Flodden Revisited

The twelfth move of the War of Stuart Succession saw, well, quite a lot happening. If you recall, James VI of Scotland had been forced to withdraw north after his defeat in the North Riding of Yorkshire. As his GOOS roll was now lower than it was before, he failed it, and the Durham trained bands, who had been quiet on the march south, decided to ambush him. At least, it was supposed to be an ambush, but read on.

In the north-west, James’ second army has crossed the border with England, and the Cumberland trained bands have rallied against them. Given everything else going on, I decided to fight this wargame after James in Durham. It could end up a bit Solway Moss...

In the south, the Dutch, in a sudden burst of activity, launched their new fleet into Thames region. Arbella Stuart decided to raise another army, hers now being under the command of her supposed paramour, Edward Seymour. Edward Seymour, on the other hand, fumbled his initiative roll again and landed up with a mutiny. The army hitherto raised and led by Arbella clearly did not find his generalship to its taste, and they went home, leaving both Edward’s and Arbella’s GOOS scores lowered. Isabella, on the other hand, made her initiative roll and got a military move. Two options were open, either to move against the Dutch in the Channel or to intervene in Buckinghamshire.

It really did not take long for Isabella to decide. Her London-based army moved into Buckinghamshire and took both Arbella and Edward into protective custody, before Arbella could rally a new army. It really has not been Edward Seymour’s campaign.

Anyway, with ambush in my mind, I rolled up a fairly dense terrain for the Durham men to entertain the Scottish king. I hesitated a bit over the Scottish strength, initially deducting the three bases they had lost in Yorkshire. After all, they are on the retreat and need to brush the trained bands aside rather than fight an all-out battle. In the end, I decided that this was a bit mean on the Scots, and the three bases were restored, but at the end on the army, assuming that they were straggling a bit.

The English are on the left in the shot above. The nearest foot are on a hill, and the ones at the far side are also on the end of a ridge, which you can just make out if you look carefully. The Scots musketeers in front of them are further along the same ridge. The bulk of the trained bands are on the road between the woods, having attempted to set an ambush for the Scots. Musketeers are in the woods, and the pike are two deep, with another in reserve.

James decided that only an assault of extreme violence would redeem his position and his reputation. He is therefore leading the three deep pike on the road, the plan being that the light horse next to him will deal with the English borderers. The pike will advance rapidly and attack the centre of the English position while the demi-lancers charge anyone who might get in the way. It was perhaps a high-risk plan, but as someone on our own timeline said of James, ‘Desperate diseases require desperate remedies.’

The photograph above shows the Scottish plan unfurling from behind English lines. On the left, the Scottish musketeers are giving their English counterparts a bit of a pummelling. In the centre, the Scottish light horse have forced their English counterparts to retreat, shaken (they are lurking behind the smaller wood). The pike, under the leadership of their king, are storming up the road, with the stragglers behind, and the lancers are coming into position. The Scottish light horse will, next move, head across the board to engage the English right wing. So far, so good.

The above shows, as it were, the big crunch. The Scottish light horse have moved across, as advertised. On the English left honours are about even, with the English pike dealing with one of the Scottish bases, but the other have the edge over the English shot. In the centre, James and his pike have hit the English, which the general has just managed to close up with the reserve. The only downside on the Scottish side is that, for reasons best known to themselves, the Scottish demi-lancers have refused to charge home. The English musketry from ambush, incidentally, had no impact whatsoever.

As is my standard practice, I was using a blue D6 for the Scots, and a red one for the English. The pike combat roll was made, and a neck was craned to see the result.

My head was held in some despair for the Scots before I even started to calculate the combat outcome. I mean, what a time to roll a 6-1. Ouch.

The outcome could have been worse, I suppose. The Scots recoiled shaken and the English, of course, followed up. However, it also meant that James had to roll for risk to his person, being the general in a losing close combat. Fine, on a 1-4 roll, he would be unscathed. The dice decided this was an excellent opportunity to roll a 6. General down.

The result felt kind of inevitable from then on. While the Scots kept the initiative, the pike did not survive the next round of combat, especially as the English had the tempo to advance their flanking musketeers as well. The rout of the foremost Scottish pike swept away their reserves as well, as seen above. On the ridge, the English pike have routed their foes, while the Scots have the English shot at a disadvantage.

