More ECW way out West

Jon stood up and volunteered to host again. Once more he chose to poach upon our preserves, offering those of us on this side of the pond his take on our Civil War. This time he offered us the Battle of Montgomery from 1644, where Parliament secured control of Wales. It is not, I regret to say, a battle I know that well.

I was in command of the Royalists - cast against type - supported by Steve and Ian, whilst Richard, Will and Phil commanded the forces of Parliament. The Royalists, to the left, must attack and prevent the Parliamentarians from crossing the bridge, but must not lose their army in the process.

The Parliamentarians won the initiative, and started to head for the exit. BTW those cavalry in the distance near the tripod are off table, and we don't know when or where they'll be coming back.

We had a slight advantage in numbers, they in quality. The plan was to throw all the cavalry at the front of the column - which was mostly cavalry - to hold the column up, whilst we overwhelmed the rear. I checked the rules in respect of the army break points, and I reckoned it was a goer as a plan. I thought we'd probably lose our cavalry division, but would be able to defeat their infantry.

There are two camera angles. This shot is from the other end. We have a 4:3 advantage in cavalry, but they are better. The hope is that we can use our numerical advantage to hold the whole process up.

After the first contact, we had a unit heading off table (see bottom right), but we were in good shape for the forthcoming fights, if the extra Parliamentarian cavalry didn't turn up too soon.

Not a bad outcome. We had one unit "bounced", and broke a couple of theirs, which you can see fleeing across the bridge. In the centre I've got close enough with my infantry brigade to open fire. We've been able to force them to stop their march, and they're now fighting because we want them too, where we want them to. I need to hold them up whilst we catch up to the tail.

The returning cavalry turn up, and we now need to fight a delaying action against them, and draw them away from the infantry fight. This means evading rather than fighting, just to delay the onset of a fight our damaged forces will almost certainly lose.

Back to the other end of the table, and the infantry are now facing up to each other.

We are succeeding in drawing the cavalry away from interfering in the infantry fight. There is debate as to whether Richard should be allowed to swerve his cavalry round from pursuit to attack the rear of the infantry. Jon quite correctly rules "no" unless the pursuing cavalry are brought back under control first.

The infantry brawl is beginning to spread, but we are losing our last cavalry units. However, I have done a proper number on their infantry in the distance.

We have driven the rest of their infantry back to the river line. If we can break one more unit (or was it two?) we break another one of their brigades, and their army is broken. It would really help to get the initiative for once in the game. This duly happens, and in a frenetic turn Ian piles into Will's remaining units, and breaks two of them, destroying the brigade.

This ends the game, and brings us a Royalist victory. If the turn had played out, then we might also have been broken, so going first really made a difference in this turn.

This was a close run scenario, which narrowly reversed the historical outcome. I don't know if we were tactical geniuses, but the plan, such as it was, played out as desired. The game saw a higher than ideal  officer casualty count, but otherwise the rules worked really well. Jon continues to refine them, and he is working with a good set of core mechanisms. These, if I haven't mentioned it before, share quite a bit in common with how the main system in "Taiping Era" functions, which may be why I like them. 

We had as bit of post game discussion, as we do, on what worked well and what didn't. The evade option for horse is probably going to go, and the pursuit rules will be tidied up, but otherwise it's all working well.

An excellent evening's gaming.