Battle of Edgehill - a 28mm Wargame using Pike & Shotte

 Afternoon All

On Monday I hosted a rather large epic Pike & Shotte engagement that was a recreation of the ECW Battle of Edgehill which incidentally celebrates its 380th anniversary later this year. The plan was to host six players (three aside) who would take the Royalist and Parliamentary commands for this opening battle of the English Civil War. 

Sadly two of my players got stuck in traffic and 3 hours later still had not appeared. (We discovered that a jack knifed lorry on the A3 was the culprit).  We pushed on with four players and because it was such a great close game the decision to refight this again next Monday has been agreed with a further four new players. Hopefully I'll be able to provide a full AAR of that battle post event.

Prior to providing details of the game I can report that we are now getting close to the potential housemove - hopefully we will exchange and complete on our new home in the next couple of weeks. Given the amount of work to be done on the new place we have decided to stay put oat our existing home for the next couple of months and move out at the end of November. This does mean that the games in the shed are coming to an end but as I mentioned in a previous post the new games room at the new place is much bigger (but also needs a lot of work). As and when things happen I'll post an update . back to Edge Hill.

The Forces gather

Background

The Battle of Edge Hill was the first pitched battle of the English Civil War. It was fought on the 23rd October 1642 near Edge Hill and Kineton in Warwickshire.

This engagement resulted from the failed attempts by King Charles I and his Parliament to come to a constitutional agreement on how England should be governed. By early 1642 war looked inevitable as both factions mustered large armies. In October Charles I marched from his base in Shrewsbury to sieze London and confront the rebels. Parliaments forces uunder the command of the Earl of Essex marched north to meet him.

By the 22nd October both forces were close to each other with Charles occupying the high ground (Edge Hill). With Essex showing no inclination to attack the upper ground Charles marched his army into the lower valley on the 23rd and battle commenced.

Both sides were very inexperienced with few of the troops on the field ever having being exposed to fire. Many of both sides fled or ignored orders. Neither army gained an advantage and the battle is seen as an inconclusive affair.

Both sides were evenly matched with Parliament fielding more artillery pieces. In terms of regimental strength the Royalists fielded more units but these were typically smaller in size than their counterparts.

After the battle Charles continued his march south to London but was not strong enough to take the city - the next action in the war was the Battle of Brentford which we fought a few years back - details here

A map of the battlefield 

Orders of Battle

As in previous re-enactments of big battles I wanted to get as many of the right units on the table and to support my efforts of this battle I drew upon the army lists in the excellent Nick Lipscombe's book on the English Civil War. This really is an excellent tome for the period and a must for all wargamers interested in this period.

Fantastic Book ...if a little expensive

Taking the musters and units for the armies present I copied these across into a spreadsheet and determined the relative sizes of the units based on troop counts. As according to Warlord's Pike & Shotte rules units were designated as small, standard and medium.

These would be represented on the table by my growing ECW collection. Given the footprint of all the units the sleeves of muskets for each pike block were limited to one base either side.

These are shown below

The Royalist force...

The victor would be the side that broke the enemy first  - the breakpoint of the Royalists was set at 16 units and Parliament 14.

As in previous games all the units and commanders had their designated unit cards (Home made) with the stats including ranges, movement and stamina. An example is shown below.

We have modified the rules slightly for this game - 

1. Ranges and movement have been reduced by 30%

2. Movement can either be done deployed or in column (the higher number ids column movement)

3. Three ranges are given - up to 4" hits on 3+, 4-8" hits on 4+, 8-12" hits on 6+

Finally 90% of the units on the table were designated as 'freshly raised' - in effect the first time they gave fire of came into melee their was a chance they might panic.

 

All the commanders have their own cards as below

The command rating is shown top left and the plus number is the extra die added if said commander joins a combat.

The cards are colour coded blue and orange for the two sides 

The following photos are from the first game...a full AAR will be produced for game 2 - hopefully I will remember to take more pictures

Below - Prince Ruperts Cavalry Wing on the Royalist right flank

The Parliament centre stretching out to their right wing

Both sides edged forward - a stream bisects the field but appears to have played no major part in the battle. It was just there for aesthetic purposes

The Rebel right wing

Parliaments horse on the right wing push forward supported by dragoons on the far right

The centres close

The Infantry mass for a big push of pike

Across the field regiments jostle for advantage

Cavalry charges proved somewhat ineffective to both sides

Full scale melee on the Parliamentary left flank

Parliament has won in the centre and is pushing forward

The Generals survey the carnage

Our first fight saw the Royalists lose marginally - thanks in part to the numerical superiority of the Parliamentarian artillery

Come back soon for a fuller AAR on the second refight

An update for August

 Evening All

Conscious that I haven't posted for the best part of a month and an update of shed activities is most definitely required however before I go into details I'll give a quick update on where we are with the house move...

