April 28th - English Civil War k/spiel

The next face-to-face game after Zombie Redux is on Sunday 28 April 2013, starting at the usual time of 11 am, at the Little Gaddesden Village Hall.



It will be set during the ECW, probably in late 1643 or early 1644.

The last time we ran this, we focused on small forces engaged in relatively minor operations in the Midlands - the petit guerre as it might have been described in the 17th C.

This version however will be set in the S of England and will involve some of the main armies, including those of the King and Prince Rupert, together with their Parliamentarian opponents, such as the Earl of Essex and Sir William Waller.

Players will represent army commanders, of greater or less seniority. If lots sign up, there may also be a position for a player representing the Parliamentary 'Committee of Both Kingdoms (CBK)' set up during in association with representatives from the Scots to oversee the conduct of the war and foreign policy.

Turns will normally be weekly, so armies can cover quite a bit of ground. When there is a battle, the campaign game will temporarily stop, and it will be fought out using a 30-minute battle module.

NB so folks aren't sitting on their hands, all players will be involved in fighting the battle, wherever they are on the campaign map. The players commanding the armies concerned will be in charge, but other players on the same side will act as subordinate generals. Given that turns are weekly, we work on the assumption that news of the battle result would spread pretty quickly to wherever they are on the map.

Please register your interest on the doodle link below. I have one umpire 'volunteer' already, but will be looking for some others too, so please say if you're happy to help on that front.

http://doodle.com/u9wz28g38ype8kuk

Martin (J)

Hi Martin

Doodle poll updated

Steve

I would very much like to, but unsure how practicable it is yet.

I should have a notion by the time I see many of you on Sunday.

How are weather patterns looking?

I'm exploring some... imaginative ways of making it, if I possibly can ^^

Good to know you're so keen, Justin. It's now looking likely that the game schedule will need to be re-jigged, and that my ECW campaign game will be run a little later in the year. All my fault.......

There will certainly be a game on the 28th April, so standby for details.

Martin (J)

Just to confirm there will still be a game on 28th April and it will still be ECW.

Paul has very kindly stepped in to run an English Civil War tactical/battle game.

I have slightly modified the doodle link to take account of this, so if you are hoping to come and haven't yet registered, please do so here:

http://doodle.com/u9wz28g38ype8kuk

I am now aiming to run my ECW campaign game in the autumn, and will post on that in more detail shortly. Our May and June games remain as advertised.

Martin (J)

Owing to unavailability of key personnel, the April strategic game set in 1643-44 will be postponed and replaced by a ‘tactical’ game (manoeuvres on a small scale which will likely result in one or more confrontations) set in June 1648, during the so-called ‘Second Civil War’. Here is the promotional (and wholly apolitical) blurb, hot from the underground Royalist press:

"Somewhere in England, in June of the year of Our Lord 1648. In recent times, the English rural idyll has been disturbed, by the strange and novel idea that the monarch appointed by God requires the guidance and consent of his own subjects in order to rule. A motley crew of black – clad misfits calling themselves “Puritans” have appeared in the Parliament, and presume to challenge the divine right of the King to rule his realm.
The unbelievable arrogance and monstrous self-righteousness of those people does not end there. Many of them claim blasphemously to have a direct connection to God and a seat reserved for them in heaven, regardless of their conduct on earth. They smash images of the Virgin in the Churches, and doubtless would substitute images of themselves if they could get away with it.
Six years ago in August, the King proclaimed an end to this treasonous nonsense, and raised his standard in Nottingham. He was served in arms by many of his loyal subjects over three years, but not always well. In the year 1645, George Goring the Younger’s sulk in the West caused the King’s defeat by Parliament at the battle of Naseby. One year later, the King was forced to surrender to his Scottish subjects at Newark. Having been disgracefully sold by the avaricious Scots to Parliamente, His Majesty is now a prisoner in the castle of Carisbrooke in Wight.
Thus free of restraint, the traitors have for two years had free rein across the land. These humourless killjoys have seen fit to remove all the innocent and traditional pleasures from their countryfolk. Drinking and wenching are now frowned upon, and music, dancing and cards have been branded frivolous and banned. Why, even cricket has been banned from England!
There has also appeared another kind of Oddball who call themselves ‘Levellers’. They wear sprigs of rosemary in their hats, sea-green ribbons on their clothing, and call for all citizens to receive equal treatment regardless of their quality and of how hard they work. Alarmingly, this creed appears to have taken firm root in the New Model Army, perhaps as a consequence of the soldiers’ pay being irregular.
Any suspicion one might have that the lunatics now run the asylum is only confirmed by the activities of one Matthew Hopkins, an officer of Parliamentary horse from Mistley, near Harwich, Essex, now removed to London, who has taken to styling himself “Witchfinder-General”.
Hopkins has authored a book entitled “The Identification of Wytches”, which he holds to necessitate the ducking and ‘pryckinge’ of suspects. He claims to have a commission from the Parliament for this purpose, though few if any have seen this document. Nevertheless Hopkins has, in the past few years alone, brought about the death of nearly 300 women.
The tide of po-faced misery appears at last however on the turn. Last December, when the party poopers tried to ban the traditional Christmas festivities in Canterbury, the good people of Kent rose up in arms, calling upon their King to return again to his rightful place on the throne of Westminster.
The brave but unpaid sailors of the fleet also mutinied off the Kentish Downs. Admiral Batten stepped up heroically, seized the entire fleet in the name of the King, and promptly sailed it over to Holland. There, the 18 year old Prince of Wales, with his French mother Queen Henrietta, is hosted by the Staadtholder his brother in law, and funded by Cardinal Richelieu. He is rumoured to be enlisting many soldiers from the German War, newly unemployed due to the Peace of Westphalia. Some say that expatriate Royalists such as Goring the Younger are present there and assisting him. Even Prince Rupert of the Rhine has been mentioned in this connection, though there are other reports of him taking up piracy in the Caribbean!
The Royalist counter – revolution has spread across much of the land. The Welsh have risen in strength and the Scots, apparently ‘engaging’ again with their rightful King but perhaps just seeking more plunder, have seized this opportunity too to march across the border. Uprisings are now reported in Essex too. In the streets of London, people whisper fearfully that an army of devils has been let loose from hell to punish the ungodly for their sin of rebellion against their lawful King.
Of the miserable black clad crew who were in London, General Cromwell is reported to have left for Wales, while General Lambert has ridden north against the Scots Engagers. Although suffering badly from gout, General Thomas Fairfax has marched to crush the people of Kent, who are now led by Lord George Goring the Elder (the Earl of Norwich) from Maidstone. There may be no experienced Parliamentary generals left in London to deal with further outbreaks, leaving the Parliamente in a bit of a quandary.....”

