Roundway Down chez Andrew Brentnall

Yesterday I travelled to the deepest wilds of Suffolk for a chat and game with FK&P stealth co-author Andrew Brentnall. He has a lovely dedicated gaming area and set up Roundway Down in a corner of it. I volunteered to play Sir William Waller's Parliamentarians at the top of the hill, and Andrew led Wilmot's plucky, outnumbered (but well-hard) Royalists at the bottom. All the minis are 10/12mm from his collection, and we used Andrew's variant of the scenario for the deployment, as opposed to my variant which has the Parliamentarian horse a little further forward. The unit cards were designed by chum Ian Notter. 

Here's a shot early in the game. Wilmot's own command piled into Heselrig and the other two commands are inclining towards the Parliamentarian left.

Above, brave Sir Arthur led his London Lobsters into one of Wilmot's units. I played a nine for the first activation, attempted a general's replay to get a lower chit and pulled a ten! Don't you just hate it when that happens? Still, I got to watch Andrew's jaw drop as I pulled two further tens to activate it twice more (3 tens in a row, the odds of that are rather to the north of 100 to 1, as there are only 8 in the bag), and managed to ride down a unit of cavalier horse before being slaughtered by a flurry of flank attacks. Those are some of the new yellow and white activation chits, by the way, very classy.

Here's the situation late in the game- the roundheads had closed on the left of my line, which I had held back so that I could support it with my foot. In the ensuing melees the leftmost "Dutch" unit broke through the Royalist line, and pursued the survivors down the hill, pursued in turn by Crawford's two units of reserve Royalist cavalry. Luckily for me my Dutch outran their Royalist pursuers, because I only had three medals left! But Andrew, by this stage, only had two himself.

And here was the last decisive melee. Requiring two medals to win, I managed to activate this disordered and exhausted unit of horse no fewer than four times. On the final activation I hit and the cavaliers failed their final save, giving me the last two medals that I needed.  It was a very narrow victory, indeed!

It was a great day out and a great delight to see Andrew again. Glorious weather, to boot. We had a sensible chat about the Thirty Years War in general and Lutzen in particular, and I feel a new scenario is coming along.

Sir William Waller

Sir William Waller was a leading Parliamentarian general during the English Civil War. He won numerous victories, at one point earning the nickname "William the Conqueror". He also suffered a few notable defeats, including that at Roundway Down. He was remarkable for his friendship with Sir Ralph Hopton, his old comrade and frequent Royalist opponent, which continued though the hostilities.

Sir William is a Bicorne miniature, as are his colleagues. I love the Bicorne historical commanders, I'll probably end up collecting the whole lot of them. I think Sir William was painted by Shaun McTague. I couldn't find a suitable cornet, so I painted my own (rather badly!). Sir William will, of course, be leading the Parliamentarians in my Roundway Down game at Partizan in May.

Colonel Robert Hammond’s Regiment of Foot

 

I've added a New Model Army unit, Colonel Robert Hammond's, to my collection. It's a "small unit", understrength due to campaigning, or it could be part of a larger regiment divided into two battalia. It contains around 2/3 the number of miniatures in my full battalions (which have 41-42 minis) drawn up in 2 ranks and a colour party. In FK&P terms, it has two hits. The images are clickable.

I formed it from a spare unit I designed for the 20cm grid, which you can see on the first colour page of the For King and Parliament rule book. By adding an extra FK&P7 base onto the edge of each of the three FK&P6 bases (shown above), it has now become a battalion suitable for the 30cm grid.  Almost all of the miniatures were painted by Shaun McTague. Ian flocked it up and I tufted- the new bases blend in pretty much seamlessly. 

Sir Arthur Hesilrigge’s Regiment of Horse

I've recently expanded my regiment of Sir Arthur Hesilrigge’s Regiment of Horse (more famously known as the "London Lobsters") by adding a fourth troop of nine, the ones on the right and below. You can click on the photo to get an expanded view.  Some of these Bicorne Miniatures were painted by David Imrie, but the majority were painted by Shaun McTague and finished by me. The basing, as usual, features my FK&P bases, flocked by chum Ian Notter, tufted by me.

I have unaccountably lost my model of the eponymous Sir Arthur, but that doesn't matter greatly as I plan to replace him with a more heavily armoured version. These are, of course, intended for the Roundway Down game that I'm working towards for Partizan.

In other news, I published the updated book of TtS! medieval army lists yesterday - five new lists, bringing the total to a nice round 120 - if you've previously purchased the lists you will have received a copy or a link, or, if you'd like to buy it, you can find it here.