Battle of Charlbury , 14 hundred-and-something

Today's Saturday Afternoon Wargame (TM) was a Wars of the Roses bash using Basic Impetus rules.  We had four players; Carl and Jamie were available from the start whilst Andy and Richard would be along later.  I decided that the best way to handle this was to make the battle an encounter one with Andy's and Richard's commands arriving later.

The battlefield was largely open with a village and woods at the eastern end and a hill at the western end.  I'd been sneaky and allowed the Yorkists to deploy one unit hidden in the woods (Jamie chose his light horse) whilst on the opposite flank the road which appeared to run behind the hill (as the Yorkists saw it) in fact ran in a gully in front of it.  Carl positioned the earl of Wiltshire's bills hidden in the gully.

Jamie, as Richard, duke of Gloucester, and Carl, as the earl of Northumberland ended up facing each other at the western end of the field.

Jamie charged forward and managed to rout Northumberland's borderers with well-aimed archery but then started to take casualties from Carl's superior numbers of missile troops.

Andy and Richard arrived and joined in at the eastern end of the battlefield as the earl of Warwick (Yorkist) and the duke of Buckingham (Lancastrian) respectively.

Here, Carl and Richard ponder their next move.

Whilst Jamie and Andy stare defeat in the face!

With Jamie's command disintegrating under a storm of archery, Carl decided to reveal the true course of the road and deployed the earl of Wiltshire's bills.

In the centre Gloucester and Lord Howard pushed forward.  The larger markers with shields or discarded livery jackets show "disordered" status whilst the numbered rocks show losses of strength points (VBU under the Impetus rules).

Meanwhile Andy's organ gun advanced s l o w l y.

At this point Carl prepared to face Richard of Gloucester's men at arms with his archers and declared, "I really need to roll three sixes"...

Shortly after this feat of dice rolling Jamie lost his light horse to a charge by the Lancastrian knights and was forced to flee to keep the remnants of his last archer unit intact.

Meanwhile the Lancastrian men-at-arms fought an epic back-and-forth melee with Warwick's billmen.  This fight saw Impetus at its best with repeated falling-back and pursuing before the two sides fought each other to a standstill.

Finally, the Lancastrian knights ploughed into the Yorkist line causing heavy casualties.

The Yorkists broke and fled the field leaving Carl and Richard to contemplate their victory.

We had started at 1 o'clock and were finished by 3:30 despite none of the four players knowing the rules.    We agreed that the game had looked good, had captured the feel of the period and had been fun to play.  We shall definitely try Basic Impetus again.  Carl was even speaking of sabot-basing his old ancients with a view to trying to the rules at home.