Friday Night Game - The Battle of Montgomery 1644

Mark, Rick, Chris and I met at Julian's place on Friday evening for our second post lockdown FtF game. This time, Julian had suggested we give his copy of "For King and Parliament", the ECW version of To the Strongest, a run through. For those familiar with TtS, most of the mechanics are similar, but there were a few differences that kept us on our toes.

Julian chose a scenario from the book, the Battle of Montgomery. It was not one I had heard of before but was basically an attempt by the Parliamentarians to relieve Montgomery castle in Wales which was under siege by the Royalists in the aftermath of the pivotal battle at Marston Moor. Following is a brief outline from Mr Wikipedia:

The Battle of Montgomery took place during the First English Civil War of 1642–1646. On 17 September 1644, a Parliamentarian force commanded by Sir John Meldrum advanced to engage a Royalist army led by Lord Byron which was besieging Montgomery Castle in mid Wales. The battle was fought the next day. After the Royalists gained an initial advantage, the Parliamentarians counter-attacked and destroyed Byron's army.

The Royalists retained a presence in North and Mid Wales after their defeat but could not again gather a field army in the region until the end of the civil war.

The events of the battle are poorly documented.

On 17 September, as the Parliamentarians approached, Byron left a detachment to guard the siege works around the castle and formed up on a hill, crowned by ancient earthworks, northwest of the castle. Meldrum formed up on flat ground 2 miles (3.2 km) to the north near the River Camladd, with part of Offa's Dike protecting his flank. There was no action that day. The next day, about a third of the Parliamentarian cavalry rode off to forage. Byron ordered an attack, intending to capture Salt Bridge over the Camladd and cut off Meldrum's retreat.

Colonel Marcus Trevor's regiment of cavalry drove back the Parliamentarian cavalry, but the Parliamentarian Cheshire foot rallied. The Royalists were discouraged by the Parliamentarian stand. It is also possible that the Parliamentarian foraging parties returned, giving the Parliamentarian cavalry parity or even superiority in numbers. When the Parliamentarians counter-attacked, Myddelton's cavalry routed the Royalist horsemen, and Brereton's infantry drove back the Royalist infantry. Behind Byron, Mytton sallied from Montgomery Castle to defeat the detachments left to defend the siege works.

The Royalists were routed. 500 of them were killed, and 1,500 taken prisoner.

Among the Parliamentarians, Sir William Fairfax was mortally wounded. It was said that after his Yorkshire infantry had been repulsed three times, he led them in a final victorious charge against Royalist pikemen but received up to 15 wounds. He lingered for sixteen hours, and asked Brereton to tell Parliament he accounted his life well spent in Parliament's services and to look after his widow and children

I am not quite sure which side was which in our game. Julian said Mark and I were the Royalists - however, we had a larger force of cavalry than infantry AND two of our cavalry started off the table, which seems to indicate they were the foraging party mentioned above....I think he was just a bit confused, the poor old chap. Assuming we were actually the Parliamentarians we did rather less well than our predecessors as the game ended in a draw when both sides ran out of victory point coins on the same turn,,,,we started the game with 13 and our opponents with 14.

 

Following are some images, unfortunately, as often happens at Julian's place, the low level dining room lighting means the photos are not as sharp as they appear on my phone when I take them....

 

 

My initial deployment - I had three full infantry units and a gun, with two small "forlorn hopes" out in front

 

Opposite me, Rick had four infantry a gun and three forlorn hopes....

 

More of the opposition infantry - these are all Warlord plastic painted by Julian as Swedes for the Thirty Years War...

 

Some of Marks cavalry - four units started on the table with two to arrive later, based on a D6 roll. The figures on our side are all mine and a mixture of all sorts - Front Rank, Foundry and Renegade metal as well as some Warlord plastics

 

 

Enemy cavalry opposite Mark, commanded by Chris, start the advance

 

Julian's infantry advance in the centre

 

Mark successfully rolled for the two extra units to come on move two THEN rolled for them to appear right on the flank of Chris's advance! A devastating flank attack looked on the cards (pun intended!) because with these rules, cavalry have three "dash" moves per game = charge bonus of one extra box plus one extra card in melee, plus they can fire a pistol once per game on the way in, so Mark had 4 attack cards multiplied by two because it was a flank. He needed to turn over a few 8, 9 or 10 but only managed to get one hit from eight possibles! 

 

In the centre Julian charged over a hedge at Mark but was repulsed disordered

 

Another view from Marks position

 

On my flank, Rick converged his forlorn hopes and began to advance with his regiments of foot

 

My forlorn hopes also converged but still looked quite forlorn facing four regiments !

 

Chris managed to extract his battered leading cavalry unit from Marks flank attack

 

Then two more of Marks units pounced

 

Rick attempted to assault my regiments of foot holding the hill but was rebuffed

 

The cavalry melee ebbed and flowed on the other flank

 

A second wave of Ricks infantry come on in the same old way...and I defeated them in the same old way - great card turning!

 

The final situation on the cavalry flank - they had basically fought each other to a standstill. We lost our last three coins when Marks commander was captured and they lost their last three when I wiped out one of Julian's infantry units with close range fire power.

 

A fun game to end the working week and we learned quite a few things playing through the scenario - I am sure we will use these rules and figures again soon!