Refighting the Battle of Bosworth with Midgard

 This week Colin and I got the opportunity to play test James Morris' Bosworth scenario, after I had franticly finished basing more archers. I was Richard III and Colin took Henry Tudor.

It was a fun game, but felt quite one sided. Colin must have committed some transgression against the Dice Gods recently. I tried to play it historically, advancing Norfolk's battle first, whilst engaging in long range archery duels else where and manoeuvring Richard and his bodyguard around to be in place to charge down the hill towards Henry Tudor. Due to an appallingly unlucky sequence of dice rolls at the end of turn 3, the Stanleys turned their back on the Tudor upstart and joined in on the side of the true king of England. If the Stanleys remain neutral Tudor is in trouble, but with them against him it was all over bar the shouting.

We are going to try again in a couple of weeks, it was an exceptional sequence of dice rolls, so I doubt it would repeat in a dozen or more games. (Famous last words anyone?).

Here are some photos from the game.

The battle deployment from Richard III's perspective. The Duke of Norfolk's battle on the right, The Earl of Lincoln on the left and Richard with the cavalry reserve on the hill. In the distance, The Earl of Oxford is on the right and Henry Tudor on the left.

On the other flank the Earl of Northumberland Battle hang back and the Stanleys mass ominously on the far hillside.

By some miracle of luck, I managed to get Northumberland's archers to advance as far as the marsh by turn 3!

Richard II leads his bodyguard around the back of his lines to be in position to strike at Henry Tudor.

Tudor had kept his troops back, just sending the archers forward to shoot at the enemy.

Norfolk was struggling in his advance, caught in a crossfire with his archers on the verge of collapse, although they dished out some punishment to the enemy archers in return.

It was looking quite historical, in the battle Norfolk was killed leading his attack and his troops pushed back early on. But that didn't matter because the battle was decided else where. Henry and his knights were now outnumbered 5:2 with enemies charging their flanks - a foregone conclusion really.

A win for Richard III, let's see how the refight goes.