FK&P AAR: Attack on Marlowe Again
One of my regular To The Strongest Ancients opponents wanted a go at For King & Parliament, so I suggested we play through the new Marlowe to Maidenhythe campaign.
I have recently been playing the Parliamentarians a lot, so we agreed that I would play the Royalists, and he would play the Roundheads. With that decided, it was on to scenario #01: The Attack on Marlowe.
The battlefield from the Royalist side. We were playing by Zoom.
This first, introductory, scenario is quite small (only 90 points per side) and features a Royalist attack on Parliamentarian forces drawn up waiting for them.
My plan was simple: use my superior horse to dispose of his cavalry, and then harry his flanks as my infantry took the centre.
Well, that was the plan…but it didn’t work. Despite the fact that my horse were fighting in the superior “Swedish” style and his were fighting in the old-fashioned “Dutch” style, my cavalry on my right flank were swept from the field!
The battle has begun: the field from the Parliamentarian side. Note the unit markers used to help my opponent keep track of his troops over Zoom.
Worse than that, on my left I manoeuvred my two units of cavalry to face and flank one of his pike units only to fall victim to some amazing shooting from both the unit and its accompanying light gun.
The opening stages of the game therefore left me down five units!
Although the outcome was now something of a foregone conclusion, I had no choice but to battle on: each game in the campaign is scored on how many victory medals the winner had left at the end of the game, so although I was fairly sure I was now going to lose, I needed to make it as painful as possible for my opponent to finish me off!
“‘Ware Horse to our right!”
Unfortunately this proved no very painful at all!
As my line moved forward, the Roundhead Dutch horse returned from having disposed of my cavalry and lined up to roll up my main battle line (as shown in the pic above).
I committed my reserve battalia to stopping them, but they were soon overwhelmed by a combination of infantry and cavalry attacks. I managed to blow away a couple of enemy Forlorn Hope units away, but soon my last victory medal was gone and I had suffered a pretty devastating defeat: down 10 victory medals after only the first game!
Revenge had better be mine in Game 2!