The slight advantage of the Scots on their right was to no avail, however. Seven bases and a general down left them with a -4 army morale, which did not improve on the dice roll, and so the army routed.

So far this turn, then, Isabella now controls two of the three other claimants to the throne, and the fate of James VI is unknown at present. It is quite possible he has followed his great-grandfather James IV and gone down fighting at the head of his pike while invading England. We shall see...

The Reduced Aztec Show

Some of you may recall, a few weeks ago, my concerns over downsizing my collection of toy soldiers. I invited The Estimable Mrs P. to examine the problem, and she did have a few comments. The first one was to suggest, as gently as possible, that I perhaps had too many soldiers. Given that the labels had fallen off some of the boxes, it was not unreasonable to suppose that I had forgotten what was in them. In point of fact, of course, I had not, but the suggestion remained on the table, as it were.

Taking my concerns to the blogosphere resulted in some suggestions. Firstly, some smaller boxes, in terms of height, were suggested. This is well taken, but remains to be implemented, although the Estimable Mrs P. has authorised further investigations. In truth, I have only just measured the height of a lot of my troops and started to determine which armies will fit (basically, those without pike or lancers) and which will not. The results suggest that a considerable saving in height could be achieved, with the subsequent ability to pile the boxes up higher and reduce the footprint of the collection that way.

The main effort, however, has been aimed at rebasing some of the troops. A number of target armies have been identified that could straightforwardly have the quantity of infantry bases halved by doubling the number of figures on the base. A quick survey of the armies suggested that most of my ‘barbarian’ would benefit from such treatment – Celts, Germans, Spanish – as well as the two versions of Romans – late Republican and early Empire. The early Persians and the Greeks, too, could be moved down this road. A lot of space would be saved, I think, and, after years of denial, I have to admit that I am somewhat won over to the idea of having more figures on a base. There are pros and cons.

The cons, as it were, are my questions about how deep the formations really were. A six or eight-man deep line of musketeers or pike, or hoplites or legionaries, is not actually that deep compared to the depth of the base, or the ground scale of the game. On the other hand, a single line of troops does not really convey the feeling of a unit, perhaps more a skirmish line, and, despite what some people I’ve met over the years might claim, pike, at least, did not skirmish.

So, deep breath time, and the project is on. Despite what I just said above, the initial target was not Greeks, Romans, or barbarians, but my collection of Aztecs. It was going to be just the Aztecs, while I pondered the fate of the Inca armies (which are much smaller). Painting the Inca is what finished me with using condensed scale DBR, incidentally. I painted 28 strips and then worked out that I needed as many again to create the armies according to the lists. Morale collapsed, and it never happened, which, given the present conundrum, is probably just as well.

Still, the Aztecs and Inca were stored in 3 box files and had taken over the top of the cupboard in which some of the armies are stored. This was unsatisfactory, as that is also the surface on which I run the wargames, so some reduction would be welcome in both the shorter and longer terms. I also forgot to count the number of bases, but it was something like 28 Inca, as just noted, 14 Aztec ‘knights’, 62 Aztec militia types, 20-something archers, and 20-something skirmishers.

As a result of my despairing post, someone kindly suggested building a shelf within a box file to add more storage. As I proceeded with rebasing the Aztecs, The Estimable Mrs P. bought me some nice coffee (to sustain the process, you understand. I’m not addicted. My days of 6 cups in a morning are long gone). This coffee was ‘Machu Picchu Blend’. The fate of the Inca was thus sealed. They were staying as well.

The process of rebasing turned out to be not that painful, although it was rather lengthy. I found that as the basing material is poly-filler, sealed with PVA glue, and then painted, it would break off if I gave the plastic card bases a slight twist. The strips of soldiers could then be removed and rinsed to get rid of the filler dust, while half the bases were recycled for the purpose of rebasing. The result is a much smaller, although still substantial, horde of Aztecs.