In a nutshell not a lot has happened we are still waiting on our new home to be given probate by HMRC so we can then exchange and complete. Believe me we are already to move in the Shed household. As and when things happen I'll post up details and pictures of the new games room !!

Plenty of games going on but I have been lazy and taken no pictures....sorry. All action reports are taking a back seat at the moment. As for painting July was a very productive month...

First up I acquired a load of plastic 28mm ECW infantry off Ebay for a bargain price (£30 quid for 150 plus figures) 

These have now been painted and added into my ever growing ECW collection

The new chaps include 36 more musket stands and 4 more pike units

With all these extra chaps I needed some more command stands - sourced from Bicorne and includes a rather smart King Charles

In addition to adding to my ECW force my Crusaders and Saracens have had some new reinforcements - again all bargains secured on ebay (I rarely pay full retail for any hobby supplies)

The Crusaders get 24 more horse and eight more heavy infantry stands 

and the Saracens get a few more mounted archers (fireforge Mongols with Gripping beast arab heads)

and another 40 infantry....

Thats about 250 plus figures painted in the last 8 weeks

In my next post I will announce my next BIG project (aside from moving house, converting new games room etc)

Adding to my ECW collection

Over the past couple of weeks I have been focusing on some additions to my English Civil War army. A rather fortuitous purchase of a Warlord Bowx set ands some extra sprues off ebay have now been built and painted. I addition I purchased a further six cannon of various sizes at Salute.

The new cannons can be seen below - based predominantly on 5 x 10cm bases. 

Three new pike units - each unit is 10cm x 10cm and is formed of 15/16 figures

Two of these pike units are on 5 x 10cm bases which allows the creation of a large unit 15x10cm or could be used as small pike blocks (5 x 10cm) 

Six more cavalry...I used the other six as command figures

Another 8 command stands - including 2 packs of renegade commands purchased at Salute from Colonel Bills

and a further 19 bases of Shotte (all four figures on a 5 x 5 bases)

Time to show off the whole collection of 960 figures...

Not quite a 1000 but I am getting there...

More soon

Quick update on October Activities

 As we head into November I realised that there were a number of wargaming activities we managed to achieve in October and yet did not post about them so rather than several short posts I thought a longer summary might be appropriate. 

Of course the big event during October was the completion of our Wars of the Roses campaign to fight all the battles in this historic period. This is now complete and a complete history of all these games now has its own dedicated page on the blog HERE. This has been a successful series , so much so I have been asked to put together a couple of articles for Wargames Illustrated. Watch this space...

So what else has happened...

Quite a lot of figure painting including over 150 Zulus to bring my total to the magic 1000. More details can be found HERE

On top of all those Zulus I have rebased all me English Civil War and added around 200 figures to the ranks. Previously I had six pike blocks I now have 13. The blocks themselves are based on 10x10cm mdf coasters sourced off ebay.

Six of the finished units shown below including home made flags. The bases make our games of Pike and Shotte go so much quicker.

Close up of the push of pike...

I also based all the infantry onto 5 x 5cm mdf bases (warbases) - with four figures a base.

It only seemed right to then host a game in the shed - sadly no report but a few pictures of the action.

Fought across a rather densely packed terrain filled table this three aside game was fought out on a cold monday night

A furious affair with a finish that ended in a win for Mark F, Tony and Alastair.

In addition to our Bosworth and this Pike and Shotte game I introduced a few new players to my predator game...

This is a homebrew set of rules that sees several humans attempt to traverse a jungle and

avoid being killed by traps, beasties and of course...

The Predator - in our game we had five players taking on two predators.

The humans won the game with just one man making the edge of the board. 

Finally I have been building some hills to go with my caulk battlemats constructed earlier in the year. These have yet to see any action but I am pleased with the result...

They start off with hot foam cut polystyrene stuck onto a hardboard base

This is then covered in filler and left to dry.

I then liberally coat the hill in pva and cover in sand and brown emulsion paint.

Once dry the hill is then covered in static grass using the same blend as the grass used on my mats. They are not perfect but At least I now have some hills to use on my table

These are not so high as to be impractical - they stand around 5cm tall

That's it for now folks.

Take care