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Friday, November 1, 2019

ECW Battle of Southam, 1642

Having refought the ECW Battle of Southam three times in August, I returned to the drawing board to see what could be done to affect an historical outcome.  All August battles ended with a decisive Royalist victory which ran counter to the actual outcome.  In the historical encounter, the Royalist foot and artillery suffered from the imbalance in the number of their kind opposing them and fled the field.  Only the more numerous Royalist horse was able to cover this withdrawal.  

In all three earlier games, the Royalist cavalry superiority played havoc with any attempt by Parliament forces to come to grips with their opponent.  Superior in cavalry on both flanks, the Royalists quickly dispatched their less numerous counterparts and controlled the field of battle.  Given the historical outcome, I needed to investigate how this came about.  Since this is a solo game and I will be commanding Lord Brooke's Army, all photos will be taken from that perspective.  References to "left" and "right" will be assumed to be seen from the Parliamentarian side of battle unless specified.

For game specifics, first, I likely rated all cavalry on the field as having a better Combat Effectiveness (CE) than warranted.  Being early in the war, these ratings were likely too generous.  I will begin by downgrading all horse regiments across the board.  Some formations will be rated better than others but a general downgrading is in order.

Second, Parliament fielded six guns to two.  In the August battles, Parliament was allocated two gun stands to the Royalists' one.  To keep the gun ratios historical, Parliament will receive a third gun stand.  Being light pieces, all guns will be able to prolong a little farther than in the earlier battles.  More numerous and slightly more mobile, perhaps artillery may play a larger role?  
Initial dispositions
As a reminder, the Order of Battle for Southam is:

Parliamentarian Army OOB:
Army Commander: Lord Brooke: Average

Infantry:
Colonel John Hampden's Foot (CE=3)
Lord Brooke's Foot (CE=4)
Colonel Denzil Holles' Foot (CE=3)

Cavalry:
Left Wing Cavalry: Fiennes Horse (Trotters CE=3)
Right Wing Cavalry: Goodwin's Horse (Trotters CE=4)

Three artillery stands (CE=3)

Royalist Army OOB:
Army Commander:Earl of Northampton: Good


Infantry:
Earl of Northampton's Foot (CE=4)
Sir William Saville's Dragoons (Dismounted) Cavalry (CE=4):

Wilmot's and Carnarvon's Horse (Galloper CE=3)
Legge's and Clarke's Horse (Galloper CE=3)
Compton's and Northampton's Horse (Galloper CE=3)
Saville's and Middleton's Horse (Galloper CE=4)
One artillery stand (CE=3)

Lord Brooke advances off from heights
Turn 1:
Royalists take the initiative and begin a timid advance toward Lord Brooke's position on the heights.  Too far out to allow his cavalry dominance to come to bear, the Earl of Northampton closes the distance to Roundhead positions carefully.  Lord Brooke gives the signal for a general advance and his army descends from the heights.  Having the advantage in foot and guns, Northampton urges his center forward while his two cavalry regiments protect the wings.

