Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Battle of Lessie’s Moor - For King and Parliament! AAR

My final game of the day at Barrage 2019 was another of Ted's For King and Parliament scenarios that I'm very much a fan of. The game's card mechanics makes for some exciting, tense moments. 


The scenario is available from BigRedBat's shop, which is set in fictitious Borsetshire. It's a fairly standard English Civil War battle, with plenty of raw and untested troops facing off.

Both armies consist of a center core of infantry, with cavalry on the flanks. The Parliamentarians (which I was helping to command) had Dutch-style cavalry, artillery and Forlorn Hope Skirmishers. The Royalists had Dutch- and Swedish-style cavalry, several larger foot battalions, two commanded shot regiments, and a small unit of cuirassiers.


The Royalist cavalry started the attack, sweeping up the flank faster than the slower Dutch-style cavalry units could react to.


The Royalists also went on the attack in the center and on their left flank, with cavalry impacting on each other, infantry firing at close range, and the artillery causing chaos in the one Royalist infantry battalia that had stalled.


In For King and Parliament, Dutch-style cavalry doesn't have much of an impact when attacking, but are somewhat steadier when taking hits. Their style at time was to approach enemy units, halt, fire their guns, and then attack.


One of the Parliamentarian squadrons broke, with the Royalists cavalrymen charging off towards the baggage train away from the actual fight.


The situation for the Royalist center was desperate, however. They had lost two infantry battalia, and the Parliamentarians were pushing hard against the last opposing enemy unit.


Events were going rather nicely for the Royalists in the fight on their left flank (Parliament's right). The swifter, harder-hitting Swedish-style cavalry were cutting their Dutch-style counterparts to shreds.

It was going somewhat better for the Parliamentarian infantry. With the Royalist center no longer a threat, they could turn to face the oncoming cavalry.


However, the Royalist losses in the center and their own right flank meant that they eventually ran out of victory medals to hand over. Victory went to Parliament, and the remaining Royalists forces quit the field.

While it took a little time to remember the rules (and Ted was very helpful as always with guiding the players), they did eventually come back to me. The target numbers are pretty simple to remember (hit on 8+, save on 7+, add/subtract modifiers). The hardest part is probably calculating what number a player needs to draw equal to or higher than to activate a unit, but even this is pretty easy to figure out with the QRS.

As I already own FK&P as a pdf, I should get those miniatures I got at Fall In! down from the attic and start working on them.

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