Randomistory

Bushwhackers!

2009-08-15T11:26:00.004+01:00

Battle of Hastings at Cavalier 09

2009-02-24T19:54:00.007Z

Harold surveys the Norman army below.

The show was quite busy so we got a lot of interested people watching the game, coming back to see what had happened later etc. which was good. We managed to quite considerably change history in our refight.
Norman movement is shown in blue, and Saxon in red. A red and blue dashed line shows the division between the forces when it is not obvious. The Bretons on the left flank were commanded by Alan Fergant, the French and Flemish on the right flank by Eustace of Bologne, and the Normans in the centre by William himself. On top of Senlac Hill was the three Godwinson brothers; Gyrth, Earl of East Anglia, Leofwine, Earl of Kent, and King Harold II of England.
Click pictures for larger version.

The initial setup.
The scenario briefing forced the Normans to attack in waves, as they did in the real battle. The archers and crossbowmen move forward and take shots at the Saxon line.

Running out of ammunition, the archers withdraw just as the infantry begin to move forward.

The Normans slam into the centre...

...and all along the line.

The Norman infantry is largely ineffective, attacking time and time again but taking more casualties than they cause. The heavy cavalry move forwards.

Harold readies his men for the attack.

William and his cavalry reinforce the infantry in an attack which will lead to the death of Harold.

As the dust clears, Harold lies dead. As does Eustace of Bologne. Alan Fergant has fled with some of his men, leaving William the only commander still on the field on the Norman side.

William tries to push through the Saxon lines, perhaps in an attempt to cut the Hastings-London road.

Now nominally in command of the Saxon army, being the next oldest Godwinson, Earl Gyrth charges down the hill to try and sweep away the Norman right flank.

To the right, Saxon troops outflank the Norman Duke, and attack. The charge is ferocious, and William is thrown from his horse and killed by the vengeful household troops of Harold.

Leaderless and broken, the Norman army concedes and withdraws in haste away from the victorious Saxons.

The Saxons reform on the hill. They have lost their king, but they have destroyed the invaders.

The box on the left is the Saxon casualties, the two on the right is the dead Normans or those that had fled before the end of the game.

Saxon England had seen off two invading armies in two weeks. The forces of the brothers Earl Edwin of Mercia and Earl Morcar of Northumbria had been smashed by Harald Hardraada and Tostig Godwinson at Fulford, who themselves had been killed at Stamford Bridge by the forces of Harold and Gyrth. Now Harold himself was dead.
Speculating, I think that that the next few weeks would have seen the crowning of King Gyrth I of England. The first few years of his reign would have been tough, as he would have no doubt have faced opposition from the Northern Earls, possibly sliding England into civil war. He may face invasion once again from King Sweyn II of Denmark, who in reality assisted English Rebels against William I in 1069. The Welsh may also attempt to push the border further east.
The result of our re-fight has basically slid England into more chaos and anarchy than than caused by Willam winning in reality, and has also thrown up some interesting ideas for future scenarios to continue this timeline.

ACW Rules - Future amendments.

2008-11-20T23:44:00.002Z

After the first playtest last Monday night, discussion arose on how to make the rules work better.
The main points that came up were:

Gun range is too short for the model scale. Suggested was go to Below 4" = Short Range, 4"-8" = Medium Range, 8" - 12" Long Range.
Gun types. This would involve inserting an additional to hit roll with modifiers based on gun type and range, before rolling to see which location was hit. So rather then roll to hit/roll to save, it would be roll to hit/roll for location/roll to save.
Boarding actions - Not really historically accurate for Ironclads to declare boarding actions due to their construction. Limit them to only non-Ironclads.
Pointless high locations on the ship templates, and the probably inability for Ironclads to be able to traverse the gun high enough to shoot at them.

These changes will be implemented and then playtested again.

Conversion of Man O' War for ACW Ironclads

2008-11-08T09:56:00.007Z

(l-r CSS Gov. Moore, CSS A.D.Vance, CSS Virginia, CSS Arkansas, CSS Tulsaloosa, CSS Manassas, Commodore class ferryboat)

***edit 20/11/08 See next blog for the results of the first playtest***
After buying some of Peter Pig's rather nice 1:600 scale Ironclads, the next logical step was find some rules to use them with. As most of the games I play are limited to a few hours on a Monday evening at Wargames club, I decided that they need to be a simple quick play set. I'm not overly keen on particularly technical rules sets, rather those which are easy to grasp and give the right feel of the period. My mind went back to when I used to play Games Workshop's fantasy naval wargame Man O' War when I was younger. I remember taking it along to club nights when I was about 16 and a good time was usually had by all. The Dwarf ships were all Ironclads, so I thought that if I could find the Rulebook I could adapt it for ACW naval wargaming.
After a fruitless search in the loft for my rulebook, I turned to the internet. The game is out of print, so getting a new copy of the rulebook would involve costly transactions on eBay, but I managed to find various resourses on the internet to reconstruct a varient of the rules.
The rules are based on each ship having it's own playsheet template, much like other naval rule sets, and on these templates is everything you need to know about the ship. This means that once the basics of the rules are learnt, there is minimal refering to the rules, which I have condensed down to two sides of A4, shown below (click for bigger versions):Hopefully there aren't too many holes in the rules, but playtesting should iron them out.
Below are examples of ship templates for CSS Virginia and USS Monitor:
Any suggestions of feedback is welcome, especially if you have a chance to playtest the rules.

Battle of Rometta 1038

2008-11-06T20:51:00.009Z

In a vain attempt to keep up posting, here are a few shots of a battle between Byzantines and Arabs in Sicily. Click on the pics to see bigger versions.The Battlefield.