Turn 2:
Lord Brooke seizes the initiative.  With his cavalry within striking distance of Royalist horse, his cavalry push forward to engage the enemy.  On Lord Brooke's left, Fiennes' horse charges forward.  Opposing Fiennes, Carnarvon's horse, counter charges.  Before the two bodies of horse collide, one of Brooke's light guns gets off a shot on the oncoming horse.  The light gun scores a lucky hit.  Carnarvon fails his response test and falls back.  His withdrawal is halted when he reaches Clarke's Regiment of Horse.  Fiennes follows up the retreat but pulls up short of contacting the enemy.  
Cavalry clash on left
Royalist horse repulsed
Goodwin's Horse on the right charges forward.  Middleton's Royalist Horse responds.  Both become shaken during the charge but both close.
Cavalry clash on right
In the clash, Middleton suffers a hit and retreats passing through Northampton's Horse to the rear.  Northampton's Horse calmly allows Middleton to pass through before charging Goodwin's Horse, himself.  Being shaken from his earlier effort, Goodwin cannot respond and takes the charge at the standstill. 
Royalists repulsed again
As Northampton closes, Goodwin's trotters, armed with pistols, get off a shot.  Shocked by this close range pistol discharge, Northampton's troopers turn tail and retreat.  Their panic carries them into the already shaken troops of Middleton.  This is too much for Middleton's wavering troops.  Middleton retreats back toward the bridge.  The Royalist left seems to be in peril.   
Goodwin vs Carnarvon
While the Royalist left is disintegrating, on the right, Carnarvon withdraws through Clarke's Horse in an attempt to remove himself from harms' way and seeks a place to recover.  Unfortunately, Carnarvon's move disorders Clarke and his troops become shaken.  In the center, the sole Royalist gun fires into Brooke's Foote at short range.  Brooke takes a hit but remains in place, shaken.
Royalist cavalry falling back
Seeing Brooke's regiment wavering, Northampton rides over to join his own regiment of foot.  Leading his regiment, he encourages his men to push into Brooke's regiment.  As Northampton bears down on Brooke, the defenders fire an ineffective volley before Northampton closes.   
Infantry fight in the center
Lord Brooke's Regiment of Foote repulsed
In the close combat, Brooke suffers heavy casualties and falls back between the gap separating his supporting regiments.  Northampton's regiment suffers casualties but stands firm.  For now, Northampton and his regiment are victorious.
Northampton's Regiment of Foote
Turn 3.
Lord Brooke retains initiative. Fiennes' Horse, now, precariously situated far from support and within the sights of Saville's Dragoons, falls back in search of a less hazardous place to reform.  As Fiennes disengages, the dragoons send off a parting volley.  Many troopers are left on the ground as the regiment withdraws.
Fiennes' horse falls back out of harms' way
In the center, Hampden's Foote fires into Northampton's Foote.  Northampton's Foote suffers casualties when the volley finds its target by a fortuitous reroll.  Not only does the infantry regiment take casualties but the Earl of Northampton is unseated and falls to the ground dead.  With the death of their commander, the fighting spirit of the Earl's army drops.
Push of pike
The Royalists fight on until the Earl's battered and weary army can disengage.  While many of Northampton's force are teetering on the brink of collapse, the fatigue in Lord Brooke's Army leaves it in no position to pursue.  The Royalist army retires from the field.  Minor Victory to Parliament.
For the Royalists, the battle is lost
Well! Parliament finally sees a victory on the ground at Southam.  Luck played a role in the outcome of this battle.  First, Parliament's outnumbered cavalry saw limited success on both wings.  With Royalist cavalry superiority negated, this early success set the tone for the battle.  Having many of the regiments on both sides either rated raw or poorly trained, there was little margin for error when combat effectiveness began to ebb.  Staying power was fleeting.  When the Earl of Northampton fell in the center, the effect of his loss rippled throughout his army.  The result was most of the army was shaken and nearing the brink.  A slight shove would have pushed the entire army over the edge.  

Was the result a fluke?  Perhaps.  Maybe the historical result was a low probability result too?  Had the light gun not found its target when Carnarvon counter charged Fiennes in the first charge of the day, Carnarvon may have defeated the Roundhead cavalry.  An early victory here would have opened up that flank for exploitation.  Did adding the third gun to Northampton's army make a difference?  I think it did.  While not many casualties were caused from artillery fire, its presence may have entered into Brooke's calculus on how to tackle the battle.  Allowing the light guns to prolong helped in supporting Brooke's general advance in the center.

An entertaining action.  The battle was swift and developed a plausible narrative.  A battle I plan to repeat before putting the soldiers back into their box.  Has Southam really been out on the table since August?  Yes, it has.  If nothing else, having Southam on the table and in sight every time I enter the game room for a painting session, has motivated me to push a few more ECW units into the painting queue.  

