As I've mentioned in the past, I like Field of Glory as a rules set for conventions, because the mechanics are easier to follow than DBMM or others for the average newcomer, while still providing something approaching a historically accurate game. Since I have a large collection of 15mm Wars of the Roses figures, I decided to try something large with the Battle of Towton. The first problem came up when I finally got around to gathering together all my figures and set them up.
"It's a little small for the largest battle ever fought in England, isn't it?" a friend asked.
And it was, since my collection was designed to provide two Big-Battle DBA-sized armies, and not a complete pair of oversized opponents. After begging, borrowing, and even stealing a few extra longbows (I think he'll forgive me once I return them), I was sort of able to put something together.
First thing I learned here - FoG scales up pretty nicely, but the player who has to try to keep track of everything going on is going to be a little confused. Also, in a large battle, it's likely that some players will be doing everything during one phase, such as the Melee phase, and will be sitting around waiting for everyone else to get through Impact, Maneuver, and Shooting before they can do their thing. Despite that, I liked the way the battle progressed, which caught the historical chaos without my creating special weather rules. (The historical battle involved heavy snow and wind that favored the Yorkists.)
On the first turn, the Yorkists rolled for Norfolk's flank assault showing up early, only to discover that it had become lost and would not make it to the battle in time at all. This was a severe blow to the Yorkists, though not overwhelming. The player commanding Northumberland's forces on the Lancastrian left saw this as an opportunity to use his otherwise worthless Northern Border Horse to outflank the Yorkists and hit some of their troops in the rear. This was a good plan, if it hadn't turned into something of an obsession, but these things happen when playing unfamiliar rules late at night on the second day of a gaming convention . . . More on how that turned out later.
The Lancastrian mounted spear in ambush on their right did not fare well, being hit by heavy longbow fire before they could get into open ground. This did give the Lancastrians the slight advantage that it diverted a battlegroup of longbow and of men-at-arms for a while. In the center, the Yorkist forces under Edward advanced on Somerset's forces.
On the Lancastrian Right, a battlegroup of militia longbowmen were ordered to throw down their bows, draw swords, and charge into the liveried longbowmen in front of them, mainly to make room for the Border Horse's flanking maneuver. To their credit, the militia longbow caused one stand of damage and passed all of their cohesion tests before succumbing to autobreak. Then things got really weird.
We had to stop briefly to determine whether longbowmen who had just won a melee would then pursue into fresh longbowmen rather than standing an shooting. The answer is apparently that they do. Now committed to a melee, the Yorkist player on that flank sent his bill forward to help the combat, about-facing the remaining longbow who weren't in combat to threaten the Border Horse who now had to turn around to catch up with the pursuing longbow. I'd need to draw a picture to explain it all. The photo gives some idea of how confused things got, without adding the Border Horse overshooting their mark.
At this point, the Yorkist center commander suffered from a terrible run of luck in shooting.
Taking advantage of the general confusion, the Lancastrian commander ordered all of his billmen to march through his longbow and engage the Yorkist forces. He routed the longbow, followed up into the men-at-arms and routed them. Compare the picture to the right to the picture of the center commands above. The red crystals were being used to mark routing forces.
Despite the fact that the Yorkists were winning on the two flanks, this was a serious setback. The Border Horse finally managed to make their charge into the rear of the advancing Lancastrian longbow, with devastating effects, though at the cost of losing all of his militia troops.
I'm afraid to say we ended the game there. Things looked grim for the Yorkists at that point, but the two forces were nearly equally close to breaking.
In the future, I'm going to refrain from running big games like this late at night.
No comments:
Post a Comment