Pike and Shotte - English Civil War II

Got in another game of Warlord's Pike and Shotte last Friday night at Spencer's house. Again, I was Parliament while Spencer was Royalists. We played "attack and defend" with Spencer being the Defender and I was the Attacker. Our forces were even and the terrain was thick to the flanks and open in the middle.

Only our second game so we were still working on using rules correctly.

Spencer Royalists:
1x Battalion of muskets and pikes
1x Battalion of musket and pikes with a medium cannon
1x Battalion of medium mounted
1x Battalion of medium mounted

Gabe Parliamentary:
1x Battalion of muskets and pikes
1x Battalion of musket and pikes with a medium cannon
1x Battalion of medium mounted
1x Battalion of medium mounted

From my position at deployment I had a small hamlet on my left, some beet fields on my right with some cottages and a hill just beyond that, and open field in the center. I deployed a battalion with a gun in that center. I deployed another battalion in the hamlet marching in column as I wanted them to cover ground, get to center and deploy behind some hedges in the hamlet with muskets and pikes aimed to center in hopes to create a flank as Royalists moved forward.

My cavalry deployed in the far flanks with the plan to move forward and screen my foot battalions so they could concentrate on the Royalist foot.

Spencer's Royalists did pretty much the same deployment on his side.

I decided, in this game, that I would give battalion-level orders until things got into stabbing range. I actually stuck with that 90% of the time and it worked. My thought being that I want my battalions to be at full strength at all times, even if slowed by inaction.  This worked great for my foot on my right. It just worked out for my foot on my left marching into the hamlet in columns. In the end it worked out as my left battalion, though late to the fight, did show up and were fresh and spry!

My left cavalry immediately moved into the hamlet first though as opposing cavalry was bearing down. I wanted those foot to be free of cavalry harassment. Royalist cavalry charged in and luck was not on their side as they got wiped out (some bad die rolls, not much to do with me other than average rolls and position). That was only one Royalist cavalry unit, there was still another.

My left foot battalion, as mentioned above, was pretty slow - must've been the brambles (or failed command rolls).

On my right my cavalry moved forward and repelled a Royalist charge with little damage actually done to either side. They then took the hill. My right foot battalion marched forward to the inside foot of the hill, which with the cavalry on it became a good anchor. This did bring them all into range of Royalist musket and cannon.

...and the Royalists gave us some jib for that. We took much musket and cannon shot from them but, as the game dictates, it's all about the grand melee in the end. Much fire was exchanged on both sides though culminating on a good die roll for me and a bad one for Spencer which destroyed one of his musket units sending them off the field. I was at an advantage.

A few moments later my left foot battalion finally took a modified position as the Royalist cavalry on my left broke and took flight

Note my cannon lower left and Spencer;s cannon upper right.

Spencer's dice weren't working well for him. He could not get enough commands out to get his foot or cavalry to really move forward to make much of a push. Further, more bad rolls forced some of his units to actually pull back from the front line as you can see in the picture above. The game would easily have changed if his cavalry on my right (his least beat up unit... if beat up at all?) were able to activate but the Fog of War just took over for him.

End of the game the bad dice rolls came my way. I wanted to end the game with a push of my fresh pikes but was only able to push my right foot pikes forward enough to get shot at. My left did even less and my cavalry kind of stood around. We got some shots off though and doled out a few casualties.

Spencer pushed his pike forward and smashed them into my right muskets but it was too late. At the end of his turn one more of his battalions folded and left the field leaving him with half of his starting battalions and me the field for the day.

Now, for some meta:
Spencer and I agree that the actual book for Pike and Shotte could use some editing. Both of us are some-what intelligent creatures, Spencer more so than I are good at figuring out game rules. The structure of the book can be confusing if you are looking for specific things. I guess it's a "train into it" situation but that hampers a lot of newbs getting into a game.

Once you do figure out how things go the rules themselves are fine. It's just kind of a quagmire physically getting through them in the book when you are learning.

Thanks for reading. I'll be seeing some of you at Enfilade this weekend!