The reduction in footprint is substantial. The Aztecs and Inca now fit into one box file, as shown above, with my own interpretation of the shelf suggestion, as shown. The Aztecs are on the lower portion; you can see the generals, skirmishers, porters, and the edge of the archers above. The Inca and the singly based officers are on the upper portion on the right. The shelf was created using half a sheet of plastic card and a sheet of steel paper, as all the bases have retained the magnetic strip they had to start with.

Undressed, as it were, you can see the details of the construction. The rest of the Aztecs fit around the legs of the shelf. I added the fifth support to prevent the shelf from sagging, but I am not sure whether it would have done so or not. In the best tradition of a former Blue Peter watcher, the supports are made from things I had lying around, in this case some corks from our wine-making operation. Fear not, they are unused, because the quality of corks has declined over recent years. They are unusable for their original purpose because they tend to stick in the neck of the bottle. My Aztecs will not start smelling of wine, although you might consider that a bad thing.

Now, this has a number of consequences. Firstly, I need to think of a campaign using the Aztecs, and then one using the Incas. And then I need to start to tackle the Romans and Celts. The footprint of the Aztecs and Incas has been reduced by two-thirds. I doubt if the rest will be that spectacular, but I am determined to diminish the storage problem, not the number of toy soldiers I have.

It’s Grim Up North

Although the flow of blog posts has been fairly uninterrupted, there has been a behind the scenes hiatus in wargaming here at Castle Polemarch. The reasons are mostly too dull to go into, except to mention that one of them has to do with rebasing the Aztecs. This project is nearly complete, but I am still wondering whether it is worth rebasing the Inca, as well. I am not sure; I think the Inca have only been on the table once in their career.

Still, existential angst aside, I did, on an insanely hot day in June, while the final batch of Aztec bases were drying, I undertook the next move in the War of Stuart Succession. Mostly, the sides took to diplomacy, without too much happening in the outcomes. James VI’s armies, however, advanced, which brought his western army to the border with England, and his eastern army, commanded by himself, to the North Riding of Yorkshire. There, James failed his GOOS roll, and the trained bands were called out against him.

The map showed that the Spanish, under Isabella, were actually in Hull, also known as the East Riding, next door. A little dice rolling saw them offer support to the trained bands, but a failed GOOS roll meant that the Yorkshire lads decided to tough it out for themselves. The Spanish therefore, stayed in Hull, awaiting the outcome.

The setup is above, the Scots to the left. The Scottish light horse is deployed at the end of a hill, as are the English in the right foreground and those in the enclosure on the far side. I suppose that, sometime, I should get around to making fields and hedges and stone walls which actually fit together, but my rationale is that the enclosures are a set of small fields, with lots of hedges or walls, rather than neat super fields as we have today. That’s my excuse, anyway.

The English plan was simply to stay on the defensive across the line, relying on their infantry superiority and positions on hills. The cavalry (they rolled 2 demi-lancers) was to plug any gaps. James pondered his plan deeply, and decided to direct two infantry formations (he gave up on doubled formations after last time) to assault the hill on his right (nearest the camera) while everyone else kept the English entertained in the centre and on the left.

The picture shows how the plan evolved. The Scottish light horse have had some nasty encounters with English musketry and are more or less out of the game at present. On the far side, the Scottish advance has somewhat stalled, again due to straight shooting from the English side. In the foreground, however, the Scots are arriving in numbers. While the English position on the hill is quite strong, it is not clear that it is strong enough to stave off a 2:1 assault.

It just goes to show how wrong I can be, I think. Above, you can see that the Scottish centre and left have stalled against the English. But James’ plan always included the flank attack. Well, that did not proceed as well as the King hoped, shall we say. The English got the drop on the Scots and attacked downhill. The English pike saw off the Scottish musketeers while the English musketeers gave a severe fright to the Scottish pike.

A bit of a swirling infantry combat ensued. The English musketeers were then flanked by their Scottish brethren and lost, being removed from the fight. However, the English pike flanked their already shaken Scottish cousins and caused them to flee, before turning to attack the Scottish musketeers still recovering from their fight, and routing them. See? I said it was swirling.

The combat in the centre and on the Scottish left has more or less settled down into a long-range musket duel, which the Scots were, in my estimation, most likely to come off second best. After all, some of the English are behind stone walls, which makes them fairly invulnerable.

