ECW Batrep - The Battle of Turner's Farm 1643

As you may have read in Fran and Lee's posts recently, The Rejects got together last Sunday for probably our last game of the year and what a great game it was too!!!
It was my first game of Posties new rules "By God or Might, we will Prevail" (Fran, Surj and Ian have all played before) The rules worked quite well and just need a little tidying up, which I'm sure Postie will have done when next we play the game.
As my post is the last of the 3 I tried to keep it a little more simple than my usual posts, but there's still far too many pics and there could/should have been more!!

"Prince Rupert's Army has been trying to bring the Earl of Essex to battle, thus forcing Essex to retire from the Midlands and giving the Royalist forces in the area some breathing space to fortify and re-supply various garrisons cut off by the Parliamentarian forces. A win over the Parliamentarians would give Rupert more fame and glory if he were to beat Essex. Essex as you can imagine will want to hang onto his stranglehold of the Midlands and its Royalist Garrisons, which are near to collapse. Both sides have come to the conclusion that it is now inevitable that a pitched battle is going to take place and both sides have built up their forces, confident of victory. They have now arrived at Turners Farm near the village of Stow ready to do battle".

A view of the Royalist flank from the left.

And from the right.....

Lord Henry Wilmot’s command (Me)

The Queen's, Prince Rupert's and behind The Prince of Wales' Horse

All were veteran troops

Royalist troops cross the bridge as support

Commanded by Robert Dormer, Earl of Carnarvern. Colonel Thomas 

Howard's and Lord Brougham Horse, the later being a Raw unit.

Lee’s troops led Lord Digby advance to close with the enemy

     Sir Arthur Aston's Veteran Horse at the rear and two Trained unit in the front

     Nicolas Crisp's and Sir Thomas Tyldesley's.

My and John’s Horse are set to charge.

The Parliamentarian's Surj and Dave move forward!!

Unlike these raw recruits, who continue to refuse to bloody move!

Come on Lord Broughton!!

Oh crap! John does his usual jammy git throws and smashes both regts of my Horse

 who both route back through both my other units of horse. I could be in trouble here??? Gulp!

Damn!! I was right it doesn’t look good, but the only good thing is all 

the Horse are disordered and cannot charge this turn.

But they can this turn, in desperation I charged Howard's Horse unit in column.

While John's unit Sir John Maldrum's charged my disordered Prince Rupert's Horse.

Prince Rupert's are destroyed and the charge carries on into the Prince of Wales Horse.

Prince Rupert’s Lifeguard, small but deadly move to the left flank to counter Fran’s Dragoons.

Lee and Fran Horse smash into each other on the left flank

The Royalist Infantry are still waiting for a decisive victory on the flanks to move forward.

The melee swings around in my favour, my column surprisingly beats and destroys the best 

unit on the table Sir Arthur Hasslerigg's Lobsters, killing poor Sir Arthur in the fighting. 

John threw at least 10 dice and scored no hits, while I threw 3 dice and got 3 hits!!

Fran’s Dragoons move down the road

With the victory and now a safe flank on our right Richard and Smiffy move their 

infantry forward, it was an agreement with Surjit the now lone infantry player as

 Dave had to leave early, to have a full scale advance with the infantry, mainly

 because they hadn’t had much of a game……….but BadBoy Surjit didn’t do 

as he agreed, this caused no end of problems!!!

Prince Rupert of the Rhine, with his dog, Boy.

The Prince of Wales’ Horse charged the rear of Sir John Meldrum’s Horse, there could

 be only 1 winner!!!!! The Royalist’s are victorious and  also capture the enemy leader

Richard gives fire as the Parliamentarian forces advance.

Fran and Lee’s Horse all meet, its bad news for the Royalists, Lee not only loses

 both melees but also his leader. Fran’s gloat was quite evil!

Fran trying to look serious??

The Earl of Essex

Fran dis-mounts his Dragoons and hops over the hedge to try and cause a little mischief.

With the flank is secure, I had to think what to do with my Horse?

Sir Charles Gerard's Foot advancing down the hill.

Will the infantry meet??

Its nearing the end of the game, but I’ve now got myself into a great position to charge next turn.

Now its Lee’s turn to have a little luck, he see’s off all the enemy Horse!!

 and captures Fran’s leader as well.

And there the game ends, as you've no doubt already read on Lee and Fran’s blogs, the

 game was a dead heat on points, it could have so easily gone either way. But if we’d played

 on for just one more turn, I've no doubt the victory would have been ours.

Well I would, wouldn't I??