Battle of Bosworth

 Hello There! At short notice the New Buckenham Historical Wargamers put on a Saturday game of the Battle of Bosworth. Although not my normal period of history that I game I wanted to see how the 'Impetus' rules worked again, as thanks to covid it had been a long time since I had last played the rules.

Here are some of the troops waiting for battle. While I am not up on the troop types these men were very well turned out. 

The set up was done using the Osprey campaign book although during the set up the discussion of recent evidence showed that an alternative site for the battle had been muted.

As I am normally a Napoleonic wargamer I tried to resist the mindset that the artillery would be all dominating. These guys would have been more effective if they had actually loaded some projecvtiles in the cannon rather than just the charge!

The units looked even better on the table with one of the clubs sky boards behind. Both sides lined up with their archers to the front and cavalry to the rear waiting to see where they could best be used. 

After the opening moves Richard III used his archers to soften up the enemy, not wanting to merely pile in. I played the Duke of Norfolk and there was a marsh in the middle to the front of my line. I did not feel I could clear the marsh before the enemy reached me and then fought at an advantage being formed while I was still at least disordered trying to get through the marsh. 

I was rather blessed on the dice front and consistently throwing 5's and 6's for Impetus did not do ME any damage at all. Well at least on the firing. I was also fortunate on losing the disorders at the end of the moves.

Here the enemy started to come forward and bit the bullet for crossing the marsh as it was a better option than getting shot at by loads of arrows. 

I liked the look of this 'fluff'. I have been considering making one of these as I have purchased an amount of big barrels from a company which also supplies items to 'rig' a 28mm resin hulled ship I have in the pipeline.

Here is Richard III's base and was very colourful he is too. As the game went so well he made some plans to finally deal with those two princes in the tower, back in London. (Obviously he is supposed to have already 'done' this historically?!").

An after battle report is available on the New Buckenham Historical Wargamers Facebook page, here along with further pictures of the day.

My deepest comiserations to my opponent facing the hail of arrows as ny dice throws were very against him on the day. I have been there, got the 'T' shirt and know what it is like!