1st Battle of Newbury 1643 - Scenario

English Civil War Action

The Royalist Army

The behemoth that is Project Jutland seems to be taking up the majority of my gaming activities at the moment so its nice to get the green cloth out of storage and blow the dust off our 28mm ECW collection.

I always seem to spend ages deciding which battle to do in this period and the original plan was Cropredy but I still can't find a decent map for it so I eventually decided on 1st Newbury. It's a big old game and I ended up deciding figure ratios based solely on the number of Royalist Cavalry I had available.

Due to the size of the game and the length of the orbat I have split the posts in two, the game is still in progress so I will do an AAR later.

A spot of Royalist Cavalry

Historical Background

Fought on the 20th September 1643, a year which to date had gone well for the Royalist cause. Banbury, Oxford, Reading and Bristol were in the hands of the King and the Rebel Parliamentarians were without an army in the field. They were forced into action when Gloucester came under attack, Essex raised an army which lifted the siege.

Parliament Forces ready for the fight

Essex retreated towards London but the Kings Forces managed to overtake him and place themselves before Newbury and across the road south for the capital. The sneaky Parliamentarians made an un gentlemanly dawn attack seizing the high ground before the Royalists had chance to allow their moustache wax to set. It's at this point that our refight begins.


Game Map

Above is our game Map played on our standard 12 x 6 table, not a massive amount of room to manoeuvre but the real battlefield had streams on either side of it. The large enclosed area at the top was known as Skinners Green a series of hedged areas, we had a brief discussion before the start of the game and decided that we would treat the whole area as soft cover rather than deal with each hedge individually.

Byrons Foot and Horse wait for Battle to commence

The hill at the bottom of the map represents Wash Common, the ground was level across the battlefield and dropped away behind the Parliamentary lines, I simply didn't have a big enough hill to cover that area, so used what I had. So for game purposes no troops on the "hill" count as being uphill of others unless they are on the raised ground looking to those on the left of the map.

Apologies for some of the Brigade Commander names being clipped on the map, pretty sure from the orbats you will be able to work out who went where, it's something I haven't figured out how to do with my mapping program yet.

Order of Battle

God Save the King

Before I present our orbats for the game orbat I thought it was best to explain my line of thinking to cut off the pendants at the pass.

Firstly to my knowledge there is no definitive historical orbat of the battle, we seem to know more or less which units where present but not necessarily how they were organised or what their exact strength was.

The Parliamentary lines prior to Battle

I am limited by the 150 Royalist Cavalry I have  (we had some spare Parliamentarian Cavalry but I was letting those rebellious rascals in my Army, can you tell which side I'm on yet ?). So that meant a ratio of about 1 : 45ish and therefore about 125 Roundhead Cavalry. Made think about getting some more which made me look at some of the new Empress Cavalry on the Internet,  oh nice, this is how lives are ruined !

That meant smallish Infantry Armies so (purists call for an Ambulance now) I used a different ratio of about 1:33 for the Foote, giving me about 240 Royalist and 270 Parliamentarians, around 800 figures all in.

Kings Lifeguard of Foote

So with the numbers of figures determined and having no direct orbat to work from I decided to split the numbers evenly between the "Brigades". Splitting this again by the number of units present would have given us some pretty small units, it would have been an average of 14 Figs a unit for the Parliamentary Foote for example. This caused a problem as the minimum unit size for Foote with our rules is 16 so I decided to build up the Brigades based on the units I had available. This meant some units present are not physically represented their men amalgamated into the other units. So if your favourite unit is missing, I'm sorry.

Rebel Artillery

Which leads me nicely onto rules and unit classifications. The thing that put me off ECW initially was most of the rule sets split units up into wings of muskets and blocks of pike and you seemed to be endlessly counting numbers of figures and trying to keep track of losses to 3 separate parts of the same unit. Then I discovered Forlorn Hope from Partisan Press, it had a single number of models in a unit which was defined by its musket : pike ratio. All figs fought or shot the effect depending on the ratio, boom, brilliant, let's buy figures.

The rules we use today differ greatly from that set, we have drastically changed a lot of the combat system to speed things up but that one ratio idea is still the bedrock. However the rules do have a great system for randomly determining troops types based on the year of the action and the area of the country the Battle took place in. You roll 3 d10 per unit to determine the strength, Morale and ratio for Foote or Tactics for Horse, as we had already determined strengths we rolled two die per unit, the results are show below.

If you fancy rolling them up yourselves if you have a crack at the game here are the relevant tables (all d10 rolls). We added +2 for some of the "famous " units like the Kings Lifeguard and Ruperts Horse which of course was the kiss of death as most of them went onto then roll a 1.

Royalist Foot - Ratio 3:2 on a roll of 1 else 2:1. Morale 1-2 Raw, 3-8 Trained, 9-10 Veteran.
Royalist Horse - Tactics - All Gallopers, Morale 1-2 Raw, 3-4 Raw/Elite, 5-6 Trained, 7 Trained /Elite, 8-9 Veteran, 10 Veteran/Elite.
Royalist Artillery - 1-3 Raw, 4-10 Trained

Parliament Foot - Ratio 3:2 on a roll of 1 else 2:1. Morale 1-2 Raw, 3-8 Trained, 9-10 Veteran.
Parliament Horse - Tactics 1-3 Trotter (F), 4-9 Trotter, 10 Gallopers. Morale 1-2 Raw, 3-8 Trained and 9-10 Veteran,
Parliament Artillery - Raw 1-5, Trained 6-10.