Please use Martins Doodle link above to register interest. Lift available from stations to theegs Watford, , Berkhamstead.

Thanks to Paul and the Umpire team for running today's battle.

Sorry I had to go while debate still raged on the game and how things are worked through.

Just a few pointers I did not make at the time but might have helped.

Markers for maps would have been good and if the designer does not have them, just asking some of the others to bring them would be good. The games designer needs to take responsibility to ensure they have everything they need to play the day out. That might have helped with showing what was where?

Also a fair amount of time was spent working out what was where at the start and if the play sheets had been slightly re-organised to break up the forces for the Royalists (I did not see the Parliamentarian sheet) that would have helped everyone.

I.e. there were four distinct groupings on the map and if each grouping was together and separated then it would have been easy to work it out.

I think the scenario worked well (but I would say that) and it could have gone Parliaments way if we had made different choices.

I nearly fluffed it with my force split and at one stage nearly went for the bridge rather than continuing down the road. This did not come out in the discussion as we focused a fair bit on the first Cav fight.

So even if we won that fight if I had done what I very nearly did we would have been held up and I would not have been able to bring to bear my force as I did in the defence of the river crossing.

Also if I had lost the fight at the river then we would have been in trouble.

So I really do not think it was beyond hope for Parliament.

Also I think the speed of play was excellent and really all you need to do is make a decision. If you need more time then wait for umpires to come back. There was at least 10 minutes a turn if not more?

Just my 2p that might not come out during the discussion.

It is a tough job designing games and not everything goes well but at least we had a game to play and discuss, so thank you.

MJ

Yes it was a most interesting ECW game, and I am particularly grateful to Paul for stepping-in and running it at short notice.

I agree with Mark that things could easily have gone Parliament’s way, had players made different decisions at various points.

The scenario straddled the operational and the tactical, and there was a lively debate during the debrief concerning what level of command the players should ideally be operating at in this kind of game. The Roundhead cavalry commander expressed the view that he needed to make tactical decisions but did not have a sufficiently clear picture of the detailed tactical position to do so. A larger scale map, together with some means of showing detailed troop deployment (such as his own set of troop blocks) would have helped. This would for example have enabled him to judge unit frontages.

Some other players disagreed, and felt that the players should be operating at a higher level, deciding overall strategy, and that detailed tactical decisions should be the province of junior commanders who should be handled by the umpire team.

On reflection I feel the difficulty may lie in the fact that different players had rather different levels of command responsibility in this game. The senior commanders on each team each had direct control of about 3 brigades, plus a train of artillery, as well as their overall team command responsibilities. For these players I think you can make a good case that they should indeed stick to questions of overall strategy.

The problem is more likely to arise with the subordinate commands. The Roundhead cavalry commander had 8 squadrons of cavalry and dragoons. This was effectively just a brigade. It seems to me that the role of such a commander was pretty much exclusively tactical, and that if you remove tactical decisions from him then he actually has very little to do.

I feel we should discuss this further. The issue has arisen before in Napoleonic and mid 19th C k/spiels, and will no doubt do so again. Whatever approach we adopt - and it may be different for various scenarios - it is probably a good idea to be clear with players at the outset as to what level of command they should expect to operate. If it is to be tactical, then they do need to be given the tools.

Martin (J)

That is quite insightful...

When you explain it that way I see the disconnect, one for umpires / games designers to consider.

All of these games are about learning and improving (well hopefully improving) the next design and play experience...