Battle of Neville's Cross 1346

This week we hosted two Australians at L'Hotel de Hercé, "Baron" Ricson and Doc Smith, we had quite a full tour schedule but did put aside a wargames day in the petite Salon.

The good Baron wanted to play a medieval game based on his Scottish heritage and Wednesday was the anniversary of the battle of Neville's Cross. I have quite a large collection of late 13th and early 14th century Scot and English armies, with a wide range of manufacturers miniatures in the collection, primarily Claymore miniatures, with a mix of Old glory, in the Scot army and Claymore, old glory, Crusader, Foundry, Mirliton, Anteluvian, and fireforge in the English army. We used Advanced Impetus rules, I find they work very well especially if you like a result in under three hours of game play, both players were relatively inexperienced playing the rules but quickly picked them up.

We set up historically, with the English closest to the castle and city, and the scots at the top of the valley on a small ridge line. The English won the opening roll and advanced, the opening round of archery from them was quite devesating, causing casualties along the Scot skirmish and archery line. The infantry line advanced twice, passing the woods on the left flank, the Scots then launched set ambushes of light javelin and highlanders. In the second round the English continued to advance and in this round the English longbow drove back the scots to their own lines, the return fire from the scots lights done more damage removing a whole base. Turn three the English won initiate again, moving the line forward and manoeuvring around the woods in the centre, and charging the Scot lights in the woods, who fell back. Turn four the scots won initiate, the archery doing very little damage, so decide to advance off the hill and attack the disordered English line, some success but not enough, the English the new elected to engage the scots, who now were disordered on thier right, so not in schiltron, and great murder was done, only the kings base did not recoil. Turn five seen the English left flank crumble under the scotish onslaught and things were looking up, but the resulting combat on the English right seen King David captured and the whole Scottish army leave the feild as a result.