ECW ..capture the wagons raiding party scenario

We played a scenario out of the Airfix English Civil War book above which my dad purchased way back in 1978, we adapted it every so slightly so we could use Pike and Shot to play the game

The objective of the game was for the parliamentarians to sucessfully get the baggage wagons off the opposite end of the table via Puddleby town. The small Royalist force made mainly of cavalry played by myself had to try ambush the the baggage and capture as many wagons as possible. We gave everybody the marauder rule so command distance wouldn't be a problem as this would represent best the idea of a raiding party attacking the column.

The commander of the rust hall is a drunk in the scenario so his garrison may or may not take part in the game depending how many pints he had supped. To represent thus we give him a lowly command value of 6. Needless to say he didn't do to much in the game.

The game was very different from our normal pike and shot games and played out fast and furious at times. The wagons made steady if slow progress for the first half of the game, however I was hampered by some poor command rolls and struggled to catch the baggage train. However this changed in the second half the game as my dad started to fail command rolls frequently so I was able to catch some of the wagons with my cavalry. After sucessfully fending off a couple of counter chargers from the Roundhead cavalry the two captured wagons started to make very slow progress back off the table, however I managed to roll a forth blunder of the game while moving the wagons so I was unable to fully get them off the table edge. Here are some pics showing the game progressing.

The wagons rolling down road with infantry escort

Royalist cavalry arrive to try head off the baggage train

Roundhead cavalry ride out to confront the cavaliers as they threaten the rear of the baggage train

The cavarly clash with the royalists getting the better of the action and defeating the Roundhead opponents.

A wagon is attacked by the royalist cavalry

A desperate struggle for the control of the final wagon ensues in the final turns of the game.

The result of yet another blunder

Come the end of the game I had lost the bulk of my raiding force although I had managed to capture and remain in possession of two of the wagons. My dad managed to get two wagons over the bridge and into Puddlesby town despite his best efforts of leaving them on the bridge, it seemed as though the town garrison didn't trust them and refused to make way off the bridge for a number of moves due to failed command rolls! It was a fun scenario and as I stated before completely different to our usual games, at times it was quite manic as our troops were fighting on all sides of the table. The one remaining wagon had changed ownership on quite a few occasions but at the run of the game it remained not in command of either side so we called the game a very entertaining draw.