Pike and Shotte: English Civil War - our first game

Spencer spent a lot of time and energy... and paint... to get both English Royalists and English Parliamentary on the table. Finally, after some delays, we got that game going.

Warlord's Pike and Shotte, English Civil War. Being newbs to the game we kept it simple, each with 2 battalions.

Spencer - Royalists:
commander
x8 muskets
x8 muskets
x12 pike
commander
x6 cavalry
x6 cavalry
x6 cavalry

Me - Parliamentary:

commander
x8 muskets
x8 muskets
x12 pike
commander
x6 cavalry
x6 cavalry
x6 cavalry

Dress up your lines boys, and make ready to give jib to the Royalists!!

Neither of us had ever played. Spencer made up some quick reference sheets for us to use. With a Battalion of foot and a Battalion of Cavalry each it was more a run-through of the basic rules than a pitched game of battle. Me, being the "learn by doing" guy I left all the scholarly work to Spencer in deciphering of the Pike and Shotte rulebook. I did read it through when I got it months ago so I wasn't going into this game naked.

I like the base command mechanic. Your "commander" (in the above picture the guy in the back rank on the horse) makes an order. You may choose to make it at a battalion level order or a unit level order. For example:

"I order my batallia  to move forward to line up with the fence on the right."

Then you roll 2 D6 and try to get your command rating or lower. The lower the better. This is where it can get a little confusing for a newb as the lower you roll under your command rating the more you get to do, like:

Command Rating - 8 (part of your commander's stats).

Roll 2 D6.

8-7 = 1 action

6-5 = 2 actions

4-3 = 3 actions

You max out at 3 actions.

How does this play out? Let's say that order I gave above came out to my battalion needing 2 actions to complete but I only roll well enough to get 1. See?

Now, you can also give orders on the unit level. You do the above process but activate unit per unit. It might work out great or you could flub it and end up with your pikemen in the rear...

Whoops!

This kind of worked out for me though as it kept my pikes out of musket range which brings me to shooting.

Your turn is in phases. I don't have it memorized but it works out to:

All units move

All units shoot

All units melee

My light artillery and muskets were in range to shoot as wer Spencer's Royalists. We opened up on each other at the edge of our max ranges. Not a lot of damage was done but some "casualty markers" were laid out.

Hey, didn't we have some cavalry? Yep. All mine were behind and inn and barn on my left flank. There were some Royalists in the hedge field beyond and my Parliamentary Cavalry wanted to get some licks in on them.

The Royalist Cavalry was split, 1 unit in the hedged field by the inn and the other 2 on my right flank looming on my light artillery that was protected by a small wood and fence.

What looks like, in the pictures, my superior force bearing down on the small Royalist unit ended up being a wash  of 2 dead units of cavalry (1 Spencer and 1 me). We were able to push the remaining unit to the Royalist rear though.

It was an opportunity to learn about melee and we did exactly that. A few points:

Melee is how you destroy enemy units. Shooting is cool and all but not even close to effective in taking a unit out of the game.

It's even better when you have 2 units attack 1 unit.

There's lots of rules governing melee.

By now it was getting late at night and we wanted to end it. It was my turn and I decided to make it as action packed as I could and closed my foot battalion into his mid field.

This culminated to:

Our pike blocks meeting and merely handing out a few casualty markers, my pikes getting the brunt of that.

A volley of muskets that did not do much at all.

We looked over what we had done and the game played out pretty much like a real engagement would have. Good rules! Neither of us reached "victory conditions" which was the destruction of 2 opposing units. We each destroyed one.

We did take a moment to contemplate how this would have played out if we went a few more rounds. Something to the tune of:
Royalist cavalry charge into my right flank, but I'd hedgehog for increased defense. It also would've brought the backs of Royalist cavalry into the sights of my light artillery piece.

My cavalry was looming in the field on the other side of the hedges. About 3 actions could've brought them into the melee but that is no guarantee in 1 turn.

I had a lot of casualty markers on my units. More than the Royalists had.

I like the game and will pursue it regularly, already looking onto sourcing some Scottish Covenanters. 

In the mean time I'm looking forward to some Saga games and practicing up for the tournament at Enfilade on Memorial Day Weekend. I am working on some WWII Finnish minis for Bolt Action. Ramping up for some Lion Rampant (late Normans and "Agincourt" era English). Then we've got the fire lit for Song Of Blades and Heroes... I've got so many fantasy minis.

Thanks for reading, have a nice spring day!