Today I dropped by Hobby Bunker to participate in an English Civil War game put on by Boston Trained Bands. There were some amazing figures in 15mm -- I can't believe how well-painted they were. I can barely get a base coat on a hulking warjack in 30mm.
I opted for the Royalist side (seriously, the King was dumb but endearing, while Parliament was dour and grumpy -- not to be confused with the band Parliament who are funky and freaky). The situation was early in the war. Prince Rupert had just won a victory but fell back to the town of Aylesbury to repulse the Parliamentarian reprisals (involving a complex series of motions and amendments and points of order no doubt). Our job was to take command of the forces and defend the town.
Each side got 2 regiments of infantry (musket and pike) along with a regiment of cavalry. My confederates said that the cavalry was exciting and fun while the infantry were just plodders, but since the ruleset was new to me (Regiment of Foot by Peter Pig) and because I feared botching the vital charge and losing the game, I opted to take one of the infantry regiments and stand fast against the on-rushing hordes.
I spread out along the east side of the village facing south towards the river that bisected the table. The other infantry regiment continued the line to the west and the cavalry stet up ahead and to the west a bit. I thought this was a mistake and that he should've put his cavalry in column to charge over the sole bridge. This would dissuade the enemy from rushing the bridge, but still give him options to peel off to the west if necessary.
Once set-up, we wandered off into the shop while the Parliamentarians got set up along the southern half of the board. When we came back, things looked rough. Their cavalry were primed to charge over the bridge and right into the center of town. Meanwhile, two huge blocks of infantry were poised on the east and west sides to come marching down and surround us. The block on the west had a fairly open approach and easy access to a road to come curving in on us.
Things did not go well for us early on. Our cavalry rushed out and then charged a column of infantry in the flank -- who promptly about faced and blasted half our cavalry from the saddle. The only good news is that it encouraged the enemy cavalry to chase after them rather than barrel into town as they were poised to do. Some bad motivation rolls meant that the infantry on the west side was slow to re-deploy. Meanwhile, my guys mostly hunkered down behind their hedges and watched the steady approach of a mass of men. I felt like we were getting pulled apart and with our cavalry so depleted, things didn't look good. When the rest of our cavalry was run down by theirs I was pretty sure things were going bad. I was redeploying my reserve trying to figure out which gap to plug, until I was advised to just hang tight, I'd need them once the eastern wing of the enemy hit my line.
I was also advised that I should try to stay behind hedges because they were like pillboxes in a WWII game. This was very, very true. A line of enemy infantry formed up and rushed my guys. The Regiment of Foot system uses a bucket-o-dice resolution system where you roll a *lot* of d6s and pick out the high rolls as hits (followed by a saving throw). The very first time a unit fights in melee during the game it gets 5 bonus dice (on top of the 19+ dice it's already rolling for a full-strength unit). However -- if you attack a unit behind a hedge, you lose 6 dice. So he was already at a disadvantage to start with and it only got worse with each round of combat after that. In two turns I shredded his unit. I was down to only 3 stands, but I got some good motivation rolls and deftly slid the injured unit to the side to fend off a potential column charge while my reserve unit replaced them in their spot.
Meanwhile two other units had engaged the other part of my line. I say line, but really I had more of a zig-zag shape. The enemy forged across the river in two columns, but couldn't readily charge through the hedge (he'd only be attacking with his lead element and get clobbered, so he turned one line and started sniping at me. Now another rule came to my aid. If an enemy unit moves or shoots within 4 inches of you, you automatically get defensive fire. Since he was wedged between two of my units every one of his shots drew two in return. This was a war of attrition he couldn't win and so he charged by unit in the open (again drawing defensive fire and losing stands). He pretty much shattered against my line.
The other unit now formed up and prepared to assault through the hedges against my unit that had been reduced to 3 stands from his first assaults against me. Since melee is between single units only, I couldn't bring any of my larger units in to help and things looked bad for my guys. But he only had enough action points to redeploy into line not actually charge. My unit in the open got a good motivation roll and promptly rushed in to attack. He failed to react to my charge and the resulting melee swept his entire unit from the field. His commander was isolated and I had two full-strength units compared to his one. He declared the flank lost and that was pretty much the game.
While I'd been dealing with all of this, the other flank had done pretty well. Our cavalry hadn't gone out without a fight and one brave line of infantry managed to gun down the rest of the enemy's cavalry. That meant it was down to another clash of infantry regiments on the west side of the board as well and some aggressive redeployment forced the Parliamentarians to move very cautiously. Only a few desultory shots had been exchanged on either side, but the enemy hadn't forced the issue and now faced the choice of assaulting through hedges (which as you'll recall is a very bad idea in this game) or marching down the road and taking lots of defensive fire from units sheltering behind the hedges. In either case, he'd given us too much time to set up and with the eastern flank a loss, he called it quits too.
All-in-all the game was very interesting. Bucket-o-dice games are kinda weird. The GM said it was mostly done to ensure consistent averages over the course of the game, but in that case, just figure out what the "average" is going to be for a given situation and then use FUDGE dice to adjust the average up or down (or not at all as is most likely). The "average hits" could even factor in the saving throw and the whole thing would speed up immensely. But I'm always trying to speed up combat resolution in that way.
Also, those "hedges of steel" really saved my bacon. The town had any number of hedge-lined fields surrounding it and I'm not sure how I would've forced my way past them if I was on the attack. I suppose the ideal situation would be to bring both infantry blocks in together on the same wing and then feint with a couple of units to force the defenders into a location and then strike with the others. Alternatively, try to catch the units as they're repositioning although that's best done with cavalry. Probably the attackers needed some light reinforcements to provide reserves that could exploit a breakthrough. Or maybe we just had tons of great rolls.
Overall, though, a fun game (course it was, I won didn't I?). They tried to talk me into buying a DBA army for their tournament next week. Yeah...DBA is a weird game. The problem isn't the rules (although their writing style is most charitably described as "opaque") or the slightly chess-like way the game runs. The problem is that it's built for tournaments and rather than almost every other wargaming period where historical opponents fight one another, you're allowed to throw armies separated by 3-4,000 years at each other. When my ancient Egyptians take on your Japanese samurai there's a problem. Still, they said they had loaners so I might check it out just to say I played it.
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