49 comments:

  1. Thanks Jonathan, great looking battle and interesting analysis. If I didn t have so many projects currently in train ............however I have always planned an ECW project when I retire and more time 😀

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    1. Thank you, Matt! "When I retire" is a phrase I mutter too. For me, though, I already have more projects than I can shake a stick at. Hope to see your ECW project one day.

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  2. A lovely sized action. I was interested in your infantry formations, I am guessing that musket are on 40mm and the pike on 60mm?

    The tweaks were gentle enough to bring balance closer to the centre ground and of course the dice are the dice, over which we have no control over, but each roll tells their own story.

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    1. Glad you liked it, Norm!

      Yes, the muskets are mounted on 40mm squares and the pike ae on a 60mm x 80mm. base.

      I have no control of the dice, for sure. Those odd and low probability results are always what was noted in battle accounts too.

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  3. Lovely looking game and the units sound suitably fragile for an early war battle where everyone was learning their trade as they went on! I really should finish off some more cavalry for this period,I look forward to the next game!
    Best Iain

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    1. Much appreciated, Iain!

      I do think the combat effectiveness reductions especially for cavalry improved the game and increased Parliament change.

      Get busy on your cavalry!

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  4. Great looking game mate, and I think the tweeks you made to the OOB seemed reasonable. A most enjoyable read.

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    1. Glad you enjoyed the battle account, TJBM! You offer me encouragement!

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  5. Very nice, always fancied ECW but never got around to it.

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    1. Thanks! There is still time to get around to an ECW project.

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  6. A most enjoyable post on the order of battle decisions and the game itself. The miniatures look great too.

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    1. Thank you very much, Peter! I appreciate your support!

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  7. Nice read. Looking forward to the next engagement!

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    1. Pleased to see you enjoyed the battle account, Mike!

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  8. Interesting action. And good that you played it through different permutations of troops. Did you find a map for this? I can’t see one on BCP-Project.

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    1. Hi! This is an interesting little action, for sure. Playing the same scenario multiple times is de rigueur here.

      The map is from Giglio's English Civil War Gaming Scenarios, Vol 3 published by Partizan Press.

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    2. Cheers Jonathan. I’ll have to get that series.

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  9. Great report Jonathan and added stimulus to my own ECW project.

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    1. Thank you, Jon! Glad to provide some inspiration for your own ECW project. Your 6mm armies look fab!

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  10. Great report Jonathan and nice to see Parliament getting the upper hand!

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    1. I am pleased you enjoyed both the report and the outcome!

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  11. Great AAR and interesting to read your thoughts on the 3 games. Often those unusual historical results can be hard to replicate on the games table, without some run throughs of the scenarios and/or tweaks to the rules.

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    1. Thanks, Steve! Glad you enjoyed the BatRep. Sometimes a scenario takes a few playings to help understand the historical situation and how to properly attack the problem on the game table.

      With this battle, a few unit ratings were adjusted to better reflect the situation. The result finally mirrored history. The next question is, can it be replicated?

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  12. Brilliant game report! The models and terrain look so lovely! The English Civil Waris one of my favourite periods.

    So hard to perfectly replicate the exact conditions of a historical battle - harder still to get similar outcomes. I mean, bizarre, random, completely unpredictable and sometimes incomprehensible stuff happens, sometimes, that can totally change the outcome of a battle - that in a game would the the equivalent of rolling snake eyes and failing a morale test when anything but double ones would be a pass!

    Some people HATE games where seemingly completely random things happen - I don't mind it at all, because THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS (sometimes...) and it all just adds flavour to the narrative! (The people that hate it seem to be the ones that see miniature wargames as an actual COMPETITION)

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    1. Thanks, Tim, for an equally brilliant comment!

      Gamers must remember that the historical outcome was only ONE data point along an unknown probability distribution. Other outcomes were certain possible and most often likely. It is the nexus of decisions, interactions, and luck that produced the only data point we see.