The above slightly fuzzy image shows the end of the game. The Scots are still stalled in their centre and on the left, but have now lost three out of four bases on their right, due to the heroics of the two English bases, of which only the pike remains. Having now lost another base, James had to make an army morale roll. In keeping with quite a lot of his rolling on the day, this went badly, meaning that his army morale slumped to 1, and the whole lot withdrew.

Well, that is another blow to James’s hope of obtaining the English crown. I have to admit that I was not sure about the Yorkshire lads' ability to beat the Scots. Not due to any misplaced admiration for the Scots, but simply because of the disparity of cavalry. As it happened, the musketry nullified the Scottish light cavalry, and the demi-lancers (on both sides) never got into the action. The terrain rolling gave the English some nice hills to hide up, however, although the defeat of the Scottish flank attack was not in the script at all. It should have worked!

As James’ army did not rout but withdrew from the battlefield, it is still extant, and so Isabella’s army in the East Riding will need to keep an eye on it. There is also the question of what happens when the western army crosses into England. James’ GOOS score is now so low that it is likely they will have some tough fights going south.

In other news, the Dutch have raised a new navy, although to what end no one knows. And in the south, there is three way diplomacy going on between Isabella, Arbella, and Edward Seymour. None of them seems to be willing to make concessions, nor to come to some agreement about the throne. There could be more to come on that. If Arbella weds Edward, she will forego her very good GOOS score, and Edward’s is much lower. Isabella, on the other hand, already holds London and is starting to boss the English armed forces around.

I wonder what will happen next….

The Charge of the Love Brigade

 Aside from Isabella of Austria, whose army is now firmly ensconced in London and who is starting to order the English armed forces about, the other major contender for the English throne at the moment is Arbella Stuart. She has marched from Derbyshire, defeating local resistance as she went, and is now in Buckinghamshire. She arrived there without resistance, then moved to Berkshire to join up with Edward Seymour, and then moved back to Buckinghamshire. Unfortunately, Seymour seems to be a bit unpopular, and this time the trained bands rallied against her.

This being the start of the Seventeenth Century, Arbella had to let Seymour command her army, rather than her own specially selected general. After all, she reckoned, it was his fault the locals had turned hostile, so he should sort it out at the point of a pike, as it were. Seymour, who has been languishing at the foot of the ‘most likely to be monarch’ table since the start of the game when he fumbled a GOOS roll, was not going to reject the chance to revive his fortunes.

The battlefield was ‘interesting’. The river and bridge on the far side were not really relevant except for slightly cramping Arbella’s left. The large patch of rough ground on the near side, too, was only really there to cramp the right, and the woods, though pretty, were a bit out of the field of interest. The real issues were the hills, upon which the trained bands are deployed. On the right, towards the river, is a ridge with nearly half the infantry. In the centre, there is a hill (I rolled a double six for location) with a load more, and the general. From Arbella / Edward’s point of view, this looked like a very tough nut to crack.

From the trained band’s side, it was a bit tricky too. The ridge and the central hill looked a bit too far apart for comfort, and as the trained bands had rolled a light horse and demi-lancer, as opposed to Arbella’s two demi-lancers, I was a little concerned about the salient by the bridge. Mind you, so was Edward, who put himself at the head of Arbella’s cavalry, positioned to trot into the gap.

The opening moves were very chess-like. Edward advanced the cavalry into the gap, having to make a detour to the river bank when the trained band demi-lancer threatened to flank him from the hill, and then he withdrew in the face of the advancing trained band infantry from the ridge. Arbella’s right had advanced into line with the rest of the foot, while her left had advanced to succour the cavalry and also threaten the central hill in the flank. As just noted, the trained band infantry from the ridge had decided that they were too far away from the flank of the central hill to protect the infantry there, and the light horse and left flank infantry were probing Arbella’s right.

At this point, Arbella was seriously concerned, as she could not see much future in storming the central hill, and there seemed to be no way of flanking it. Given Edward’s unpopularity, she hatched a scheme to negotiate with the trained band leadership. In her first go, she offered to let them go home in return for not disturbing them (or pardoning them when she became queen). This was rejected. Her second offer was to arrest Seymour as well, and this was accepted.

