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.

1st St Albans

The GVS members who have WOTR Medieval armies decided to get together to refight the opening stoush of the War of the Roses, the first St Albans. I spent the last week or so doing some research and refurbishing my WOTR troops (still not finished!).

I wanted to capture the main features for our refight of St Albans, so I embarked upon some research of the battle. The main features are the cathedral, the market square with the clock tower and the Great Cross, Hollywell Hill and the church of St Peter. I hunted through my terrain collection and came up with a 20mm Cathedral I use for my Arnhem collection, and I decided to build a tower out of foam card, the rest of the buildings come from my and Greg’s collection. The other main pieces we needed on the table were the three main lanes, Sopwell Lane (London Road), Shropshire (or Butts) Lane (as it lead to the archery butts in Tonman ditch)and New lane all leading off Halliwell street and of course Tonman ditch which was represented by a line of hedges.

 

I made up the army lists making sure I included the main characters of the battle for the Lancastrians The King HenryVI, The Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland, and Lord Clifford, and for the Yorkist’s The Duke of York, and Earls of Warwick and Salisbury.
After the set up of the tables and the troops which took some time (two hours of chatting) we then went to lunch before a dice was rolled!
Greg commanded the Lancastrians and Bruce and myself the Yorkist’s, basically Greg’s troops defended each of the lanes with a unit of men at arms or billmen behind hasty barriers (needing sixes to hit them)and his Archers defending Tonman ditch hedges(also requiring sixes to hit). The opening three turns began with the massed archery of the Yorkist’s, cutting down large numbers of Lancastrian archers, then the Yorkist billmen advanced, finally contact was made, the Yorkist bill block on Sopwell lane had a hard fight with the Lancastrian Men at arms for three turns and finally fell back after failing a morale test, the Yorkist billmen attacked up Shropshire lane fighting for three turns also before fleeing whilst being chased by Lancastrian Men at Arms, this cause four other units around it also to flee! The Yorkist billmen attacking along New lane should of had the better of the shire bill but fled also but were all cut down buy the Lancastrians.

At this stage I thought that the Yorkist cause was lost so I threw the Duke of Yorks Men at Arms with himself leading along with the Earl of Warwick and the Army standard bearer against the Lancastrian Men at Arms holding Sopwell lane. They forced their way through and chasing the Lancastrians up the hill. The Lancastrian Men at Arms on Shropshire lane decided to charge the Yorkist archers who flee leaving the men at arms at close range to another unit of Yorkist archers who promptly cause 5 casualties in one turn!

Last turn, the Lancastrian Men at arms charge the archers again losing another three in the charge leaving only three men and Lord Clifford for the ensuing combat, no archers are killed and the archers manage to kill another Man at arms, Lord Clifford promptly surrenders surrounded by 30 archers! In the streets the Lancastrian Men at Arms rally and charge the Yorkist’s plodding up Halliwell hill, Somerset challenges the Duke of York to single combat both fail to do each other damage, the Yorkist Men at arms do murder though and the Lancastrians again flee, and are all cut down including Somerset, only The King HenryVI, and the Earl of Northumberland remain both surrender.


The game was great fun, we didn’t change the historical outcome but it was a near run thing, this game with a bit of tweaking and some more buildings it would make a great demo game I think. I think it has been at least two years since we had a WOTR game so it was time! I do think plate armour in WAB should be at least a three plus save, the archers done great damage on these heavily armed men who only had a five plus save.


Cheers
Matt