Edgehill with Pat

Following a couple of weeks of preparations, old Japan mate Pat H and myself got together online last Thursday using VASSAL for the board and Discord for chat to start a playthrough of the Musket and Pike scenario of Edgehill. 

For those that may not know Musket and Pike, it is a series of hex and counter boardgames put out by GMT focusing on battles of the English Civil War / Thirty Years War era. It was originated by Ben Hull, but has an obvious progenitor in the Berg/Herman Great Battles of History series. Like the GBoH series before it, it is a grand tactical treatment of each battle, with a specific map, named counters, and various scenario options for each battle.

The system tracks morale, attrition and formation at the unit level, while command and control rules require orders to be set at the wing level and communication traced between commanders and the commanded.

Command counters have special functions which allow units they are stacked with or in some cases are adjacent to to perform orders (rally, reform, etc) which their wing stance (charge, make ready, etc) may not ordinarily allow. 

It is one of those systems that I thought would allow a battle to be worked through over a a week or so of casual after-dinner play. Unfortunately, to this point I have not yet been motivated enough learnt the rules well enough to manage this. Hopefully this Edgehill game with Pat will change that. 

But on to the game. The scenario sees the Royalists (Pat being an inveterate Royalist I had to be very careful not to mention Harry or Megan in the course of the evening - it could have got nasty!) with charge orders itching to have at the Parliamentarian menace. As commander of the said menace, I got to sit back and watch as Rupert surged forward on my left. 

His initial activation saw all right wing cavalry, dragoons and musketeers forward. Pat then rolled for a continuation and was successful, leading to controlled carnage as his wing engaged with mine. A remarkable run of luck with my reactive shooting saw Pat's wing take considerable casualties in the charge, but ended with my commander driven off the field. 

Battle map after two activations of Rupert's wing.

It remains to be seen how we can come back from this. On the positive side, we were not routed in our entirely, and all of Rupert's units have suffered some kind of attrition. 

It has been enjoyable. It took about 90 minutes of play to get to this point in the game, but I expect things will speed up. The advatange of rules which are so procedural is that once you get those procedures down, things start to take care of themselves. The disadvantage of course it that it takes a bit of time to familiarise oneself with those procedures. 

It seems though that we are well on our way.

Mulled Newbury

Today I was lucky enough to be able to jump on a train and head north for a few hours of gaming with Pat, whom I had not seen for a twelvemonth.

Amidst the odd snowflake, some mulled wine and around a picturesque table, we refought 2nd Newbury with the boardgame This Accursed Civil War from GMT's Musket and Pike series.

I took the side of Parliament and deployed on both flanks, as if to trap the king in a vise. I outnumbered him and was under charge orders.  What could possibly go wrong?

King Charles awaits.

Well, as has been telegraphed, quite a lot. Firstly, my own intrepid self Skippen bungled his attack on the Royalist position at Speen.

Bungle bungle bungle...

As a consequence, Waller, being overall commander, was forced to get involved rallying and reforming the troops thrown back during the somewhat over-hasty assault against a prepared position.

But Balfour's and Cromwell's cavalry wings would surely do their best and save the day.

Onwards, gentlemen!

And so they did: Balfour's horse destroyed Maurice's flank defence, but so weakened themselves in the act that they were in turn overwhelmed by a devastating counter-attack, prosecuted under the very eyes of the king himself.

Cromwell's wing then also got into prancing difficulties.  Hedge crossings disrupted their formation and unimpressive thinking condemned them to the indignity of being reaction-charged in a constricted space.  Consequently, they were unable to bring any force to bear against the brave (and superbly led!) Royalist horse. Touche, Patrick!

OLIVER!  WHAT HAVE YOU GONE AND DONE?

Skippen's foot eventually got back into the action and pushed the Royalists from their position at Speen.

Looking a little more promising as we punish Maurice with musketry.

Sadly, our casualties were mounting, and like an idiot, Skippen stayed in the front line with his wobbling brigade instead of sensibly retiring to join the next line. He dies bloodily, and with him lie our chances of winning the day.

But what of the other flank, you may ask?

There too it was a sorry sight. We got across the river but disordered ourselves so terribly we failed to get any momentum against the stalwart men of the king.

With night (and snow) falling, it was time for Waller to catch his train back home call his men together in conference and have a good go at them.

****

Despite the awfulness of the defeat, it was an excellent game to play. A real tactical puzzle, and it was a thrill to re-learn this solid system. It can get a bit fiddly for fat-fingered Kiwis with all the markers about, but it has a lot of to-and-fro action that makes for a great day's gaming and provides some moments of high drama.