Whether Seymour was aware of Arbella’s treachery is something future historians will have to debate. Nevertheless, he was aware that something heroic was necessary for a future king of England. The advancing trained band foot gave him a fleeting opportunity.

Sensing the danger, the trained band general had rushed to his right flank by the bridge to recall the infantry there. He did so, but not quite far enough, and Edward’s cavalry was still to the flank, just about. Edward charged home, crushing the arquebusiers and routing them, who carried away their own pike and the general in the rush. Ouch.

While shaken, the trained bands did not give up. Edward’s cavalry had charged, so it was now pursuing. One base ran into some more pike and routed them, but the attached musketeers survived, albeit just. Edward’s demi-lancer base charged on, up the hill and hit the trained band cavalry. Trying to go uphill against formed cavalry was never going to go particularly well, and Edward was lucky to get away with his troops being recoiled, shaken, from the hill. He was able to withdraw them from the fray to reorganise. He also survived himself. Arbella’s thoughts about that are unrecorded.

The trained bands were still not giving up (good morale rolling) and even had some tempo points to spare. These they used to advance the infantry in the centre on Arbella’s men. Here, the trained band's luck ran out. Arbella’s musketeers shot away the wings of the trained band formation, while the trained band pike pushed back hers.

This meant that next turn, when Arbella was a bit more flush with tempo, she could turn her own lifeguard pike and some of the left wing foot onto the flanks of the trained band pike with almost inevitable consequences. At this, the trained bands had had more than enough, and the army routed.

That was a fascinating combat. I really did not think that Arbella would come out ahead on that, and her dumping of Seymour was the best I could make of the job. Seymour had other ideas, however, and seized a fleeting opportunity. In the photograph above, you can see the results of his labours fleeing behind the trained band lines, while the man himself is just finishing rallying his base of demi-lancers.

In terms of the campaign, of course, we now have a fairly solid alliance between Arbella and Seymour, while Arbella is still allied with Isabella. My guess is that interest will now switch north, to both of the invading Scots armies. One is in Durham, moving south, with the king, the other is aiming for the west coast route. One of the issues is whether Isabella can move the English army in Dublin to north-west England to oppose them.

For the Want of a Charge

I have noted before that campaigns can throw up some unexpected wargames, and the War of Stuart Succession is no exception. I have already had the Spanish against the Dutch at sea off Dover, and now another Spanish and Dutch confrontation.

The story is this. After a week getting organised in London, the Spanish shipped another army from the Low Countries into Kent to reinforce the already extant and victorious army in London. This, however, left the Low Countries denuded of troops. Elsewhere, Arbella moved to Berkshire, collected Edward Seymour, and attempted to move back to Buckinghamshire. This time, the trained bands opposed her. Evidently, Lord Seymour is not that popular, even though, in real life, the unauthorised marriage of Edward and Arbella during the reign of James I led them both to the Tower.

Anyway, the Spanish were doing quite well, but James VI was advancing from Scotland again, and had arrived in Durham. Isabella therefore transferred the newly arrived army from Kent to the East Riding of Yorkshire, using the English fleet in Thames. This she can do, being in possession of the capital and thus able to persuade the Privy Council to issue orders to English forces. Meanwhile, James has raised a third army in Midlothian, which is not on its way towards the west coast invasion route.

Now, rather unusually, the Dutch managed an initiative roll, and decided on a military move. They had not reformed their fleet after the defeat, however, so the only option was an invasion of the depleted Low Countries. A few dice rolls later and a scratch Spanish army confronted them.

The left-hand side of the battlefield is fairly open, and that is where the Dutch are deployed. The Spanish side has some villages, enclosures, with woods along the near edge. Most notably, though, although scarcely visible in the photograph, is a hill in the middle of the table, occupied by Spanish foot. You will also note that the Dutch have four bases of cuirassiers, being at the forefront of military trends of the time, while the Spanish, outnumbered in cavalry, have stuck to the demi-lancer and gendarme formula.

Both sides have their problems. The Spanish have a strong central position but are outnumbered in cavalry, and their skirmishers are vulnerable, unless they get them into the village quickly. On the other hand the Dutch have to work out how to storm the hill without decimating their own infantry. The answer, it seemed to me, was to lead with the cavalry and then work the flank and rear of the hill while the infantry did their stuff.

