Wednesday 5 August 2020

First Game - War of the Roses

Afternoon All

The twice weekly gaming sessions continue and on Monday we played something completely different. This time we dipped into the War of the Roses. During the lock down myself, Alastair and John had all painted up retinues for my planned 2021 campaign. Mark (currently unavailable) has also mustered a sizeable force.

Monday night was the opportunity to get some of these on the table. We were using Hail Caesar as a rule set but because we had insufficient forces units were restricted to six men for infantry and three for horse. In hindsight this was a mistake as we had too many units on the table.

Prior to kick off I set up the table - a rather cramped affair with lots of hedgerows, a small river and a couple of villages.







Each of our forces were drawn randomly using some cards I created based on the Kingmaker board game. For example a titled noble (eg the Earl of Warwick) would get a men at arms unit, a retinue bow and a retinue bill. If he had an office (eg Warden of the Northern Marches) he would receive appropraite forces for this office. Finally depending upon the number of towns and bishoprics hen controlled gave him addition bow and bill. This system still needs tweaking but all the players thought it worked well.

What did not work so well were the 'alliances'. By drawing cards we determined who would be supporting Lancastrian/Yorkist. Two players were elected this way with the use of playing cards - a jack, queen or king of a particular suit denoted the allegiance. The other two players then had three cards to play their suit and numerical value determining who they would support in the coming rounds.

This was somewhat chaotic and in the end I was confronting all three other players with Warwick's meagre retinue (11 units versus 40+). Who says wargames need to be balanced ?

With such a superiority the game was very one sided so no full action report but we did get some great action shots...


Warwick asd his allied nobles realise they are up against it...





The Forces of Percy advance

The forces of Talbot mover forward


Finally Arundel advances on Warwick's right flank


Archers and Bill take up positions


The tin cans are very shiny !!


Opening shots exchanged


The killing field


More troops for Percy


The battle rages in the centre


Its proving disastrous for Warwick



Chaos - but its colourful



More forces surge forwards


So it was a dark night for the Yorkist cause - Warwick took a pounding. Have no fear the War of the Roses will pick up again very soon.

Stay safe

12 comments:

  1. Wonderful tabletop and stunning location.

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  2. Awesome looking game! Interesting idea about drawing the cards ... one of those "lots of flavour" to the game things that can somewhat backfire - been there before.

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  3. A fine looking game there Mr Shed!

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  4. Great table Eric and excellent report, chaos but colourful! Cheers Greg

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  5. A beautiful game and a source of inspiration as I gather my WoR forces. I struggled a bit with the text because of the over powering wood effect wallpaper.

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  6. Beautiful table. Sometimes an unbalanced game can be a lot of fun. Losing is a forgone conclusion (no pressure now) so maneuvering to maximize your damage is the challenge.

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  7. Great looking table and game

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  8. looks great , but i think you have too many hedges , hedges not a great feature of the english countryside in this period ( much later yes due to the enclosure acts ), and the hedges that existed wotr era were impassable spiky ones like holly or blackthorn . : Hedge prevalence in England When: Roman, Anglo-Saxon, 13thC, 15thC
    Where: Lowland areas
    Why: occasional Field boundaries
    How: planting bushes or trees and pleating them together at an angle as they grew
    Materials: huge variety based on local availability, but the most common were hawthorn, blackthorn, and holly .
    The tenament farms that were on the site of the sports grounds east on the hogsmill in new malden ( off windsor avenue ) were marked out by the planting of oak trees . ( 17th century and before )

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  9. Amazing room and setup. Just a smidgen jealous! :)

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