      Good post!

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  13. Exactly!

    All systems tend toward entropy.

    There is so much that a commander of any era has absolutely no control over in combat! I mean, Sun Tzu summed it all up very nicely over 2500 years ago with "Best laid plans never survive first contact with the enemy"!

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  14. Great looking ECW game Jonathan!

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  15. It is hard to know when you have the balance right, but downgrading the Royalist cavalry seems to have struck the right chord so that the Parliamentarian foot weren't paralysed.

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    1. I plan to play the game again with the ratings as in this game to see if the balance is good. Both sides saw their cavalry ratings reduced. That reduction made for more brittle formations such that the cavalry were not able to sweep the field. I liked the way the battle played this time.

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  16. We did up the same scenario back in 2015.

    https://murdocksmarauders.blogspot.com/2015/08/ecw-warr-without-enemie-battle-of.html

    The rules set was different, so the results were predictably different. The part I liked best was due to the poor commanders on both sides there exists the possibility for BOTH armies to choose to withdraw (something that may have happened more often than recorded historically).

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    1. So you did!

      I played Southam a number of times in 2015 too using a variety of different rulesets (Ironsides, OHW, Impetvs).

      I enjoyed your battle report!

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  17. Fantastic looking troops and movement, Jonathan!

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  18. Another fantastic report Jonathan! Thank You!

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  19. An enjoyable after action report Jonathan...
    And of course some lovely looking toys.

    All the best. Aly

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    1. Glad you enjoyed the battle report and my toy display, Aly!

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  20. A fine looking game and a compelling narrative, Jon. I like the "Old School" ECW look [most regiments coat and flag colors match, lost of colored jackets instead of acres of scruffy browns and greys, etc ]. Of course, my own armies are done similarly. :-)

    Remind me what rules you are using, Jon?

    I shall have to try this one with FK&P. The artillery had a more than marginal influence on the outcome... an uncommon thing in an ECW wargame! For that matter, I should get the Giglio scenario books. Hmm, Christmas is around the corner...

    ECW is my second oldest period, with the bulk of my forces painted in the mid 1970's; FK&P is the first set of ECW rules that I have truly liked, and that has lead to expansions of the armies in 2019... 40+ years later, with at least a few more new units likely in 2020!

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    1. Thank you, Peter!

      Perhaps the uniform is too uniform in look and Old School but not all of my regiments are dressed thus. While most have the same color coat, many wear a variety of breeches. A lot of browns, greens, and grays can be seen among many of the regiments legwear.

      As for rules, I use a heavily adapted version of Whitehouse's Ironsides. While Ironsides provided the initial inspiration, Howard may not recognize them much any more.

      Give it a try with FK&P and see what you think. The opening shot by the Roundhead guns was quite a lucky one as noted. A very low probability shot found its way into the cavalry and caused a bit of discomfiture.

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    2. The same could certainly happen with FK&P - Artillery is unlikely to have much effect, but it still can!

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  21. Great looking battle and nice analysis. I’m afraid I don’t know enough about ECW to offer any advice. We know that luck plays a part in any battle but we don’t like feeling our games are purely determined by it. Seems like down grading the cab some helped with the balance. 😀

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    1. Glad you enjoyed the battle report! With a small battle such as this, luck may play a bigger role since any given roll of the dice may have a more important effect in guiding the outcome. Not enough rolls to allow the Law of Large Numbers to take hold.

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  22. Wonderful looking game! I would be curious to see it played with Baroque Impetus.

    Christopher

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    1. Thank you, Christopher!

      Four years ago (has it really been that long?), I gave Southam a run-out with Baroque. You can see the BatRep here:

      https://palousewargamingjournal.blogspot.com/2015/09/ecw-battle-of-southam-impetvs.html

      I should give it another go with the revised OB.

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  23. Missed this post? Certainly a great report, the figures look excellent!

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  24. How not to love a game with such beautiful figurines, superb period!

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