The Battle of Glastonbury was an action fought on 12 June 1643 in the southwest of England. The outnumbered forces of Parliament were trying to delay the Royalist advance long enough for their baggage train to get away.
The objective for the game was for the Royalists to exit three horse units off of the Parliamentarian end of the table within twelve turns. Per the scenario, which we adapted from Bob Giglio’s ECW scenario book, Parliament’s pike-and-shot units had to begin to withdraw on Turn 5, and their horse and dragoon units had to withdraw beginning on Turn 9 (we tweaked the scenario turn limits a bit to fit our table size and the BBB movement rates). Since BBB does not have a mechanism for this type of general withdrawal, we ruled that withdrawing units would move backwards every turn at half speed, facing the enemy, ignoring terrain and without having to roll on the maneuver table, although disrupted units would still roll to determine whether they rallied or routed.
The scenario uses a figure-to-man ratio of 15:1, which is a good ratio for this small battle. That ratio conveniently fit how our 15mm figures are based and gave us pike-and-shot units of 18 figures (6 bases) and horse and dragoon units of 6-12 figures (3-6 bases). The game was thus played at a “regimental” level, which meant we could ignore the BBB variant rules for brigade deployments and attachments.
The other rule that we made was to impose a 6 inch movement penalty (vice the usual 3 inches) for pike-and-shot units that moved outside of their 45-degree frontal arc, which we felt reflected the lack of maneuverability of those units in this period.
We sized the table to fit the units as they are deployed in the scenario, which gave us a very small table that was 3′ wide by 4′ deep. The terrain featured hedgerows which gave a -1 advantage to the defense in fire and melee combat and served as linear obstacles. Ditches (depicted with rows of small stones) also served as linear obstacles. The crop fields and orchards were rated as difficult going. We forgot to bring a stream to the game, so the stream on the Royalist right flank was depicted with a line of foliage clusters.
The forces were deployed according the scenario map. The Parliamentarian foot lined the forward hedgerows, supported by dragoons on both flanks, with their horse to the rear. The Royalist deployment was similar.
The opening moves saw the Royalists advancing across the table. Soon the pike-and-shot units were engaged in combat along the hedgerows, and the opening combats favored the Royalists.
The battle then raged in the open fields behind the hedgerows, with both sides attacking and counterattacking. The poorer-quality and outnumbered Parliamentarian foot was eventually spent, and had already begun to retire when they were ordered to withdraw.
Parliament’s horse then moved forward to stem the Royalist advance, and they stopped it cold. The BBB variant rules forbid foot units from charging horse, so there was nothing that the Royalist pike-and-shot units could do to force the Parliamentarian horse to give way. Musketry alone under the BBB rules was never going to produce enough casualties to break the Parliamentarian horse. We felt this was a major problem with the variant rules.
The Royalists tried to regain their forward momentum by moving their own horse to the front and charging the Parliament horse, while other Royalist horse units attempted to move through the rough ground on their right flank. The game then saw several turns of back-and-forth cavalry melees in the center. The “galloper” cavalry of the Royalists had the advantage in these melees, but the combats did not all go their way — Prince Rupert’s small Lifeguard regiment was wiped out! The deadlock was only broken when the Parliamentarian horse was ordered to withdraw.
Meanwhile the flanking horse moved painfully slowly due to poor maneuver rolls and the effect of the rough terrain. A unit of Parliamentarian dragoons slowly evaded in the face of this advance, and then made a stand at the final ditch on the table. Their firepower then halted the charges of the leading Royalist horse unit for two critical turns.
By the final turn of the game, all of the Parliamentarian units had withdrawn from the table, and the only question was whether the four most advanced units of Royalist horse would pass their maneuver rolls and exit the table. Only two out of three succeeded, resulting in the narrowest of victories for Parliament!
An exciting and enjoyable game, despite some issues with the rules. We will continue to tinker with the BBB rules to see if we can make them work better for this period.
- TJ
Adding to TJ’s battle report, we wanted to try the BBB ECW variant one more time. However, with a few tweaks. The first was that front arcs for infantry would be changed to ninety degrees (straight ahead). Next, changes of facing for all units would still be free, but only up to forty five degrees. More than that would be a cost of three inches. Finally, units moving out of arc would pay six inches, instead of three inches. All those changes made a big difference in a lot of tactical decisions and seemed to work very well.
With that said, what did not work well was the lack of casualties and the push pull nature of the fighting. So, it seems that two more changes may need to be implemented. First, shooting should be changed to first two ranks to give enough firepower to the units. Second, would be to make spent status much more devastating to simulate units just breaking apart and running. The easy solution would be to give an additional negative two on disordered spent units. These two changes should make the game more explosive!
- Manteuffel
Those are really nicely painted figures (though I cannot be doing with those “casualty caps”, but that’s a question of taste). If you have few casualties and seesawing infantry (& cavalry) combat, I think that probably reflects the conflict pretty well.
It seems from the primary sources that, like in classical & medieval warfare, casualties were suffered predominantly during the pursuit.
I’m sure Simon Miller would like to hear your views on the rules.
Your trees are really nice too, & look like Somerset,
Yeah, caps are always a bit of a visual challenge. We just did not want to remove bases, as we thought the aesthetic of that was worse when dealing with mixed pike and shot units. No criticism of his rules was intended. It is more about knowing our game group and running afternoon games with casual games.