Battle of Torrington 16/02/1646

This game was played yesterday at the New Buckenham Historical Wargamers Club. The figures were 28mm and the rules used were Warlord Games 'To Kill a King'

 The board consisted of a line of barricades at the edge of the town of Torrington, blocking two roads which enter the town. The defenders were entrenched with a number of cavalry units in the rear. The defensive line terminated in a large redoubt manned by artillery and infantry.

This was the last battle of the English Civil War with the last Royalist remnants holding out in the village. The New Model Army were to attack from the end of the table.

Here is the left of centre of the defences. The musketeers are manning the entrenchments with the Pike in the rear ready to support the frontline in the event of a heavy attack in their area.

Here is a close up of a musketeer line. As you can see the standard of painting from Stuart and Peter helped the visual appeal of the game.

The large redoubt was heavily defended and flanked either side with further infantry.

Here is a close up. With the large amount of open ground in front of this position the Parliamentarians had the opportunity to deploy onto the table.

Part of the attack in the centre of the table stalled at first but did eventually continue.

 The fighting for the redoubt was fierce and continuous. During the real battle the redoubt fell due to the use of pikes by the New Model Army, but only after two hours of fighting. Also once the redoubt fell as the Royalists fell back the church was destroyed by an explosion as an amount of gun powder ignited.

Here are some of the Parliamentarian cavalry. These deployed to the left of the defenders and had a difficult time deploying in front of the defenders trenches. Unfortunately these troops did not budge for a long while despite a lot of encouragement! The rules used try to add uncertainty to the movement rates by determining the amount and types of movement a unit can make by a dice throw. Throwing over this initiative rate means that nothing happens. This can be infuriating for the player commanding those figures. I personally can see why this has been done in the rules but feel a morale based system rather than something more abstract would be more suitable. Using these rules I have seen units stubbornly refuse to do anything for most if not all of the game which is not strictly accurate.

If you look closely at the figures above you can see the roots growing out of the bases of these figures into the board!

The game went to history and after the redoubt fell the game came to an end.

Many thanks to Paul, Stuart and Paul for organising this game and supplying the figures. Further pictures can be found here