An early Tudor battle at BLAM - pics and report

[Captain Blood]

At our British Lead Adventure meeting last weekend, I played in a splendid game staged by two of our resident top medieval modellers and painters, Stuart and Painterman.
It was a real treat to get to play with a small portion of their exquisitely modelled and painted figure collections.

A quick photo battle report follows.

Points to note:

1. All the figures are from Stuart and Simon's collections and the terrain is also Simon's.
2. The shine on some of the figures is purely down to the light in the room.

The rules used were Lion Rampant, which worked pretty well. There was a quite surprising amount of evading, falling back, running away, and rallying. Casualties were fairly brutal.

The scenario was as follows, based on a real historical event:

Henry VIII's invasion of France in 1513.
Not far from Calais, one of his twelve large bombards, christened 'The Twelve Apostles' (this particular beast being called 'St John The Evangelist') has become stuck crossing the shallows of a river...

Henry Lord Bourchier, the Earl of Essex, has been despatched post-haste with a rescue mission (and a stout wagon) to retrieve the missing artillery piece before it falls into French hands. But the French are also en route with an eye on the prize...

It was largely a fast-moving cavalry action. The forces were well balanced - the English with units of demi-lances, scurrers or border horse, and of course two companies of longbowmen.
The French with a whole variety of horsemen from heavily armoured gendarmes, through mounted ordonnance archers to mercenary Stradiot cavalry. Backed up by a company of arquebusiers.

Here is the super-gun in question, stuck in the shallows on a bend in the river...



The English relief force arrives...



At the same time as the French, commanded by Jimbibbly...



Stradiots, gendarmes, mounted archers and more...



The French observe the English rescue wagon trundling towards its stricken objective...



The English longbowmen take the field and prepare to see off the French in time-honoured fashion... Not terribly successfully to begin with, but they got better...



Whilst Essex heads straight to the river with the scurrers, the English demilances, led by the very Welsh Sir Rees ap Thomas, sweep nobly across the meadow to take the advancing French gendarmes head on... (Can you tell which side I was playing? )



But with the French stradiots almost upon the river, Essex himself plunges forward to confront the gendarmes and drive them back...



As the longbows begin to have a deleterious effect on the French, causing various withdrawals...



...a charge by the border horse forces the stradiots to evade, just as Essex breaks the gendarmes... Leaving the rather strange spectacle of one stand of gendarmes racing off the field as another surges forward into the fray!



Another view of this excitement. At this point, Essex, somewhat wounded, is behind the clump of trees, right.



As the English horse establish more of a secure defensive screen, the rescue wagon reaches the river...



But wait... The routing gendarmes have rallied, turned, and come roaring back in to have another go, leaving the gallant border horse no alternative but to throw themselves in harm's way...



The wagon spends three turns recovering St John The Evangelist, whilst the tide of battle washes around it...

The Earl of Essex however, is mortally wounded (as can be seen by all those arrow casualty markers) and expires shortly afterwards, as the French arquebusiers finally catch up with their cavalry and start popping away...



The battle rages on in various small actions...



As the wagon, laden with the mighty bombard trundles serenely off the field to safety...



At the end of the day then, a successful rescue mission, but at the cost of the life of the English commander, and one of the foremost men of the Kingdom. So overall, honours even. (Historically, Essex survived, rescued the bombard, saw off the French, and he and ap Thomas returned in triumph to King Henry's grateful embrace... )

The second game played to the same scenario (not by me) was apparently a resounding French win. I believe the English became somewhat mired by Lion Rampant's infamous 'lose a unit activation and your whole army grinds to a halt' rule. Strangely, we didn't suffer much from this at all in the first game.

Anyway, a great little game, and a true pleasure to play with such lovely figures.
Thanks chaps  

[Ray Rivers]

Sounds like quite a fun scenario and of course, the mini's are superb! 

Thanks for the BatRep.

[Phil Robinson]

You have taken some fine photo's of two splendid collections, any shine given by the light really enhances the nicely painted armour I feel.

[Mr.J]

Wow! Stunning looking game.

How did you factor in the multi-basing when playing Lion Rampant?

[Gangleri]

A beautiful and thrillingly narrated game    And what a clever idea for a scenario.

[Dalauppror]

Stunning pictures of lovely minis ! Thnak you very much !

[Furt]

Such beautiful minis. 

The  bogged gun and wading attendants are a triumph!

[Atheling]

What can I add? A really stunningly beautiful game and that's an understatement!

 

Darrell.

[Stuart]

Thanks for the write up and some very dynamic photography, and of course for riding nobly against the old enemy  

Basing wise we counted 2 60x60mm bases of infantry as a unit throwing 12 dice, for the bows this was roughly representational though the xbows and arquebus had less figures but it still worked well.

Cavalry; each base was a unit in this game, in the second game we doubled that.

We'd not played before so learn as we went along, getting up to pace about halfway with some step in tuition from Eric the Shed.

For my part, being used to pike & shotte it was refreshing to not have to factor flank and rear support. It was a good fast game, unpredictable in parts with a sense of fog of war. I'd certainly play again, possibly with some troop type adjustments but otherwise a most versatile set of rules.

Thanks again for having us, it was a great day.

Stuart

[Elk101]

It was a pleasure to play with such lovely figures. Nice photos too, my photos were awful as the light was streaming in behind the table. I was in the second game with the 'resounding French win' and yes, the English (and Welsh) had some bad luck with the activation dice. We also had Gamer Mac making some incredible dice rolls on the French side! What a job to take down Essex, he refused to die  

[Stuart]

Not forgetting Simon's effort, given the scenario he was able to represent an empty limber moving across the field, figures limbering in the river and then a fully limbered train moving back. It was a visual spectacle that made the game.

Thanks again buddy, you're a gent  

Stuart

[Andym]

It was a pleasure to play with such lovely figures. Nice photos too, my photos were awful as the light was streaming in behind the table. I was in the second game with the 'resounding French win' and yes, the English (and Welsh) had some bad luck with the activation dice. We also had Gamer Mac making some incredible dice rolls on the French side! What a job to take down Essex, he refused to die  

Great stuff gents. Steve-Colins rolls were too good and jeff/mine too bad. Our rolls were that bad, we got to try and activate one thing, then the WHOLE french army would go. We ended up with the Earl of Wessex fighting pretty much on his own, holding off two lots of french horse! Severe bad luck!











Nice meeting you, gents!

[Elk101]

You creased me up with your comment "see, this is what I get for playing the English! " (we had three Scots and a Welshman playing so someone had to go the English!).

Nice photos Andy, mine were all blurred.

[tyrionhalfman]

An interesting read and a truly stunning array of minis - the work of artists

Thanks for sharing

[Keith]

What a wonderful AAR - beautiful to look at and a great scenario.