The Byzantine Army
The Arab General
The Battlements

The assault on the gates

The Battle of Fulford, 20th September 1066

2008-06-20T22:30:00.004+01:00

As mentioned in the last blog, The Battle of Fulford was the pivotal battle in 1066. Being a Dark Ages wargamer, I decided to reproduce this battle at Bognor Wargames Club on Monday June 9th 2008.
Fulford was the first battle to take place in 1066, between the combined forces of Edwin, Earl of Mercia and Morcar, Earl of Northumbria, and the forces of Harald Sigurdson, King of Norway and Tostig Godwinson, exiled Earl of Northumbria. The site of the battle was about 3km south of York, and most of the action took place over a drainage ditch that ran into the River Ouse.
In this refight I allowed the players to set up their forces however they wished, rather than the historical positions of the particular commanders and their men.

The Anglo-Saxon force began closer to the ditch, which was defensible, but the Norwegian force had a higher number of heavy troops.The initial setup. The Anglo-Saxons are on the left, on the northern side of the drainage ditch, and the Norwegians are on the southern side. The River Ouse runs along the bottom of the table.

The Norwegian battle-line.The Anglo-Saxon battle-line.Tostig and Harald lead from the rear...
The two armies face off across the ditch.

The first Norwegian Swine-arrays make their way across the ditch.
The battle-lines become fractured as the armies smash together. The red line shows the division between the two.
Harald and Tostig make it to the front line... Harald is supported by Flemish mercenaries and warriors from Orkney.
Earl Edwin is killed, and the Saxon right flank collapses, opening the road to York.

The centre of the field fights to a stalemate.

The battle ended as a draw, edging towards a marginal Norwegian victory. However in the real battle it was a total rout. The Saxon army was swept away. Both earls lived on to become leaders of the resistance against William The Bastard, and Tostig and Harald were both killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge five days later. Figures are 10mm Magister Militum and Pendraken.

Harold, Harald etc. first blog post...

2008-05-17T17:09:00.005+01:00

...And I'm using it to talk about the exciting world of History. Specifically the year 1066AD. I would argue that the events of no other year in British history were as defining as that one year.
The invasions and battles, in particular the Battle of Fulford, that resulted from the power vacuum caused by Edward The Confessor's death shaped the way Britain is today.

Well, the English crown wasn't viewed so much as a power vacuum, more of a power Dyson; expensive and not as desirable to some people who already have perfectly good vacuums. The vacuums I speak of? The Dukedom of Normandy and the Kingship of Norway.
My God, what a roundabout analogy.

My extensive research (I read it in a book) shows that it was in fact King Harold's brother, Tostig, who was the architect of both Harald, King of Norway and William, Duke of Normandy's invasions in 1066.

Why, you may ask, would his brother be trying to bring down his kingdom? Well I'll tell you. Again, according to my research (it was in the chapter before the other bit) Tostig was exiled from England while Edward was on the throne. This was due to the fact that while he was hunting on Salisbury Plain with King Edward, Edwin, Earl of Mercia, orchestrated a coup on Tostig's Earldom of Northumberland, placing his younger brother Morcar into this position. This was helped by the fact that Tostig was an unpopular leader in Northumberland, bringing lots of Saxon ways from down south up to the Scandinavian modeled North when he was appointed.
Here comes the schism in the family. Edwin and Morcar marched south with their armies in case they had to fight for Morcar's position. Edward, Tostig, and Harold (himself Earl of Wessex, the second most powerful man in England after Edward) marched to meet them.

No battle ensued. After talks, it was agreed that Morcar would keep his position. Edwin insisted that Tostig must be exiled, and Edward agreed. Harold did nothing to stop this, wisely stopping a civil war between north and south. Tostig took it to heart, however, and fled to Flanders...

Early in 1066 Edward the Confessor died, and Harold was agreed to become king. Tostig may have seen this as the perfect time for his brother, now King of England, to welcome him back and reinstate his position. Harold did not. Instead, he married Morcar and Edwin's sister. This was a further slap in the face for Tostig, who was likely to have traveled from Flanders to Normandy, where he met with William. William himself had a claim to the throne, and may have even been planning his invasion before Tostig visited. Tostig would have known the exact size of forces that the English could raise, so using this information he may have formulated his plan for two simultaneous invasions.

After Normandy, Tostig moved north to Denmark. He met with the king, whom he attempted to persuade to invade England. The Danish king refused, so Tostig then went to see King Harald of Norway. Harald was persuaded. Here was a man who had spent a lifetime fighting, manly in the employ of the Byzantine Emperor fighting all around the Holy Land and Mediterranean, and then went back to Scandinavia and became King of Norway. So, at the age of 50, he left on possibly his last adventure, mustering a fleet of 200 ships and heading for England.

It was late Mid-September. William's own fleet was turned back in the Channel by bad weather. Harald landed at Scarborough (presumably because the hotel rooms would be cheaper in September), and guided his fleet up the River Ouse to Ricall, where he set up a base of operations. Much raiding and pillaging was done, and Morcar and Edwin summoned their forces. The two armies met south of York at Fulford. The battle was a defeat for the two brothers. In one day, half of England's army was scattered and annihilated.

Although Harold beat Harald at the Battle of Stamford Bridge (England beating Norway 2-1 on aggregate) a few days later after racing up from London, had the Battle of Fulford gone the other way and Harald been defeated, Harold would have had many more men two weeks later at Hastings, possibly giving him the edge over William of Normandy.

It just goes to show that the most crucial parts of history are those that are often the parts that people know the least about.