Battle at Hoveton

After their defeat at Wrinkleham the parliamentarians continued to recruit men to their standard. Sir Warwick Hunt, having the county trained bands under his control decided to try and give battle again to the Royalists.

Meanwhile Sir William de Willoughby royalist army had received some reinforcements so he moved down the valley from Wrinkleham and was on his way to Chipping Creaseton. Near the river crossing at Hoveton the two armies met ....

Using the river as a secure flank both sides deployed ready to do battle. Two views of the initial deployment - royalists at the back of the table, parliamentarians at the front.

The parliamentarian left flank was the focus of the battle, where the bulk of the cavlary was deployed. Firstly the two royalist horse regiments.

Their initial oppositions - Cuirassiers

The cavalry moved forwards and the infantry did so as well ...

The cavalry melee is joined, the Cuirassier smash into the royalist horse ..

the Royalist horse recoiled, but manage to do so in reasonable order.

The nearby royalist foot regiment rout after a stiff volley by the parliamentarian foot and the presence of the cuirassiers on their flank.

The front royalist horse regiment charges and routs the cuirassiers and the royalist foot regiment rallies. The middle royalist foot regiment was shot up badly by artillery and musket fire, and has withdrawn.

The battle hangs in the balance but both commanders decide to withdraw, the royalists as their foot regiments have had enough fighting for one day, the parliamentarians concerned about the larger number of royalist horse remaining.

Making the ECW Unit Cards

One of the comments to my previous post asked how I made the unit cards.

1. I wanted some cards which were reasonably robust and larger than the size of a business card. I decided on using those from a standard pack of playing cards (rather than buying special blank cards).
2. Next thing I did was to identify a standard inkjet sticky label size that would fit over the playing card. [Avery J8173 - 10 labels]
3. The playing cards then had blank sticky labels put on them; these were then trimmed off.

4. I set up a single page document with 5 columns; two blank cards to each column. Making sure when printed that each 'card' would come out on a label.
5. A picture of each unit is added to the card; the picture size is then adjusted till the card layout is correct again - this can be a bit fiddly. I do a batch of 10 cards in each print; each unit having one 'for Parliament' and one 'for ye Kinge' card. A batch of 10 cards is printed onto a page of sticky labels, labels are then placed onto the cards.
6. If I just want to do one card, I just print the page; cut out the 'card' and stick it onto a playing card covered with a sticky label.

Unit Cards

All ready for the next battle. The rules we use have a movement mechanism, where for each move the next unit to move is selected from a set of shuffled cards in turn.

All units have a 'For Ye Kinge' or 'For Parliament' card, this allows units to be on either side in different scenarios.