The Encounter at Fiddler's Rise October 1469

Another thin month at the Tantobie Warfare and Tactical Society with only three memeber available for this month's game. Nil Desperandum however the three of us amnaged a fine little 40mm Wars of the Roses punch up with my collection of models in that scale and period.
 It had been a while since these last saw the light of day though I had managed to add a couple of extra figures to the collection.

The battlefield, Fiddlers Rise top right Yorkists on the right of the picture 

Lancastrian troops 

Some of the Yorkists

 Most of these are from my own Romanoff Miniatures range of late medievals - including a good few conversions the cavalry are mostly Irregular and the guns - two are Hinchliffe /.Foremost the so called Heavy Culverin in the Landsknecht range and the large bombard a scratchbuilt item. The few cavalry were Irregular with a single "Mindstslker" model on a Sash and Saber horse that I picked up secondhand and rebased  a few weeks ago.

More of the Yorkists on Fiddler's Rise. 

 Rules used were basically Anthony Clipsom's set "Foray" with  some local amendments to add in gunpowder and changing his metric measurements back to inches simply because I don't see Medieval games in millimetres as that system had not yet been invented !  The rules are simple D6 based but have enough flavour to make them interesting. Simple mechanisms and none of the  farting about seemingly so desired by many "games players"  so decisions are left to the players rather than the rule set. For this kind of large skirmish - small battle they work very well especially as they leave room for the Umpire to fiddle about and make the players think a bit. The table was a bit smaller than our usual being only five feet or so square and terrain was as simple as possible - wooden blocks under the cloth with my venerable collection of Britain's trees for the woods on top of Fiddlers Rise.

Lancastrians.

The cavalry charge. 

So to the action. The Yorkist faction was take by Mechanical Shaun and the Lancastrians by Andrew the Tekkie. I allowed both sides free deployment - simply to see what each would do  and at first both sides played it defensively, Andrew scoring an early success with a flukey double to destroy the Yorkist gun. This caused Shaun to advance and arrows  flew  but without major damage to either side, though the Lancastrian artillery did  cause a few casualties. Then the Yorkist cavalry charged  a unit of Lancastrian archers- in Percy livery but under Oxford.s banner(see what happens when you give free deployment!)  Andrews dice rolling was to say the least awful - several hist but not a single kill and the horse crashed into the archers who then failed their post melee morale and broke and fled . The horse pursued and overan the lighter Lancastrian guns and disappeared off the table.

A melee- the growling began next turn. 

 In other parts of the field honours were more or less even. A Lancastrian charge was held- just- and , though neither side broke the Lancastrians retired both sides then growled at each other, In the centre Shaun had kept his heavily armoured men at arms together and these advance upon the Lancastrian centre which looked decidedly unnerved and began to pull back.. However the Yorkists - who were slightly outnumbered overall- did not fancy assaulting  up hill  especially without cavalry support and something of a shortage of archers. As I went to the bar to get them in the fighting died down amid mild slurping of fine ale as neither side had the numbers or morale to finish the job.

As usual our thanks to Landlady Jean for excellent Beef Butties and fine pints of Consett Brewery Pale Ale.  Now off to paint some more of these for another game next year. The next meeting of our group will be  sometime in November. Don't know what period yet - therein lies the interest!