I strongly recommend getting a copy of Forlorn Hope even if it's just for these tables.

Royalist Order of Battle

King Charles I	C in C	LV1
Sir Jacob Astley	Gen of Foot	LV2
Brig Vavasour	Brig Foot	LV1
Vavasours Foot	Trained 2:1	20 Figs
Herberts Foot	Raw 2:1	20 Figs
Brig Belasyse	Brig Foot	LV1
Belasyse Foot	Trained 2:1	24 Figs
Earl Rivers Foot	Vet 2:1	20 Figs
Astleys Foot	Trained 2:1	16 Figs
Brig Gerrard	Brig Foot	LV1
Gerrards Foot	Raw 2:1	24 Figs
Ruperts Foot	Vet 3:2	28 Figs
Byrons Foot	Brig Foot	LV1
Kings Lifeguard	Trained 2:1	30 Figs
Prince of Wales Regt	Raw 2:1	16 Figs
Col Lisle	Brig Foot	LV1
Herberts Foot	Vet 2:1	20 Figs
Molyneuxs Foot	Trained 2:1	20 Figs
Owens Foot	Trained 2:1	16 Figs
Prince Rupert	Gen of Horse	LV3
Brig Byron	Brig Cav	LV1
Astons Horse	Raw Gal	9 Figs
Byrons Horse	Raw /E Gal	9 Figs
Digbys Horse	Vet/E Gal	9 Figs
Northamptons Horse	Vet Gal	9 Figs
Col Wilmot	Brig Cav	LV1
Kings Lifeguard	Vet/E Gal	12 Figs
Queens Horse	Vet/E Gal	9 Figs
Wilmots Horse	Vet Gal	9 Figs
Chandos' Horse	Raw Gal	6 Figs
Prince Maurice	Brig Horse	LV1
Prince Ruperts Horse	Trained Gal	12 Figs
Prince Maurice Horse	Vet Gal	9 Figs
Lucas' Horse	Train/E Gal	9 Figs
Andovers Horse	Train/E Gal	6 Figs
Lord Carnarvon	Brig Horse	LV1
Carnarvons Horse	Train/E Gal	12 Figs
Sandys Horse	Vet Gal	9 Figs
Eures Horse	Vet/E Gal	9 Figs
Morgans Horse	Raw E/Gal	12 Figs
Artillery
1st Heavy Gun	Trained	5 Figs
2nd Heavy Gun	Raw	5 Figs
Ind Medium Gun	Trained	4 Figs
1st Light Gun	Trained	3 Figs
2nd Light Gun	Trained	3 Figs
3rd Light Gun	Raw	3 Figs

Prince Rupert and Dog

Parliament Order of Battle

Earl of Essex	C in C	LV 2
Sgt Major Gen Skippon	Gen of Foot	LV2
Col Fortescue	Brig Foot	LV1
Martins Regt	Trained 3:2	16 Figs
Springates Foot	Trained 2:1	16 Figs
Col Bulstrode	Brig Foot	LV1
Skippons Foot	Raw 2:1	20 Figs
Brookes Foot	Trained 2:1	16 Figs
Col Harvey	Brig Foot	LV1
London Trained Band Red	Vet 2:1	24 Figs
London Trained Band Blue	Trained 2:1	24 Figs
City of London Green Aux	Trained 2:1	16 Figs
City of London Yellow Aux	Vet 2:1	16 Figs
Col Robartes	Brig Foot	LV1
Robartes Foot	Trained 2:1	16 Figs
Constables Foot	Veteran 2:1	20 Figs
Col Barclay	Brig Foot	LV1
Earl of Essex Foot	Vet 2:1	20 Figs
Langhams Foot	Vet 2:1	20 Figs
Col Holbourne	Brig Foot	LV1
Holbornes Foot	Trained 2:1	20 Figs
Thompsons Foot	Trained 2:1	20 Figs
Sir William Balfour	Gen of Horse	LV2
Col Middleton	Brig Cav	LV1
Middletons Horse	Trained Trot	9 Figs
Lord Greys Horse	Trained Trot	12 Figs
Col Meldrum	Brig Cav	LV1
Sheffield Horse	Trained Trot	9 Figs
Meldrums Horse	Trained Trot	12 Figs
Col Denbigh	Brig Cav	LV1
Denbighs Horse	Trained Trot	9 Figs
Behres Horse	Trained Gal	12 Figs
Col Stapleton	Brig Horse	LV1
Earl of Essex Lifeguard	Trained Trot	12 Figs
Earl of Essex Horse	Vet Trot	9 Figs
Col Ramsay	Brig Horse	LV1
Dalbiers Horse	Vet Trot	9 Figs
Ramsays Horse	Trained Trot	9 Figs
Col Goodwin	Brig Horse	LV1
Goodwins Horse	Vet Gal	9 Figs
Harveys Horse	Vet Trot (F)	9 Figs
Nortons Horse	Vet Trot (F)	6 Figs
Artillery
Ind Heavy Gun	Trained	5 Figs
Ind Medium Gun	Raw	4 Figs
1st Light Gun	Raw	3 Figs
2nd Light Gun	Raw	3 Figs

That's the set up for you, in the next post I will cover the action itself.

The whole set up, apologies for the strange angle of the photo it was the only way I could fit the whole thing in.