Midgard Again! Giving the War of The Roses Lists a try

        After having given the  100 Years War version of Midgard a try I went ahead and rebased (gasp!) more figures from the Jon Williams Memorial Collection ( R.I.P. my friend, you were a better man than most) to match the new rules and set out to give the War of the Roses lists a try. As we were going to have four people playing I buffed the armies up a little but kept things balanced. The units and leaders were taken directly from the lists published by the author that are available here.  The players were given their leaders, armies and deployment areas and were free to organize and deploy their troops withing the area assigned to them. In all the pictures North is to the left.

 

The Lancastrian Deployment

A=Longbowmen  B= Billmen  C= Foot Knights  D=Scourers 

E= Mounted Knights  F= Gallowglass  G= Kerns

On the first move the Lancastrians went all-in and advanced as fast as they could 

 

The Yorkist Deployment 

1= Longbowmen  2= Billhooks  3= Foot Knights

4= Mounted Knights 5= Scourers 

In reply the Yorkists moved to the large hilltop while holding back the balance of their force 

The Lancastrians again moved as rapidly as possible except for the mounted Knights who remained a respectful distance from the longbowmen deployed between the two large woods

 

 

spotting the Lancastrian flanking move the Yorkists moved  their own Scourers  to counter the flank attack, the troops on the hill deployed stakes to their front then the longbowmen of both sides exchanged arrows

 

as the Lancastrian foot steadily advanced Jasper Tudor remembered why he had hired the Irish  mercenaries and began to move them in front of the mounted knights to act as a meat-shield

 

 

despite heroic efforts the Yorkist archers could no longer sustain the unbalanced shooting match (outnumbered two to one) and fell back behind their Billmen abandoning their stake line, far away to the northeast the Scourers of both sides squared-off, in the gap between the woods and the large hill the Yorkist billmen charged the Lancastrian Archers in a fight that they won handily

 

 

point-blank longbow fire is devastating; the Lancastrian archers obliterated the Yorkist Billmen,

next to the woods the Lancastrian Knights replaced the Archers and drove the Yorkist billmen back, one glimmer of hope for the Yorkists was that their mounted knights had finally managed to move around the left flank of the Lancastrian line Fitzgibbon was forced to lead a unit of billmen personally to plug the gap and secure the southern flank

 

away to the north the Scourers were skirmishing ineffectively, safe behind their wall of Irish mercenaries the Lancastrian Knights began to advance

 

 

in the south things were rapidly coming to a head as the Lancastrian billmen got in amongst the Yorkist archers, the untimely death of Edward Neville didn't help matters nor did the Yorkists inability to roll anything aside from "four" on a d6!  the cost in Reputation as successive units were eliminated combined with the death of Neville left them with only on Reputation token.....

( Ed note; I don't know where the unit of blue longbowmen at the bottom center came from, my best guess is they are a unit that was destroyed and I failed to remove them from the table!)

 

 

 

....in the center the Lancastrian Knights eliminated a Yorkist longbow unit  while the skirmishing Scourers conducted a "mutual destruction" melee which cost each side a unit, this finished off the Yorkist supply of Reputation tokens and thus the battle.

       A bit of jolly fun and (even with two players that were not familiar with the rules) we were done in about two hours. I continue working on my Fall of Roman Britain campaign game. As quickly as these rules play I can envision getting two, maybe three, games done in one evening (I have the luxury of three tables that I can use for gaming) which would allow the campaign to play to completion before folks get tired of it.