Bauge

Well,we had a couple of runs through the Bauge scenario for next Saturday at Triples and the games seemed to flow well. 

The battlefield from behind Bauge

An account of the battle can be found here and of course Wikipedia.  The scenario begins with Douglas at Bauge with two units of pikes and two of archers.  Buchan, with the remainder of the Scottish forces enters on the same side of the river.  La Fayette, with the French forces is on the opposite bank, facing Clarence with the English mounted troops, who is supported by his illegitimate son and a body of archers. Salisbury, with more archers and a small unit of cavalry enters on the Bauge side of the river.  Clarence is rated as 'rash' and on rolling a 6 on a d6 he will attach himself to a body of cavalry and attack Bauge across the bridge, (the only crossing point for mounted troops).

The French contingent

In the first game Clarence behaved impeccably, resisting the urge to charge pikemen on a narrow front and instead turned his attention to La Fayette's troops.  In a series of charges the English cavalry trampled each and every French unit, whilst the Scots looked on from across the river.  To be fair, the Scots had problems of their own.  Buchan was somewhat reluctant to enter the fray, consistently rolling high dice and therefore failing his command test and thereby remaining stationary.  Salisbury's archers were also tardy in their arrival, but once on the field their fire quickly drove off one of Douglas' units of pikes. The English archers hit with five dice out of 6 and the Scots failed to save any of their casualties due to rolling miserably low dice. However, when it came to deciding on the distance the pikemen would have to fall back the 5 dice produced a total of 28! a score sufficient to have saved three of the casualties if rolled a few seconds before.    28 cms was comfortably more than the usual move for the pikes so they were deemed to have routed from the field.  his loss, taken with the French losses was sufficient for an English victory, especially as La Fayette was killed leading a charge of his last reserve in an attempt to halt the English cavalry.

The gallant La Fayette

 After a break for lunch we played the scenario again.  This time, Clarence played more to type.  Rolling a six at the first opportunity and taking the unit of English knights headed for the bridge to Bauge.  In no time at all the English knights were charging home against the Scots pikes, and acheiving no success whatsoever.  However, Carence would not be denied and the English tried again, this time they did push back the pikes before a counter push forced the knights back onto the bridge.

Clarence on the bridge

 Meanwhile, Salisbury had moved forward and arrayed his archers facing Douglas's men in Bauge.  Some Scottish archers had lined the river to fire at Clarence and thereby offered a flank to Salisbury's cavalry.  Not one to spurn an opportunity, Salisbury ordered the cavalry to attack.  They moved forward but failed a command test to charge and were left as a tempting target for the Scots archers, who redeployed and shot into them.  Flinching from their losses the cavalry fell back and ended up in the river where they milled about helplessly.  Seizing their chance the Scots pikes now charged Salisbury's archers and in a hard fought melee wiped out one unit.  However, they had suffered heavy losses and were now isolated and the remainder were driven from the field by the remaining archers.

Clarence's remaining cavalry were attacked by La Fayette's French knights and were almost wiped out.  Only the supporting archers saved the day,shooting down many of the French as they sought to close to melee.
Back on the bridge Clarence attacked for a third time and gained a little more ground.  Perhaps sensing victory was near he charged a fourth time and this time the pikes gave way, Bauge was his!  Or perhaps not.  Although again suffering poor command dice, Buchan had arrived with his pikes in the nick of time.  Deploying to face Clarence the Scots edged forward, forcing the English back onto the bridge.  It was now that Clarence found that rather than English reinforcements coming to his aid, the men advancing across the bridge were French billmen.  Trapped, he could only surrender and the remains of the English force quit the field.

Two games, a victory for each side, so the scenario was judged a success.  If you are attending Triples on the Saturday, please stop off at the Lance & Longbow stand and say hello and maybe stay and take part in the game?