plenty going on. This made me pull my copy of ‘To Kill A King’ for a quick browse. I do like these ‘we don’t know much about this battle’ type scenarios and there are several such examples in the book, where you know a scenario designer has had to squeeze everything out of just a few sources.

    I find that Command Rating 7 is a tough place to be in the BP (P&S) universe.

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    1. Yes a fun sized scenario and the more obscure battles hold a fair bit of interest, command rating of 7 does make life harder!
      Best Iain

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  3. Blogger is a swine! Why they’ve gifted us with a such a crap error riddled platform is beyond me. Anywhoo great looking game and more importantly you had fun. Take comfort from the fact that however many hedges you make, it will never be enough, which is true for all of us!

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    1. Thanks Mark! I know, I'm going to make some more and I guarantee I still won't have enough!
      Best Iain

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  4. What a great looking game sir!
    Thank you so much for a report.
    Best regards

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  5. Iain, good to see your troops out on the table for another large and handsome action. "Aromatically based with Oregano"? You are killing me! Your ground cloth is making me go blind, too!

    As for blogger and photo posting, I think there may be a trick to get this to import the photos in sequence. I do not have issues uploading all of my photos at one time and in order but I am using a Windows PC.

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    1. Thanks Jonathan! Yes Des picked it up from somebody's blog,it's cheaper than flock I guess, I haven't had any problems for a while, I'm solely on my android phone !
      Best Iain

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  6. Marvelous Pike & Shotte gaming, Iain!

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  7. Great stuff Iain, a fantastic looking game, even viewed backwards! It's odd, I had that issue a couple of times when Blogger was first updated but it's not happened for ages...touch wood. Surprisingly, I have read on a blog somewhere of people using left over contents of the wife's herb jars as basing material, although I do not think it was anything quite as pungent as oregano....more appropriate for your Italian Wars collection surely?!

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    1. Thanks Keith, it's been working fine for ages,lulling me into a false sense of security!
      Best Iain

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  8. Great photos Iain. I need to look again on my laptop as my phone doesn’t let me view them as a ‘slide deck’.

    I’ve not had problems with the order of photos but every other comment I make in Blogger produces an error message so I have to copy, close Blogger and then reopen and paste the comment in.

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    1. Thanks, I haven't had a problem in ages,keeps me on my toes I guess!
      Best Iain

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  9. Excellent ECW game Iain, the random result of a blunder is fun!

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    1. Thanks Cyrus! Yes ,usually fun when you're opponent gets it!
      Best Iain

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  10. Nice to see the collection out for another run Iain. Some lovely figures in there. Whenever I think of Shropshire and ECW I think of narrow country roads and hedges.

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    1. Thanks Lawrence! I was going for narrow country roads and hedges!
      Best Iain

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  11. Lovely looking battle, and it makes me sorely tempted to start ECW but perhaps not just yet ?

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    1. Go on Matt,you can start with a small pikemans lament force, you know you'll love it!
      Best Iain

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  12. The really fun bit is when blogger keeps some in order, and reverse others ;) Game looks fantastic, and is inspirational as hell. I'm still at the "Pikeman's Lament" stage of collecting, but am hoping to get to a P&S scale game at some point.

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    1. Thanks Markus! Keeping me on my toes!
      Best Iain

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  13. I did wonder why the two armies were retirng away from each other, but soon got my head around th reverse viewing mode. I upload all my photographs individually nnd haven't encountered any of the problems you've had !
    Good looking battle btw and, dare I say, fairly typical of ECW engagements.
    As both sides used very simialr flags, I wouldn;t worry too much about using Parliamentarian ones as Royalist ones !

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    1. Thanks Joe ! I do all mine in one go and it usually works alright, I think you're right about it being fairly typical result too!
      Best Iain

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  14. I can never get tired of these reports. Even in reverse order!

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  15. I never think of myself as being into Pike and Shot…

    But when I see games like this… I am tempted…

    All t e best. Aly

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    1. Let the pike and shot butterfly settle on your shoulder Aly, it's certainly colourful!
      Best Iain

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  16. Nice looking game! Though I did laugh out loud when scrolling through the pics saw the random double 6 with no context. 😀
    A CMD of 7 is really low in these type games. Stupid bell curve of 2 D6s.

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    1. Thanks Stew! Yes the double six blunder roll! I guess it's the same for everyone?
      Best Iain

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  17. A fine looking game and figures, Iain! I recognized quite a few of the "new" minifigs that I have in my own collection!

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    1. Thanks Peter! Yes the ECW collection is one of your older ones? I do like this period of minifigs and they certainly do the job!
      Best Iain

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    2. The core of my ECW armies are Minifigs, and are probably among the oldest figures in my collection, the majority dating from the id 1970's.

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