Adwalton Moor at Historicon

[Pictors Studio]

We used Warmaster English Civil War to play a game of Adwalton Moor at historicon with the Epic ECW figures from Warlord Games. 

It has been a while since I played it. Other than a test game before the con, the last time I played was about 20 years ago.  I've played a few games of regular Warmaster since then and the basic rules are pretty much the same. 

The battle has asymmetric sides, the royalists have much more cavalry, about threefold more.  They have pike and shot units, while the forces of Fairfax only have commanded shot, although they outnumber them in foot by 8 units to 5, although a quarter of the Parliamentary force are clubmen. 

https://i.imgur.com/B1lMUus.jpeg

The Parliamentary forces have a pretty big terrain advantage as they start behind hedges.  Hedges made the units count as fortified so they were at -1 to hit, cavalry couldn't charge them and any units that did charge did not get the charge bonus. 

The rebel forces were bedevilled throughout much of the game with poor command roles.  Had the sides been reversed the Royalists would have been slaughtered.  The Roundheads were able to hold on only because they were largley on the defensive. 

The game started with the Royalists trying to move their cavalry up on the flanks while the infantry moved up the center. 

The cavalry really got slowed and disordered by the musketeer lined hedgerows.  Their attempts to skirt past them were largely thwarted.  The Royalist infantry was thrown in on the left at first and managed to make some headway against the defenders but at pretty significant cost to themselves. 

Eventually, the royalists were able to push the defenders away on the left but chewed up all of the infantry sent to do so.  A counter charge by the Parliamentary cavalry would have been much more successful if the musketeers had been able to be rallied to the hedgerows, but they could not be. 

In the end the Parliamentary force collapsed losing their 7 units to meet breakpoint conditions.  The Royalists were only at 4 out of the 8 they needed but there were several units that were dangerously close to breaking and they didn't have the drawback of having their guns engaged. 

There are probably a few tweaks I will make to the rules after playing these two games.  Hopefully I'll get another game in before the fall and I'll keep painting until then.