First Newbury Play-Through: Introduction & Turn One

THE eighth battle in Mike Lambo's English Civil War book is the First Battle of Newbury, which was fought in September 1643.

Royalists under the direct command of King Charles trapped, but failed to destroy, a smaller Parliamentarian force under the Earl of Essex.

The Parliamentarians will attack from the bottom of the map

The human player takes command of the Parliamentarians, who have three units of muskets, two of pikes and two of horse.

There is a special win condition for this refight - the Parliamentarians 'only' need to get one unit off the top of the map before the end of turn 10.

If this sounds unrealistic, in that one unit would not have contained many men, remember a single unit in the refight represents many regiments in real-life.

I have concentrated my forces on the left flank, but with a small group on the other flank to act as a diversion or, perhaps, a separate breakthrough  group

The AI receives a unit of artillery and three units each of horse, muskets and pikes. They are placed according to dice throws.

The Royalists have sited their artillery behind trees, a mistake I made at the Battle of Stratton

As usual I will write up the refight as it goes along.

TURN ONE

My seven dice give me two 6s, 5, three 4s and 1. Since attack dice (4-5-6) are useless this early in the battle, I reroll the 4s but get 5 and two more 4s.

Accordingly I can only move one unit, and I choose to move forward the furthest-left muskets. I could instead have moved the unit next to them from off the same column of hexes as the artillery, but that would only lead to the artillery moving from behind the trees.

The Royalists start by firing their artillery, needing 8+ to score a hit, increased by one since they are firing through trees, but roll 6.

All three units of Royalist horse advance, with the right-flank units forming into column.

All the Royalist muskets also advance, and so do the pikes.

Royalists are advancing in unison