The Dutch got off to a slow start, hampered by a lack of tempo. The frontmost cavalry got going, thanks to the general being attached, but the rest were a bit tardy. The idea was that the infantry would get moving as well, and that has only just started to take place. The Spanish have decided to move their right flank infantry forward a bit, and also have, under the general’s command, moved the gendarmes into a flanking position on the hill. The plan is, of course, to ambush the Dutch cavalry.

The Dutch cause was not helped by their cavalry refusing to charge the Spanish demi-lancers. This was a case of simple, bad dice rolling, but they were left marooned and exposed. The Spanish had the tempo to counterattack in duplicate – the demi-lancers charged, and the gendarmes went in on the flanks, downhill, with the general.

The result was predictably messy, but not quite as bad for the Dutch as it could have been. They bounced one of the demi-lancers while losing a base of cuirassiers. The successful Spanish charged on, striking one of the supporting cavalry bases with their victorious demi-lancers, while hitting the general’s base cuirassiers from the flank. Both of these fights were a struggle for the Spanish, but, after a couple of moves, they were victorious, although desperate measures were used to win the general’s fight, including moving the shaken demi-lancers into a flanking position. This eventually disposed of both the cavalry and the general.

There was then a pause in the battle, presumably as both sides tried to work out what had just happened. The Spanish general rallied his gendarmes and moved back to the central hill, while the victorious demi-lancers pursued their opponents almost off the Dutch base line. Remarkably, Dutch morale held up at this point, and they were not quite ready to give up the fight.

Eventually, rather painfully slowly (on half tempo, after all), the Dutch tried to get moving again. The infantry were sent forward to dispute the hill, and were not doing too badly, all things considered, when a thunderbolt struck. Well, not so much a thunderbolt, more the returning demi-lancers who crept up on the remaining base of Dutch cavalry and charged them from the rear. All things considered, those cuirassiers stood up to the shock rather well, but it was unrealistic for them to last more than a turn, and they routed.

At this point, I suppose inevitably, Dutch morale collapsed, and the army was routed. As you can see above, the infantry had not given a bad account of themselves. A more coordinated assault on the hill could have gone in their favour. Perhaps I was overconfident in their cavalry advantage, but really, if that initial charge move had gone home, the battle would have looked very different.

Not just the battle, I think. If the Dutch had won, Isabella would have had to pull an army out of England to face them, either leaving Arbella a free hand in London, or handing the north, potentially, to James. As it is, the Dutch have no viable military force at present, and Isabella still holds London. The campaign world is full of might-have-beens, I suppose, and this was quite a big one, and a lot seems, in retrospect, to have depended on that failed charge dice roll.

The Perils of Downsizing

As a slight break from the incessant wargames of the War of Stuart Succession, I have been pondering a little. Although you would never believe it if you saw us in the flesh, the Estimable Mrs P and I are approaching that certain age when we start to wonder what we are going to do with ourselves when retirement has done more than loom. We are not there yet, but there is a certain question on the horizon.

As we live in what is essentially a tied cottage (which looks like a suburban house), the question of where we go when the inevitable happens is present. And the inevitable seems to include that terrible word: downsizing.

Now, many of you are probably aware that the both of us collect books in profusion, and also that I have an extensive collection of 6 mm figures, terrain and buildings. We can both find books that we would trim from our collections, although we both have non-negotiables. But the figures are a bit more of a problem.

The biggest problem, which I cannot at present see a way of solving, is my collection of 20 mm card buildings to go with the 25+ mm figures. I need a better solution than the large plastic boxes they currently reside in. But that is a bit of a side order. Another problem, which I suppose I shall have to find a way of solving, is my ancient collection of 15 mm, mostly Peter Laing ECW, medieval, and a few ancients. I am aware of a few collectors of these who might possibly be interested. If that is you, drop me a comment with your email address (I won’t publish it) and we can talk about them.

