Battle of Nantwich 1644 : and other stuff…..

The run on battles continues, this time the Dungeon hosted a refight of the battle of Nantwich to introduce George to my ECW collection and rules we have been using.

The battle of Nantwich, the Kings forces had been besieging the town which had a substantial protective wall. It was I understand the last town in Cheshire holding out. Fairfax arrives to break the siege. But attacks across difficult ground which is broken up by hedges, ditches and fields.

Our set up the Church at Acton on the right with the Royalist artillery. The scenario is broadly historical, although from my brief reading on the battle the Royalist had no cavalry, this being stuck on the other side of the River Weaver which is in the line of trees in the distance. To give some balance we would allow some Royalist cavalry across the weaver on D6 roll.

The Parliamentarians begin their advance through the broken ground. The Royalists are slightly unsure what to do, they open fire where they can but the enemy use the cover to their advantage.

Quickly Fairfax sees the opportunity to out flank the enemy with his cavalry, the Royalist infantry begins to fold back to try and prevent this, in the distance a unit has also been detached to deal with the threat from Nantwich !

Arghhh if only they were Royalist cavalry ! But they are not the Royalist left flank has been turned ! It’s going to be a struggle now for Byron the Royalist commander

The Royalist cavalry make it cross the bridge, but the path is block , they charge in and a swirling melee ensues 

Quickly forming into a defensive position, in the middle distance the Royalists are on the attack hoping to link up to their cavalry ?

“We are undone” the cavalry charges the rear of a second unit and the artillery in the church yard

The royalists bravely fight on but it is really only a matter of time now, in the distance the Nantwich reinforcements have been thrown back into the town by accurate musket fire. But the main Royalist line is close to breaking 

In the far distance the Royalist cavalry has broken through literally wiping out the Parliamentry horse, but they are too far away to save their infantry. And instead spend time looting the Parliamentary baggage, this forces a morale check for the Parliamentarians but they pass easily

With all but one infantry block fleeing the field the Kings forces surrender the ground and the siege is lifted of Nantwich. A good job for the parliamentary army as their baggage has been looted and they will need supplies from the town.

A fun battle and a good introduction for George, the rules worked well, the disrupted terrain didn’t help the Royalists enough to hold back the tide. The flank being turned so early was devastating and rightly so. Seeing off the Nantwich contingent was a bonus but it had tied up an infantry unit which was needed elsewhere. The Parliamentarians didn’t quite have it all their own way……..just most of it ! I’m really enjoying the ECW setup and the scale is giving the mobility which I was looking for plenty more mid scale battles to stage, but I would play this one again…….

A change of scale ….

Some painting this week so SYW artillery horses, rather than have full limbers I have gone for horses and a spare artillery figure to hold them. Simple but nice to add to the collection

Look what the postman (well Evri delivery driver) brought, I had been pondering these for a while, not my favourite but they came up at a bargain price on eBay. We’ll see what we can do with them

With the rugby on TV (Ireland/wales) not that enthralling I set to to paint the HYW infantry from Wargames Atlantic. They took about 3 hours start to finish.

I chose simple colours and painted them the same way I do the ECW. The only difference being a grey undercoat rather than brown, given the armour on show. I then picked three colours to see what they would look like and mixed them up. Some Agrax stain and then pick out some details/highlights.

I think I have missed a bit on some figures as I have now referred to some pictures which show all the figures in surcoats a few of mine don’t have them painted, hey at this scale it makes little difference. I think the bases are a 30x40 which bunches them up a bit, I tried various different bases but this seemed to give the most attractive result. Not too regimented and with another set you could have quite a lot of variation brining the individual figures to the front rank. Quite happy with the overall effect. What takes the time is the variation in coat colours, the more variation the longer they would take.

Scale wise here they are compared to a unit of Pendraken SYW infantry and some Epic scale ECW. I guess the photo shows they are much closer to 10mm, but as previously shown the ECW are really small 15mm. Food for thought anyway, we’ll see how the cavalry turn out when I get a chance.

Another game planned for today and then I need a rest 😂

Thanks as always for checking in

Matt ❤️