Never Mind the Billhooks Game One

Romanov Ağustos 30, 2022

View from the Yorkist side

Lancastrian side

Lancastrian left flank

Lancastrian right flank

Lancastrian centre

Yorkist right flank and centre

Yorkist centre

Last Tuesday afternoon Craig and Garry came over to my place and we played our first game of Never Mind the Billhooks, the new War of the Roses rules by Andy Callan, which is available as part of Wargames Illustrated September 2020 Issue Number 393. Rick was unable to make it but kindly lent us most of the figures for the game. Craig and Garry were the Lancastrian commanders and I was the sole Yorkist commander. Both sides had 124 points, three commanders and very similar forces the only difference being, two units of light horse on the Lancastrian side and a single unit of knights for the Yorkists.

An initial manoeuvre phase ends with hostilities (shooting or combat) and the regular game turn is card driven with a play deck, bonus deck and special event deck. Commanders issue orders to units who can then make up to two actions. Shooting and combat is decided with dice rolls for hits and saves. Some of our infantry units were the standard twelve figures, in two ranks of six and others were eight figures, in two ranks of four and we used casualty markers. The cavalry were on 50mm by 80mm bases so we used these in two ranks of four as the frontage was the same as the standard single rank of eight cavalry figures.

It proved to be a lot of fun with the randomness of the card draw making it important to make the best use of orders and actions for individual units in a turn. The Yorkist knights destroyed the Lancastrian light horse but then retreated themselves in disarray from some Lancastrian foot and were wiped out by shooting. In the centre there was an archery duel before a decisive charge by the Lancastrian foot men-at-arms saw their Yorkist opponents rout with their Commander-in-Chief. We forgot to do the leaders duel in this combat but the game was all over!