The real issue is the quantity of 6 mm figures. I offered, as an opening gambit, to replace them with 2 mm figures, but the Estimable Mrs P rejected that. Then we went and looked at the size of the problem. I thought I had a fairly modest collection, but a more objective examination revealed that the size of the problem was larger than expected, but not massive. It also revealed that there are some actions that could be taken to ameliorate the situation.

Firstly, and most obviously, the bulk of the armies are stored in A4 box files. These are cheap, convenient (because they are recycled from other uses within the household), and fairly robust. However, they are about 3 inches in height, which for even the largest 6 mm figures means that there is around 2.5 inches of wasted space. So the initial plan is to get more of those A4 plastic boxes, which are half the height, and transfer the collections to them. I already have a fair quantity of them, but obviously need more.

A second, partial solution to the problem is to rebase the Aztecs. Again. I like the Aztecs and their campaigns – the Mexica campaign I wrote ages ago is one of the few I have actually re-run. But I have always had a bit of a problem with basing the soldiers. When I rebased onto plastic card, I based one strip to a 20 by 40 mm base. This, for the militia, makes them look a but underwhelming, particularly as I found I have vast quantities of them.

This will be, by my calculations the fourth rebasing of the Aztecs. They started off on flimsy card stands, one Irregular strip to a base. Then I rebased them to two strips per base for the militia, and one for the skirmishers and ‘knights’. Then, as I switched to plastic stands, as I said, I recall thinking briefly as to how many strips to put on a stand, and decided on one. This, as now seems apparent, was a mistake. Humbug.

Mind you, I am still not really sure how the Aztecs and their ilk fought. The ‘knights’ were, of course, the protagonists of the Flower Wars, the professional soldiers. The militia were, it seems to me, largely untrained, a mass levy. Thus, it is possible, at least in my mind, that the ‘knights’ were the officers and did not fight independently of the masses. After all, quite a lot of the Aztec fighting (before the Conquistadors came and spoiled the fun) was to do with capturing victims for sacrifice. During a battle, this would surely be done by the ‘knights’, presumably leader against leader, before the more massed brawl started.

I do wonder if this is a way forward for specific rules for Aztecs. A unit has a base of troops, plus an officer, if it expects to move. The officer, before the units come into combat, may elect to have one-to-one combat with an officer on the opposition side. If he wins, he gets both kudos and an attack at an officer-less, and hence demoralised, enemy unit. Otherwise, the Aztecs have simply ‘knights’, militia, and skirmishers, which can be a little dull, I suppose.

I suppose before going much further down this route, I should reread Hassig’s Aztec Warfare again. The thing is, I am not sure it is really known how the Aztecs fought other Mexica, so it is all a bit speculative. Mind you, I suspect that the same might be true of the Samurai – were, say, the archers of a specific lord brigaded into a mass of bowmen, or did they fight with the rest of the lord’s men? Opinions, so far as I have seen, vary. Plus the Samurai themselves were very interested in single combat, just like the Aztec ‘knights’. Room for some comparative history here, perhaps.

Still, this does not really matter for the rebasing project. The militia needs rebasing, the ‘footprint’ of my toys needs reducing, and this could just be the start of it. With a project like this, of course, you cannot really tell where you are going to end up. But sometime I might write my own rules for Aztec warfare. Just don’t hold your breath for them.

The Rolling English Countryside

 ‘I like the set-up for that battle,’ the Estimable Mrs P. remarked. ‘Rolling English countryside. Who is it between?’

‘Arbella Stuart and the Bedfordshire trained bands. Arbella is marching on London.’

‘I thought the Spanish got there in the last battle.’

‘Yes, but this is going on at the same time. Roughly.’

So there you have it, in summary. The army of Arbella Start is still advancing south on London, this time facing the Bedfordshire trained bands, having failed her GOOS roll this move. I confess to approaching this action with some caution, because the armies are mirror images of each other, more or less, and the margins of success and failure are, consequently, it seems, fairly narrow. Not only this, but the terrain rolls gave a fairly narrow frontage for the armies with only limited outflanking opportunities, at least on the face of it.

After some thought and messing about, the armies were deployed. On the near side of the field, the woods in the centre end at a stream which runs along the entire edge. What you cannot see is that the blue coated Bedfordshire infantry on the near left are actually deployed on the lower slopes of a hill. Aside from that the Bedfordshire have thrown their light cavalry forward in the hope of disrupting Arbella’s infantry, while filling the gap between the rough going on this side and that on the far side.

