Wargame; Tudor Rebellion

Over the weekend myself and Simon Chick (http://je-lay-emprins.blogspot.co.uk/) were hosted by Michael & Alan Perry and Dave Andrews for a Tudor Rebellion wargame.

The premise was a semi fictional notion based upon the Lambert Simnel / Perkin Warbeck rebellions of Henry VII's reign. Myself & Dave were the royalist coalition using my collection and Simon and Alan were the rebels with Burgundian support using the Perry's and Simon's collections, fairly large hosts on both sides.

For me this was a rather momentous occasion; to my memory I haven't gamed in around 14 years and my collection has never been used so it was really quite something to see this occur and to see those present enjoying the game, It was a pleasure and a privilege.

On to the game, The rules used were Hail Caesar with some small adaptions, Michael umpired and along with Dave and Alan guided myself and Simon through the setup. I found these to be relatively fast play with an excellent facility for the fog of war.

To begin, royalist scurrers entered the arena to seek out and engage their rebel counterparts.

Over the next few turns the royalists were relatively slow to emerge with the rebels taking the initiative and forming up early in their respective divisions, this was turn 3 I think;

Royalist bow and bill on the left with some yeomen of the guard stiffening, the royalist centre with three cavalry divisions, Henry on the hill with Kings Spears entourage and artillery battery, to the right were mercenary pike and demilancers.

Opposite from left to right were the pretender and a wing of bow and bill with scurrer screen, pike, artillery and shot in the centre with heavy cavalry in front and a further bow and bill wing on the far right. The game soon split to a bow and bill exchange on the left and more renaissance feel to the right. 

After some squaring up, the rebel horse formed intimidatingly close to their royalist counterparts, exchanges of long range fire followed and the royalists charged, here's the rebel perspective;

This soon began to look ugly for the royalists who broke and hurriedly moved their mercenary pike into position to plug the gap between Henry and the rebel cavalry. Insult was added to injury as my unlucky dice meant the royalist guns were very slow on the initiative, I quickly passed important dice rolling to Dave thereafter!

Demilancers moved to cover the right wing but things were looking shaky, much to the glee of the rebels;

Over on the royalist left flank, things were quietly developing behind a screen of scurrer activity;

Bowfire was exchanged as each respective division moved to engage the other, at this stage the scurrers had exhausted themselves, taking casualties requiring a morale boost from their commander who was engaged under a 'cloud of doubt' in a surviving regrouping element of horse defeated in the opening cavalry exchange.

Bolstered by the yeomen of the guard the royalists moved closer;

The Landsknechts now holding the royalist centre began to slowly move to their Burgundian counterparts with withering crossbow and arquebus fire soon assisted by enfilading artillery, things were crumbling and a division of bow and bill were moving rather close so the Demilancers were thrown in to try to stem the flow of the rebel advance, bounding over hedges into their flank, with scurrers joining in for good measure;

Events in the centre and right were beginning to look decisive and somewhat distracting whereupon the yeomen got very close to the pretender;

At this point the demilancers prevailed, somewhat phyrically but the rebel left broke, closely followed by the pretenders grisly end on a yeoman's halberd.

The game was very close, I enjoyed myself thoroughly and took my place among the yeomen;



In my post game deliberations I mused over my 14 year period in the non gaming wilderness and the last 7 years of building this army with only a blog to keep me going.

As a painter I may not be alone in this though I have always been at pains to have a proportioned and accurately represented army which I could only do using doctored army listings so there was always a gaming pretence. I suppose I in some way felt that as my interest was relatively niche there would be no-one to game with so I never really got myself out there as a gamer, being happy to paint the blog soon filled this gap and i've soon found a learned, interested and encouraging audience, equally concerned with the fine detail of costume and arms of the period, some of whom I eventually gamed with !

Stuart