Wednesday 15 February 2012

Hoggerton Moor 1643 [Hypothetical]: Part VI - The Final Cut

The Parliamentarian Cavalry collide with their Royalist counterparts and the seething mass of man and horseflesh writhe over the now muddy morass of Hoggerton Moor (see below). The first vital round of combat are rolled for and the Gods of War favour the True Blue Bloods over the democracy of the business and small estate owning classes.


I am meanwhile rather busy over on the left of the battlefield trying on "two legs" trying to catch a bunch of "four legs" for some shooting practice (see below):


You line out, you point and then you shoot (see below):


You roll good high dice and your opponent rolls low and you knock a stand off his command, but then the rest of his forces run out of your range, so the fun is over (see below). But casualties are casualties and at least Royalist command is starting to look peaky. If only we could punish those Royalist Blue Jackets in the Hoggerton Moor enclosure, we could then break it.  


Meanwhile Parliament announces the start of the catastrophe as our Right Wing of Horse "breaks" and the center infantry is put in deadly peril (see below). It now becomes imperative to take out those Blue Jackets and avoid a "Major Defeat".


We press them hard (see below) "closing the door" on any chance of escape:


But their metal stands the stress test some four times (pretty cool dice throwing by their commander) which is time enough for the swing Royalist infantry Phalanx to crack the Parliamentarian Center and so an embarrassing 'minor defeat' turns into a 'major rout'. A young serious faced chap in my command called Cromwell mutters that "this will never do", gathers his remnants of horse together and heads off to London with intent and a large Bible. He has good cause to be discontented, not with the DBR rules this time but rather our (Parliamentarian) Generalship as we misused our troops (two legs cannot catch four legs), forgot to use our interior lines (my command should have just shuffled back to the center where it could have been at least used. Even a greater crime is that we as Generals appeared as "not want to fight" our opponents and tried our very best to "hide" behind rather than use terrain! Alas I stand as inept and incompetent as the rest. Perhaps it is time to let this young Cromwell chap have a crack at the whip.

Indeed the campaign swings towards London as the Royalist armies pursue and in early 1644 (hurray for the turn of the year and better cavalry troops) the Royalist attempt to take London ... is this the fall of the Republic?


Above, see the field of battle as it stands today, Hoggerton Moor. Look closely and you can still see the impact marks made from the dice.

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