As the attacker, I was a bit dubious about this setup. I had a slight cavalry advantage – 2 demi-lancers against a demi-lancer and a light horse, but there was not really the room to deploy them. The alternative seemed to be an infantry slog with roughly equal numbers in the middle. I was not too impressed by that idea, but it seemed to be the only alternative.

A few moves in, and a bit of command ineptitude has opened a slight possibility for the Bedfordshires. Arbella’s central infantry block is in danger of out-marching its supports and being flanked on the far side, where a company of trained bands are angling in to catch them in flank. On such things, and the timing of them, battles can be settled. However, Arbella’s general has already dashed to the front lines to try to exert some control. The lady herself, note, is presently leading her own lifeguard (the blue coats to the right). She has no command powers herself, however, but she does inspire any troops she is attached to with a +1 in close combat.

The general’s energetic ordering of people around paid off. On the far side, the potential flankers have been forced back in line by approaching infantry under his direct command. Meanwhile, Arbella’s left flank infantry are in combat, reasonably successfully so far, and the Queen’s Lifeguards have started to move up as well, to provide some back-up in what otherwise looks like a fairly even infantry fight.

It got predictably messy, as the shot above suggests. Some of the fights have been even, some have swayed from one side to the other. On the far side, however, you can see that the troops led by Arbella’s general have managed to rout the opposition musketeers (fleeing top centre left, with the yellow ochre marker) and then, under the general’s direct orders, turned in and flanked the pikemen who have just spectacularly failed their combat dice roll and have vaporised.

Remarkably, the Bedfordshire men shrugged off the sudden loss of their left flank and carried on. As Arbella’s men tried to reorganise on their right, the Bedfordshire trained bands surged forwards again, possibly inspired by the sight of their general leading the demi-lancers towards the fray. On the other hand, you can also see the Bedfordshire light horse being hammered by some of Arbella’s musketeers, and that all of the infantry formations are beginning to break up a bit.

The end, when it came, was quite sudden. The Bedfordshire central blue-coated pikemen attacked some of Arbella’s musketeers and routed them, but were then taken in flank by Arbella’s general and his red-coated pikemen, who routed the blue coats. Meanwhile, on the near side, the Bedfordshire general has used some valuable tempo to rescue his light horse (who have moved back into the bottom left of the picture). However, Arbella’s white coat pikemen have just taken some Bedfordshire white coat musketeers in flank and routed them – they are fleeing centre left – while in the centre some more Bedfordshire pike are in deep trouble.

The arriving Bedfordshire general might have stabilised the situation, but he did not get the chance. The morale rolls kicked in. Arbella’s men rolled poorly, but survived. The trained bands rolled even more poorly and got a rout result. Looking at the situation, I can hardly blame them. The centre is about to collapse, the left has already gone, and only the unengaged right is looking secure. The arrival of the infantry reserves and demi-lancers might stave off the inevitable, but Arbella’s lifeguard is arriving, and it probably will not be long before her demi-lancers (who have not moved all game, incidentally) arrive to administer coups de grace all round. Going home seems like an excellent idea.

As I have said elsewhere, that was nasty, brutish and short. When an infantry battle is in front of us, we can expect a bit of a slog. That was more or less the case. The Bedfordshire trained bands did try to take advantage of some early confusion in Arbella’s ranks, but that was quickly overcome by the intervention of the general, whose continued presence in the infantry ranks meant that they could respond more quickly and the Bedfordshires.

I think the general’s mixing it at the front led to the victory here. It gave Arbella’s infantry just that edge that they needed to work flanks and pick up on weaknesses in the opposition. If the demi-lancers had arrived a bit sooner, things might have been different, but the trained band’s position collapsed within a couple of moves, so it is hardly surprising they were caught flat hoofed.

Still, in campaign terms, Arbella’s GOOS score has increased again, and she is still on track for London. However, a glance at the diplomatic table suggests she is in alliance with Isabella’s Spanish, who are already there. This is going to take a bit of thinking about….