As an added bonus, I won a copy of the game on the Japanese version of ebay the other night, so I can study my many mistakes in the comfort of my own private dungeon!

Many thanks to Pat for a most enjoyable day and some most palatable beverages.

Edgehill with Pat

Things have been busy here recently, but I'm very pleased to report that two excellent game days have been had this month.

First up, on Saturday 11th, I headed to Pat's place in Kobe for our long-delayed game of Edgehill using Ben Hull's Musket and Pike series.

While I don't have the ECW game that Edgehill comes from I do have two of the others, so I was looking forward to getting to know the system in the hope that I could then play a few games solo.

The M&P system clearly owes a debt to Berg and Herman's Great Battles of History series, most strikingly (for me) in the way that leaders and their commands are activated, but it is still its own game, with the wing orders, cavalry interception and general reaction rules giving the game plenty of character.

I should qualify my comments by saying that I have only a very passing familiarity with warfare from this era and am not therefore a sufficient authority to say how the games reflect the history, but you can be sure I will not allow such gross ignorance to prevent my commenting on the system itself!

Weaknesses.

It's quite fiddly in some areas - morale status, formation status and casualties all have to be kept track of separately; so too do the pistol shots used for cavalry - yet in other areas it is, by comparison, not fiddly enough. Musketeers, for example, are able to shoot in reaction any time a unit comes within range.  Although their chances of scoring a hit are only about 30% per volley, that they can potentially fire unanswered shots against up to four separate units seems to me to be an unrealistic anomaly.  That said, it appears to fit together well enough as a whole.

Under certain orders, rallying and recovery can only be done by army commanders, and as army commanders can be activated any time a formation is activated, we saw them  running around the board like chooks, and, in the case of King Charles, dying like chooks as well.  I think I would prefer to have rally and recovery included in a slightly more abstract way, but that's just personal preference and is not based upon a survey of the period...

Strengths.

The activation and orders systems work very well together.  There is a lot of 'game' packed into this aspect of the system, and I like the choices that it throws up.  The interception and reaction mechanisms mean that even the inactive player has important decisions to make, so there is constant tension and interaction between the two sides of the board.  The combat system allows antagonists to experiment with different types of tactics and it is clear that good play will be rewarded and poor play punished.  As I say, how those game choices relate to the historical choices I am not qualified to say, but it certainly makes for interesting game play in which timing plays a key role.

The battles flow surprisingly smoothly once the basic sub-systems are learned.  Our first game took a long time and a lot of flicking through the rulebook, but the second one went much faster and I think a third would have gone faster still.  Once people are sufficiently familiar with the system (I would say three to five plays in) I think it will become a game in which the rules take a back seat to the game play and in which players have the ability to be the authors of their own success or the arbiters of their own downfall.

The battles.

(This image of the battlefield is taken from Gnut Grunitz's VASSAL module)

In the first game I took Parliament while Pat took the Royalists.  There was fighting on both wings but the ability of my musketeers to get off a number of successful shots in reaction meant that the Royalist cavalry superiority came to nothing.  Seeing this, the heavy infantry of the Royalist centre concentrated on attacking the left, and while moving into position opened a gap in the line which Parliament was able to successfully infiltrate and exploit (thanks to some extremely favourable dice that allowed an order change and three activations in a row!) in a manner similar to Alexander at Gaugamela.  Despite scarcely creditable bravery from Charles and his immediate company, the king himself was eventually captured and we called time with a Parliamentarian victory.

In the second game we switched sides, and as the Royalists I concentrated on clearing the left in an attempt to outflank the formidable heavy infantry of the enemy.  Foolishly, I left Charles in an exposed position, and a  succession of poor activation rolls by myself matched by good ones from Pat saw Charles captured again, though I fear this time they just lopped off his head immediately.  The heavy infantry advanced, but Pat's skillful movement and interruption of the Royalist activations saw him lure my men into musket range and take a grievous toll on them before melee could be joined.  We had to call the game so that I could catch my train, but Pat probably had the upper hand on the field and had clearly won on points by virtue of his bold capture (and execution) of the royal person.

(Image courtesy of Pat, showing my Royalists in a tricky position after being led into the guns of Balfour and Essex)

It was a great day's gaming, and I am very keen to play some more of this fascinating system.

Many thanks to Pat for a fantastic day (and for yet another very good lunch!).