AAR War of three Kingdoms/ ECW 25

 We had another pike and shot game at the club, we chose a scenario where the  victory conditions were occupation of the two river crossings at the end of eight turns. Each force had a pike block and two shot units, a light gun and two units of commaned shot, split in to two battalias, the Royalists (John's) were early Royalists taken from the To kill a king supplement while my force was based on Essex's from the same source as per the last game.

I rolled high and went first and  managed to grab both crossings, John's pike and shot regiment resolutely failed to activate, unfortunately beyond my shot range. On the other flank he skillfully exploited the terrain to take out my light gun and eventually the whole force, meanwhile his pike and shot unit advanced to yhe other crossing and it all looked bleak as his shot were in cover while mine were exposed, I charged his pike unit with mine and destroyed one of his shot units, John's force on the other crossing stalled, both pike units fought themselves to a standstill then broke but there was no longer time for John to try and take the other crossing so we called it a draw, as there was still a fair amount of time we set to with a straighr up melee from the one hour wargame scenario with two pike and shot units each , two cavalry and a medium gun , I was lucky enough to activate my infantry forward but held my cavalry back.

One of John's pike blocks got stuck near the start point and never really moved, failing activation and at other times being disordered so unable to follow orders, my cavalry moved off the hill to take shelter from John's artillery fire in the hedgrows, meanwhile John couldn't get his cavalry to move. The fighting in the hedgerows started to reduce the Royalist force and a charge by my pikemen eventually broke John's pike. Meanwhile John's Cavalier cavalry finally activated charged my cavalry, which being caracole cavalry meaning they take a closing fire shot instead of counter charging , were defeated , withdrew and were hit again in a sweeping advance, they lost again so I  had to roll a break test which with an eleven each( on two dice) meant that surprisingly they survived even if they had to withdraw from the table, I  continued mangling the Royalist foot, John declared a charge on my artillery piece but wasn't able to fulfill it and we had to call the game as we had run out of time, another draw. I thought it worked out rather well, the Parliamentarian foot is marginally better than the Royalist and the Royalist cavalry is superior to the Parliamentarians at this point, if John's cavalry had gone off to attack a  baggage train it would have mirrored a number of civil war battles! We're going to keep at it for pike and shot for a while so expect more of these chaps!

Framlingham Castle in Suffolk was often the start of our family summer holidays in the east coast and is a good eleventh century ( I think?)  Castle with some lovely Tudor chimneys, we walked the dog around it the other day, captured by king John in the thirteenth century it was where Queen Mary rode out from to start her counter coup to depose Lady Jane Grey with the support of Suffolk. 

Next up ? Definitely Napoleonics, all painted just need to take some photos after the holiday, went past James's headquarters during the second Anglo-Dutch war in Southwold today as that conflict seems to be in the air!

All the best

 Iain