Sedgemoor or less

Gary Sheffield (yes, that Gary Sheffield) contacted me about the progress of "From Pike to Bayonet" as he is interested in using them for late 17th century battles, including Sedgemoor. I'm not sure about that, but I do think that "Tricorn and Bonnet" with a few simple changes might do the trick instead. T&B battles tend to be smaller than those intended for FP2B, so having offered that opinion I thought I'd better give it a go. 

My main source for this was Richard Brooks' "Cassel's Battles of Britain and Ireland". As the rebels attacked at night, I made musketry and artillery one square range, unless shooting at matchlock troops and also negated charge bonuses for cavalry. Anything moving more than one square also rolled to see if it went off track. In a change to T&B the Intimidation rules weren't used. I had no time for any testing of these changes, so the players were just dropped right in it.

The Royal troops are in the curve of the drainage ditch. Their units are a base smaller than the rebels. Rather than deploy them up to the ditch, as historically, I put them back in a reserve position, to be triggered when their picquets warn them of the rebel approach. Otherwise the Royalist players have nothing to do until the rebels turn up.

Steve and Tim were the rebels. Phil & Chris were the Royalists. Steve had read a book on the battle. I don't know that it helped, as Tim was even more gung-ho than the original Monmouth army and Steve was unable to restrain him.

The rebels got to the drainage ditch first, but decided not to rush the far bridge with their cavalry. The Royalists were starting to react and move up to the defensive line.

Soon the Royalists were in range and firing. T&B pretty much assumes that troops are Platoon Firing, and the pike modifier that reduces fire effectiveness is too great if troops aren't. I realised that part way through the game. At the actual battle the rebels identified the defenders' position as one of their units was armed with matchlocks. I told the Royalist players they had one such regiment, but didn't tell them which as their commanders didn't realise the significance until after the battle.

The rebels eschewed firing, mostly, as Tim declared that they should charge home. They did, but suffered from defensive fire and also from the disordering affect of the ditch. These are things I might reconsider should we play this again.

The rebels had been too impatient to allow time for their guns to come up. This was a shame, as it was reported afterwards that it was the artillery that caused quite a few casualties. The rebels were losing out in the hand to had combats quite badly.

For some reason the rebel cavalry ended out wider than needs be, trying to turn the flank. They entered a scrappy prolonged melee with their Government opponents.

What the rebels feared all along has come to pass. Unable to break the infantry line they are in danger of being enveloped by Royalist cavalry.

This is just before it was agreed that the rebels had been thoroughly beaten. Next turn most things started to run away.

T&B has a good core engine for this battle. Given the small troop numbers and the nature of the armies  the extra detail you get from morale status cards is important. There are changes needed to some of the factors, but otherwise not much else. The rules in FT2B about secondary lines in squares and support in melee are superfluous, and the two level troop differentiation (regulars/militia) is probably not enough in a small sized game.

Nice to see the pikemen back on the table.