Blink Blink Gone

Yep, Blink once, blink twice and the week disappeared. Kinda like what happened to all my Calvary in our game of pike and shotte at the club on Saturday.

Feeling lazy tonight so I’ll use Bryan’s  little write up on the game. Which I’ll post below.

Other things happening, well I decided to go back to my old blog format, the new one I tried was just too much overload. Also got a couple of games of Small Worlds in, which is a great fun little game, easy to play and its a non-brain draining game.

Looking forward to getting some more games in since the last month was just a blur of holidays and family life.

Pike and Shotte

 

(Bryan’s report) As per the last couple of meetings, we had another large Pike & Shotte game for the October meeting. Going into this game the Parliamentarians had won the first game (two months ago), the Royalists (thanks to Cavan) had won the second game (last month), so the coming game would be the decider.

This time we had myself (Bryan), Glenn and Cavan upholding the Royalist cause, against Rob, Kevin and Mark for Parliament.

Pretty typical deployment all along the 16ft table, however the Parliamentarians did try something sneaky on their right flank and massed the bulk of their cavalry (9 regiments) there with Rob. Opposite this was myself with Prince Rupert and (initially) only four Royalist cavalry regiments, so I was worried, but Rupert wasn’t!

Cavan held our Royalist centre, mainly opposed by Mark (yes, he had made a rare appearance and even played some of this game before being distracted by another game!). Glenn was on our other flank with a mixed force, opposite to Kevin with his Scots infantry (Kevin’s Scots cavalry had all gone to Rob to bolster that big cavalry deployment mentioned earlier).

So the Parliamentarians got the first turn, and Rob was super aggressive with his 9 cavalry regiments, most getting 3 moves on superb order dice rolling by the Parliamentarian maestro that he is. I think his plan was to overwhelm Rupert’s 4 cavalry regiments, before the Prince could bring up his two reserve cavalry regiments to assist. Things were looking grim for the Royalists. Then Prince Rupert (or was it his poodle) pulled a blinder! First fight – two cavalry regiments on two – Rupert wins, Parliament rolls low and both are destroyed. Next fight, similar thing happens, next fight, same again, and again! At the end Rupert (who now had 6 cavalry regiments) had destroyed all 9 Parliamentarian cavalry regiments for the loss of only one Royalist cavalry regiment. And that loss was caused my Mark’s pikemen coming across to assist Rob! A total massacre for the Parliamentarian right flank, leaving their centre exposed to (nearly) the full force of Rupert’s Cavaliers!

In the centre Cavan was grinding it out against Mark, mainly infantry action around a village, with Cavan coming out slightly ahead in the end. On the other flank Glenn and Kevin were thrashing it out, but the lack of cavalry for Kevin was probably not helping him. In the end Glenn seemed to have that flank, so with Rob broken and Kevin nearly broken the game concluded as a major Royalist victory!

Another awesome game on the big table, and thanks to all players especially Rob who took his defeat (and bad luck) with a smile which truly made for an enjoyable game (at least for Rupert – he is redeemed!).

Grant and John came for a visit and played a 28mm game of Impetus – an Ancient/Medieval ruleset, with miniatures on large bases which looked really interesting.

Early finish, once the Parliamentarians capitulated, so Mark suggested a beer, like we used to, so we all retired to the Two Fat Cows (or Blondies or whatever it’s now called), and Rob being the loser he was, very kindly paid – what a sportsman he is!