Continuing my new monthly resurrection of a post from ten years ago.

I'm not sure why I suddenly decided that I needed to wargame the English Civil War using One Hour Wargames, but I did. And because I wanted to do it as soon as possible I put together some armies using paper figures from Junior General.

I did a few posts in September 2015 showing how I assembled the armies themselves, but I highlighted a 'make' last month. So I thought I'd take you back to their first game. It's one of the One Hour Wargames scenarios rebadged as the first action in a mini-campaign set in the county of Midsomer.

'The Archers' is a British institution. Set in the village of Ambridge, this BBC radio 'everyday story of country folk' has been running since 1951, and is now the longest-running drama series in the world. At some point in its history it was established that there was a battle at Ambridge during the English Civil War so, of course, it would be rude not to have a go at refighting it.

To be fair, from what I can find out, there is pretty much no information about the battle aside from the fact that it happened in 1642, so any reconstruction is going to be somewhat conjectural. However Battle Of Bridgeton at Elenderil's 'Small But Perfectly Formed' blog is probably as good as we're going to get for a source, since it's based on notes provided by the BBC to a group from the Sealed Knot who were involved in a episode of the series which featured a reconstruction of the battle. In the comments on the blog Elenderil speculates that the battle may be based on that of Powick Bridge, which was certainly fought in the same area as The Archers is set, but his scenario isn't Powick Bridge.

Elenderil's scenario has the following background:

"The Royalists are preparing for the 1643 campaign season by bringing new recruits from Wales and the Welsh borders into Central England to join the King's main field army. After reaching the West Midlands they find the route blocked by a well fortified garrison at a significant river crossing. Marching downstream to secure crossings away from that garrison they hope to cross at the small village of Bridgeton where an old Roman road crossed the river at fords and a medieval bridge. As they cross a ridge line to the West of the village their Cavalry scouts report a force of the local Parliamentarians approaching from the East. The Parliamentarian force is tasked with denying the crossing to the Royalists and preventing them from moving further East"

Anyway, I took Elenderil's scenario, and fiddled with it a little, firstly in order to scale down the forces and terrain in order to fit it on an 8x8 portable wargame grid and, secondly, to put the village of Ambridge closer to the centre of the action by allowing some deployment on both sides of the River Am. For some reason he sets it in early 1643, although the only map I can find showing the location of the battlefield says 1642.

Here's the terrain setup, looking north. The River Am runs north-south and cannot be crossed except at the bridge. The village of Ambridge lies to the east of the river. The Royalists will approach from the south, looking to secure the road and the river-crossing in order to avoid a large Parliamentarian garrison on the river elsewhere (maybe the nearby town of Borchester). Parliament has sent troops from the garrison to hold the crossing, and they have marched from the east along the road and formed up to the north of the village.

The objective is for the Royalists to control the whole length of the road, by having no Parliamentarian unit on or adjacent to it at the end of eight turns. Obviously forcing the opposing army to break is an automatic win as well.

Both sides massed their horse to the west and foot in the centre. Some foot were on the Ambridge side of the river.

A cavalry action started to the west, and it was obvious that the superior Royalist numbers were going to win the day.

Both sides fought each other across the hedges to the east of the village.

Royalist horse routed one of the Parliamentarian units ...

... then turned on the flank of the foot.

An overview of the battle. At this stage the Royalist foot hadn't made much headway in the centre, but their horse were very much in control of the western end of the battlefield, and Royalist numbers were beginning to tell to the east of Ambridge.

Indeed the Parliamentarian troops to the east of the village quickly routed.

Parliament's commander fell as the Royalist horse kept up the pressure.

The Parliamentarian foot kept fighting and holding off theh Royalist horse, though. Royalist foot were now engaging the Parliamentarian dragoons across the river. The dragoons were the only unit Parliament had controlling the road.

The Royalists reorganised for one final push.

A Parliamentarian regiment was now surrounded, but kept fighting; the Royalists seemed unable to finish it off.

