Inspired by the success of Mortimer's Cross, Monday Night Richard revised his rules a bit, and then set up another Skype game for us. This time he went for part of the 2nd battle of St Albans, the bit where the Lancastrians walk round the back of Warwick's elaborate defences.
I played the Lancastrians, and Steve got half of the Yorkists. The other half was supposed to be commanded by Tim when he logged on (he never did. Got trapped in Basildon, so Richard ran them).
You can just see one of my battles edging onto the table on the left. In the top left Warwick's men are lining a ditch. Steve's first act was to send a messenger to call for reinforcements.
I advanced on to the top of the hill. There's quite a slope away to the left, it's not just the camera angle. I was shooting as I went, but came under artillery fire. There's a cannon just near the red mark in the hedge line on the left. I stopped a move or two after this, and lined my fellows up for some sustained archery into the Yorkists.
I've now got into contact at the far end of the table. The headless Richard has moved me into contact, with Clifford on the left fighting John Neville, and Somerset on the right, fighting Warwick.
One of the things you have to do with Richard's rules is decide when to swap over your ranks, as battles start with archers to the fore, and you don't want to end up with them doing your hard melee fighting. I'd done that a move or so before I made contact, relying on superior armour quality to keep me in decent enough condition for the fight. I'd done more damage to John Neville on my left, so I was hoping to break him first, whilst holding Warwick in place. I'd taken slightly more damage on Somerset than I'd inflicted on Warwick, and the two battles were well matched.
On the way into contact we passed Henry VI and his guards under that tree in the middle.
It was a hard slog, as you might expect. I finally pushed John Neville back down the hill and broke him, but Somerset took some heavy damage. However, I'd just about won on the left in time for Clifford to be able to tip the balance.
Richard admitted that he might not have got the scenario completely right. That's a hard thing to do on a first play through anyway, so no shame in that. He's tightened up the rules in a number of places, and they work quite well. My only concern is that the melees do take a long time to resolve, and the number of things a commander can do are limited as well. It might be that once we get more involved in the game the decision making on passage of lines and so on will become more obvious to us as players, as will the other decisions you have to make in a turn.
Good to be having a game, even if it was by proxy.
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