The dragoons were driven from the enclosures by the river.

This was enough to break Parliament's army. The Royalists picked up a win in six turns.

On the whole it was a pretty easy win for the Royalists; they never seemed in much trouble. I ran it through again, and they had a slightly harder time, but still picked up a win in seven turns. I may tweak the forces a little to make their job a touch harder.

Not that Elenderil's scenario has the village on the other side of the river; I moved it to make the main area of the board less cluttered. There are two river crossings as well. I simplified that too. Looking at semi-official maps of Ambridge, it actually appears that the river runs east-west, and that the main part of the village lies to the north:

And the battle takes place north of the village.

I haven't tried this scenario for ages, but with a low unit-count and some open areas I thought that it would offer some excellent flanking opportunities in order to test my rules changes.

Here's a rundown of the forces:

Parliament

1 x Commander (Colonel Shuttleworth)
1 x Elite Pike & Shot (Shuttleworth's Foot)
1 x Average Pike & Shot (Brereton's Foot)
1 x Average Dragoons
2 x Raw Horse

Royalists

1 x Commander (Earl of Derby)
1 x Average Pike & Shot (Molyneux's Foot)
1 x Elite Pike & Shot (Tyldesley's Foot)
1 x Raw Pike & Shot (Fylde's Clubmen) - This unit cannot fire and starts with a Strength of 3
1 x Raw Dragoons
2 x Average Horse (Derby's Horse and Houghton's Horse)

The action starts with the Royalist advance party, consisting of Tyldesley's Foot and the dragoons, being surprised by Shuttleworth's Foot and Parliament's dragoons. To cover this I had Parliament go first. To simulate surprise, and the the fact that a lot of each side's forces were unprepared and acting as reinforcements, I gave the Royalists only 2 activation dice on the first turn, and only 4 on the second. Parliament was restricted to 4 activation dice on the first turn as well.

Reduced to a regiment of foot and some dragoons, Parliament's army broke.

I fought it again the next day. After having a look at the terrain on Google Maps I made the stream trickier to cross in the second game (stop when you reach it and on the next bound the only move you can make is to cross one square). This time the initial Parliamentarian volley destroyed the Royalist dragoons, whilst Parliament's horse pushed back the Royalist cavalry. The Royalists quickly found themselves on the back foot, and defending the stream-line, but steady fire from Parliament's foot and flank attacks from their horse saw Lord Derby's men break.

The flank attack changes didn't get a massive test in either of these games, since most retreats were blocked anyway, but I will keep trying.

I am playing around with my Portable ECW rules a little more at the moment, looking at two things. The first is the co-location of artillery with other units, rather than it occupying a square on its own. I covered this in a post earlier this month. The second is a tweak to the way flank attacks work.

Flanking enemy units is basically very easy in most iterations of the Portable Wargame, but over time I've made the effects of being flanked deadlier, especially in how it affects the ability to retreat. For the past year I've been considering ways to help reduce this. I started by looking at making it harder to make a flank attack, but couldn't get that to work for me. But the other day I clicked that really I'd created my own problem by making it harder - nay, impossible - for flanked units to retreat. I went back to the basic Portable Wargame rules and in those a unit can simply retreat, so long as it's not blocked by terrain or other units. So if you are hit in the front and have an enemy on your flank as well, you can still retreat from the unit in front of you.

So for my own Portable ECW rules I have decided to try the following change: When testing for the effects of a hit a unit takes a -1 modifier to the roll if they are in the frontal zone of more than one unit. This makes it more likely that they will simply take a hit, but doesn't preclude a retreat. The rule that a unit cannot retreat if in the front squares of more than one unit is removed. All other retreat rules apply.

To test this I set up my refight of Newbury, which has become a default scenario for any testing, since it has a decent number of units, a relatively simple battlefield and roughly equal forces.

So here is everything set up and ready to go, with Parliament on the right and the Royalists on the left.